The NBA’s conference semifinals represent an escalation in both stakes and quality of competition. Nobody expected the play-in teams — outside of the Golden State Warriors — to compete for the 2025 title. But once the playoff field is whittled to eight remaining contenders, they all have a legitimate chance.
Just look at what happened in the opening days of the second round. Road teams upset the higher-seeded No. 1 Cleveland Cavaliers, No. 2 Boston Celtics and No. 1 Oklahoma City Thunder in each series’ Game 1.
With the sport’s ultimate prize now firmly in sight, let’s examine what it would take for each remaining team to lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy this June. What strengths would they need to flex? What weaknesses would they need to mitigate? And what matchups would they need to exploit, or avoid?
Here’s how each remaining team — sorted in order of title odds by ESPN’s Basketball Power Index (BPI) — can win the 2025 NBA championship.
Jump to a team:
BOS | CLE | DEN | GS
IND | MIN | NYK | OKC
Oklahoma City Thunder
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 63.6%
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To reach NBA Finals: 50.6%
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To win 2025 title: 39.2%
Statistical models consider the Thunder to be overwhelming title favorites. And why wouldn’t they be? Oklahoma City set an NBA record for point differential (plus-12.9 per game), is led by likely MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and boasts one of the best defenses in NBA history.
But the path to a title might not be as easy as the Thunder’s regular-season dominance would suggest. Navigating a stacked playoff bracket could prove challenging: In the regular season, the Thunder went 2-2 against the Denver Nuggets, 2-2 against the Minnesota Timberwolves and 1-2 against the Golden State Warriors. They also have less playoff experience than those three Western Conference foes — as they proved in an uncharacteristic meltdown late in a Game 1 loss against Denver on Monday.
Stephen A. Smith details why his biggest concern for the Thunder is Jalen Williams.
To maximize their odds of winning the franchise’s first championship since the Seattle SuperSonics won in 1979, the Thunder need better play from their stars going forward. Gilgeous-Alexander is in a small shooting slump, with a 45% effective field goal percentage in the playoffs, down from 57% in his remarkable regular season. And his leading sidekicks struggled immensely on Monday: Jalen Williams shot 5-for-20 from the field, while Chet Holmgren scored just 12 points and missed a pair of crucial free throws in the final seconds.
The top-seeded Thunder lost to the Dallas Mavericks in the second round last season, largely because the supporting cast couldn’t make the Mavericks pay for overloading their defense on SGA. Williams and Holmgren will need to step up and prove they’re ready to be championship-level second and third options.
Oklahoma City must also be stronger on the boards. The team added Isaiah Hartenstein in free agency after the Mavericks’ size punished the smaller Thunder last postseason, but Denver still grabbed 21 offensive rebounds in Game 1.
Still, one clutch collapse doesn’t destroy the Thunder’s overall chance at a title. They remain the NBA’s best team, on paper. Now they just have to translate that potential into reality.
Indiana Pacers
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 77.9%
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To reach NBA Finals: 37.0%
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To win 2025 title: 12.8%
The Pacers have played like a member of the NBA’s elite for months. They finished the regular season on a 34-14 run, and in that span they had the NBA’s sixth-best net rating and top-10 showings on both offense and defense.
They’ve maintained that pace in the playoffs, too, dispatching the Bucks with ease and seizing control of their second-round series with two wins on Cleveland’s home floor.
After hearing chants of “overrated” throughout Game 2 from Cleveland fans, Tyrese Haliburton responds in style.
Indiana’s rise coincided with the return of glue guys Andrew Nembhard and Aaron Nesmith, who missed time earlier in the season due to injuries. The Pacers’ starting lineup, with that duo plus Tyrese Haliburton, Pascal Siakam and Myles Turner, had a plus-11.1 net rating in the regular season and is up to plus-18.2 in the playoffs — second best among all lineups with at least 25 minutes played.
Indiana’s core contains a collection of complementary skill sets: shooting, playmaking, pace and perimeter defense. And coach Rick Carlisle’s bench offers support from the likes of T.J. McConnell, Bennedict Mathurin and Obi Toppin, who have each scored double figures multiple times in the playoffs.
Most of all, Indiana knows its identity, which allows it to dictate the tempo of games and throw opponents out of their rhythm. With Haliburton pulling the strings, the Pacers consistently generate good shots and rarely turn the ball over, giving them a high offensive baseline every night.
And the defense is much improved compared to last season, when it couldn’t get enough stops to threaten Boston in the conference finals. In 2023-24, Indiana ranked 24th in defensive rating in the regular season and 13th out of 16 teams in the playoffs. This season, the Pacers are much more balanced.
Golden State Warriors
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 78.8%
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To reach NBA Finals: 25.9%
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To win 2025 title: 12.5%
Three players who are still active in the 2025 postseason have at least three championships on their résumés: Stephen Curry, Draymond Green and Kevon Looney. Add in Steve Kerr, who won five titles as a player and four more as a coach, and Jimmy Butler III, who has never won a title but has been the best player on two surprising Finals teams, and it’s clear that the Warriors have the richest high-level experience in the playoffs.
The Warriors will continue to rely on Curry — who must return from a hamstring strain soon, or else his team has no chance at another championship — and Butler, with just enough supplementary contributions from Game 7 hero Buddy Hield, Brandin Podziemski and Moses Moody.
The defense, meanwhile, was the best in the league after the All-Star break, as the Butler-Green pairing controlled the game on that end of the floor and shut down the Rockets in the first round and the Timberwolves in Game 1.
Don’t discount Looney’s contributions, either: The Warriors are most comfortable playing small, but the veteran center played a big role against the super-sized Rockets in the first round and Rudy Gobert‘s Timberwolves in Game 1, and he might be called upon for similar contributions against either Jokic’s Nuggets or the double-big Thunder in the conference finals. The Warriors have schematic versatility and ample experience implementing mid-series adjustments.
Despite losing Steph Curry to an injury, the Warriors prevail in Game 1 for a 99-88 win over the Timberwolves.
One other wrinkle in Golden State’s favor is that Kerr knows how to manage the postseason as an entire journey rather than a disconnected set of individual games. In the team’s Game 5 blowout loss in Houston, for instance, Kerr threw in the towel early, and no Warrior played more than 26 minutes — which helped Curry and Butler stay fresh for Game 7 a few nights later, when they played 46 and 45 minutes, respectively.
Unlike the teams atop this list, Golden State doesn’t have a ceiling that would allow it to cruise to a title. The team doesn’t have enough consistent offensive firepower outside of its stars, and with Curry’s injury the Warriors will be hard-pressed to reach the conference finals. But if he returns, they could absolutely finagle their way to 12 more wins over the next six weeks — and in any Game 7 scenario, they might be the best bet in the field.
Boston Celtics
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 46.6%
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To reach NBA Finals: 27.1%
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To win 2025 title: 12.0%
Nine Celtics played at least 100 minutes last postseason, and all nine still wear Celtic green this spring. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, the saying goes, and Joe Mazzulla’s rotation hasn’t changed since it went 16-3 en route to the 2024 title.
The Celtics enter every game with a mathematical advantage because they take (and make) by far the most 3-pointers in the league. And they were one of two teams, along with the Thunder, to place in the top five in both offensive and defensive rating this season. But Boston has more than just a system — it relies on a collection of tremendous talent, with five elite starters and top-notch role players in Al Horford and Sixth Man of the Year Payton Pritchard.
With Giannis Antetokounmpo‘s Milwaukee Bucks eliminated in the first round, Jayson Tatum has an ironclad case as the best remaining player in the Eastern Conference playoffs. And Tatum himself has leveled up since earning a ring in 2024 (but not winning Finals MVP). After missing Game 2 of the Celtics’ first-round romp against the Orlando Magic, Tatum closed that series with 36, 37 and 35 points across the final three games — essentially scoring at will against the NBA’s No. 2 defense.
Jay Williams rips Boston’s Game 1 collapse vs. the Knicks on “Get Up,” saying a series loss would mark a historic failure.
Even after losing Game 1 against the New York Knicks on Monday, Boston is still a heavy favorite to reach the conference finals, as the Celtics dominated the Knicks in a regular-season sweep and would have done the same in Game 1 if not for rotten shooting luck. According to GeniusIQ tracking, the Celtics underperformed their quantified shot probability — which measures a team’s expected effective field goal percentage based on factors like shot location and defender distance — by 15% in Game 1, which is their worst mark in any game all season. If Boston’s shooters had performed like they had in the regular season, the Celtics would have scored an extra 30 points in Game 1.
In other words, the Celtics will shoot better going forward. And when they do, they’ll take another step toward becoming the first team since the Kevin Durant-era Warriors to repeat as champions.
Denver Nuggets
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 36.4%
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To reach NBA Finals: 19.7%
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To win 2025 title: 9.2%
Nikola Jokic is the best player in the world, and the formula that delivered the Nuggets the 2023 championship still works, as his historic 40-point, 22-rebound, 6-assist effort in Game 1 against Oklahoma City demonstrated.
But Jokic can’t do it all himself, and if Denver is going to win its second title in three years, his supporting cast will need to uphold its end of the bargain. That’s working well enough so far: Aaron Gordon has already made multiple game-winning shots, and Jamal Murray‘s efficient 43-point outburst in Game 5 in the first round is the best single-game performance for any player this postseason.
Kendrick Perkins calls out the Thunder after their loss to the Nuggets in Game 1.
Denver is as potent as ever when its best players are on the court. The Murray-Jokic pick-and-roll remains unguardable, producing a scorching 1.35 points per play this postseason, according to GeniusIQ. In the playoffs, the Nuggets’ starting lineup has a plus-12.9 net rating. That lineup with Russell Westbrook in Michael Porter Jr.’s place is plus-23.8.
The Nuggets will have to contend with tired legs as the playoffs continue: The team has a shallow rotation and survived a tough seven-game series against the Clippers before meeting the Thunder gauntlet.
But that factor hasn’t slowed the 2023 champions yet. In Game 1 against the Thunder, the Nuggets scored 71 second-half points. And in the two teams’ last meeting of the regular season, in March, Jokic and Murray combined for 69 points while the Nuggets made 56% of their 3-point attempts (18-for-32). They won’t stay that hot every night, but they clearly have the potential to torch the league’s best defense.
If Denver can get past Oklahoma City, it can beat anyone. It would help, though, if the Warriors beat the Timberwolves on the other side of the West bracket, because Minnesota beat Denver in all four regular-season matchups after winning Game 7 on the Nuggets’ home floor last spring.
New York Knicks
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 53.4%
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To reach NBA Finals: 23.2%
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To win 2025 title: 7.7%
It’s difficult to imagine the Knicks breaking through for their first title since 1973 — even after they pulled off an improbable comeback win in Boston on Monday. The Celtics would have claimed Game 1 if not for terrible shooting luck, and they swept the regular-season series.
Moreover, New York just struggled to outlast the sixth-seeded Detroit Pistons in the first round. The Knicks’ combined margin of victory across their four wins in the first round was just 17 points, compared to 122 for Cleveland, 66 for Boston and 54 for Indiana.
Stephen A. Smith celebrates the Knicks’ comeback victory over the Celtics in Game 1.
But New York’s playoff run thus far, led by Clutch Player of the Year Jalen Brunson, offers one indication of how the team could scratch and claw its way to the title in close games.
More clutch heroics from Brunson & Co. would pave a path to a Knicks title, but so would some external luck. After all, New York’s playoff run was cut short due to excessive injuries last year. Why couldn’t the Knicks be on the opposite side of that equation this postseason?
New York is still the underdog against Boston, but Tatum and Jrue Holiday have already missed games this postseason, Jaylen Brown is nursing a knee injury and Kristaps Porzingis left Game 1 early because of a lingering illness. The Celtics are deeper and more talented than the Knicks, but this matchup would look a lot more even if Boston were down one star and had others hampered due to injury.
And if the Knicks could sneak by a hypothetically injury-addled Celtics squad at the same time that Indiana upset Cleveland, then New York would have home-court advantage in the conference finals and a serious chance at snapping the franchise’s 52-year title drought.
Cleveland Cavaliers
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 22.1%
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To reach NBA Finals: 12.7%
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To win 2025 title: 5.5%
What looked like a magical season days ago has quickly turned into a disaster for Cleveland, as injuries and the Pacers conspire to beat the East’s top seed. Darius Garland missed the first two games against Indiana; Evan Mobley and De’Andre Hunter missed Game 2; and Tyrese Haliburton sank a game-winning 3-pointer to bury the Cavaliers in a 2-0 hole.
So, how does Cleveland climb out and get back on track for a title? The most important step is to get healthy. The short-handed Cavaliers led for nearly all of Game 2, thanks to Donovan Mitchell‘s 48 points, but that’s not a repeatable plan, especially with how exhausted Mitchell and Jarrett Allen looked at the end of the game. Cleveland needs Mobley’s size, Garland’s playmaking and Hunter’s shooting, to say nothing of the added depth that trio provides, to have a chance at a comeback.
Tyrese Haliburton gets the ball after a missed free throw, then nails a step-back 3 to allow the Pacers to rally for a win in Game 2.
Other signs are in Cleveland’s favor. The Cavaliers will probably shoot better in the coming games, as they ranked second in the regular season with a 38% 3-point mark and nailed 44% in their first-round sweep of the Miami Heat but are down at 26% through two games against the Pacers. On the other end, the Pacers’ 47% 3-point mark thus far will almost certainly regress.
If the injured stars return — an extra off day before Game 3 will help — and the shot luck evens out, then Cleveland actually has a shot to overcome its deficit, even with the Pacers hosting Games 3 and 4. It won’t be easy for the Cavaliers, but five previous teams have won a playoff series despite losing the first two games at home, most recently the 2020-21 LA Clippers against Dallas.
Mapping out the rest of the Cavaliers’ playoff path past the conference semifinals seems overly optimistic at this point — but a full-strength Cleveland squad won 64 games with the NBA’s second-best point differential this season. That team can win it all, as long as it gets past Indiana. But time is running out.
Minnesota Timberwolves
BPI odds:
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To reach conference finals: 21.2%
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To reach NBA Finals: 3.8%
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To win 2025 title: 1.2%
The Timberwolves burst into the playoffs with a 17-4 record in their final 21 regular-season games, then handily upset the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round. Minnesota’s stifling defense held a team with two of the best offensive players in NBA history — LeBron James and Luka Doncic — below 100 points in three of five games.
Between Anthony Edwards ascending in his superstardom, Julius Randle playing by far the best playoff basketball of his career, Jaden McDaniels looking like the 3-and-D archetype, and starting-caliber players in Naz Reid, Donte DiVincenzo and Nickeil Alexander-Walker coming off the bench, Minnesota is blessed with excellent shooting and size across the board.
Anthony Edwards struggles to start Game 1 as he goes 0-for-8 in the first half with one point for the Timberwolves.
Even though it lost to a mostly Curry-less Warriors squad in Game 1, odds should lean dramatically in Minnesota’s favor if the league’s all-time 3-point king is ruled out for multiple games or for the series.
But the Timberwolves themselves need to shoot better from deep to advance further in the playoffs. They beat the Lakers despite a 32% mark from distance as a team, after making 38% of their 3s (fourth in the NBA) in the regular season, and Minnesota started 0-for-16 from 3 and made just five in Game 1 against Golden State.
In particular, DiVincenzo, Alexander-Walker and Mike Conley have combined to shoot a ghastly 21% from deep (17-for-82) this postseason, and at least one of them needs to hit open looks to give Edwards a proper backcourt partner in clutch time.
It would also help Minnesota if Jokic could pull off some magic and upset the Thunder, as Minnesota has owned the Nuggets over the past season. But the Timberwolves are brimming with confidence, and they have the athleticism and defensive chops to make any opponent’s life miserable across a seven-game series.
Last season, the Timberwolves took a huge leap forward, reaching the conference finals before running out of steam. They might know how to pace themselves better now. That’s a scary prospect for any team that might stand in their way.