It's been more than a month since the 2025-26 season started, giving us an early idea of where teams stack up in their respective conferences.

The Oklahoma City Thunder , the defending NBA champions, are at the top of the Western Conference with a nearly perfect 16-1 record . Meanwhile, the Eastern Conference has seen the surprising rise of the Detroit Pistons , while teams expected to contend for the conference faced early struggles.

The season is still in its infancy, but early play is already revealing strengths and weaknesses. Our ESPN insiders took a look at teams with title aspirations in both conferences, answered the biggest question facing each team and weighed in on what each team needs to do to stay among the contenders. These teams were selected based on having at lea

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