Fact or Fiction: The list of NBA title contenders is longer than you think

Each week during the 2025-26 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.

Last week: The NBA will have another 100-point scorer

Fact or Fiction: The list of NBA title contenders is longer than you think

Stephen Curry once told us, “A good team, or a relevant team, wins the games they’re supposed to win, steals a couple on the road against good teams and protects home court.” By his definition, the NBA features plenty of good teams.

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So, last year, we set about finding out what makes a great team, and we discovered two simple truths about championship teams. They win more than the games they are supposed to, and they steal more than a couple on the road against good teams. In fact, this century’s champions have won on average 63.4% of their games against teams with a winning record and 63.9% of their games against teams on the road.

To succeed in the playoffs you must be able to beat good teams and win on the road. This isn’t rocket science. But it is a pretty tried-and-true theory. We should probably come up with a name for this. The Curryculum? We’re just spitballing here.

Only three teams have met those marks to date this season, the Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs and Detroit Pistons, and that is not such a bad list of title favorites, which was what made news of Cade Cunningham’s collapsed lung so massive. The injury threatens to undermine one of the teams that can win the title.

This is not to say that all other teams are excluded from winning the championship.

Then again, only one champion this century, the 2006 Miami Heat, owned a sub-.500 record (19-21) against teams with winning records, and only one champ this century, the 2023 Denver Nuggets, finished with a sub-.500 record (19-22) on the road. So, no team since 2000 has won a championship with a losing record in both categories.

If we expanded our list of potential champions to include teams that are .500 or better against both winning and road teams, we must now include the New York Knicks, Boston Celtics, Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets, Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers. Again: Not so bad a longer list of the potential title contenders.

Notably absent, the Minnesota Timberwolves, who are 15-17 against teams with a .500 record or better. However, they are a combined 4-3 against the Thunder and Spurs. They have both games left against the Pistons and a slew against teams with winning records remaining on the schedule. They can absolutely get to this baseline.

No other team, really, comes close.

Only eight teams this century have won better than 70% of their games against winning opponents and better than 70% of their games on the road: the 2000 Lakers, 2009 Lakers, 2013 Heat, 2016 Warriors, 2017 Warriors, 2018 Rockets, 2022 Suns, 2025 Cavaliers and 2025 Thunder. That is five champions, the 73-win Warriors and three great regular-season teams, all with 64 or more wins, in the past decade.

If you win 70% of your games against both winning and road opponents, then, you are more likely than not to go on to win the championship. Or, at least, until recently.

The Spurs, as you can see, are the only team this season to be winning 70% of their games against both winning and road opponents. They are on pace for 61 wins. Sure, they could join the 2018 Rockets, 2022 Suns and 2025 Cavaliers as paper lions, but just the same: We could say they belong as title favorites, even ahead of the Thunder.

One team that could join the list of title favorites, along with the Spurs, Thunder and those healthy Pistons, is the Celtics, who added Jayson Tatum to a team that was close to winning two-thirds of its games against both winning and road opponents.

If over the next month Tatum can return to form from Achilles surgery as a perennial All-NBA First Team candidate (and that is a big if), joining forces with Jaylen Brown, who could make an All-NBA First Team himself, then perhaps Boston will outperform its record against winning and road teams and belongs on a short list of favorites.

As for the contenders — not the favorites, but the teams that could threaten them, according to The Curryculum — that list notably includes the Lakers, who have won nearly two-thirds of their games on the road and are now .500 against winning teams.

The Lakers’ current eight-game winning streak, which has impressively included six wins against teams with a .500 record or better, has put them on a 53-win pace, third place in the Western Conference — and absolutely onto our short list of contenders.

Over that eight-game stretch, the Lakers own the league’s second-best offense, and they are bordering on a top-10 defense, outscoring opponents by 9.7 points per 100 possessions. Only the Spurs, Pistons and surging Atlanta Hawks have been better.

The Hawks? Well, they are winning the games they are supposed to on their current 11-game win streak. Ten of their 11 opponents in that span have losing records. They have, over the course of this season, stolen a couple of games on the road against good teams, and because of this streak they now own a winning record at home.

That makes them a good team, or a relevant team, in Curry’s eyes. Not a great team, though. But our list of great teams — which includes the Spurs, Thunder and Pistons as favorites and the Knicks, Celtics, Rockets, Nuggets, Cavaliers and Lakers as contenders (and the Wolves as lingering threats) — is maybe longer than you think, at least according to The Curryculum.

Determination: Fact. The list of NBA title contenders is longer than you think. At least by this metric.