With less than a month left in the 2024-25 regular season, most of the NBA-watching world’s attention is focused on the top of the standings: on the Cleveland Cavaliers and Oklahoma City Thunder finishing off their historic regular seasons, on the state of the MVP chase, on the race to secure home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs, and on which stars can lift their squads clear of the play-in tournament.
While those outcomes will likely remain up in the air until the season’s dying days, though, we do have a pretty clear picture of what’s going on at the bottom of the standings — the teams that have, for months now, been playing for ping-pong balls rather than postseason seeding.