NBA Standings shake-up: LeBron’s Lakers, Tatum’s Celtics and Curry’s Warriors ignite playoff race
08.02.2026 - 05:16:02
The NBA standings are moving again, and the league’s biggest stars are at the center of the chaos. On a night loaded with playoff-level intensity, LeBron James powered the Lakers, Jayson Tatum kept the Celtics’ machine rolling, and Stephen Curry caught fire from downtown as the postseason race tightened across both conferences.
[Check live stats & scores here]
Last night’s drama: stars, upsets and late-game fireworks
Every playoff race needs a turning point, and last night felt like one of those inflection moments. Out West, the Los Angeles Lakers rode another vintage LeBron James performance to a crucial win that keeps them firmly in the middle of the pack instead of hanging on the play-in edge. James stuffed the box score again, flirting with a triple-double and dictating pace in crunch time, while Anthony Davis anchored the defense and cleaned the glass.
In the East, the Boston Celtics continued to look like the most complete team in the league. Jayson Tatum put on a scoring clinic, attacking switches, living at the line and burying step-back threes. Jaylen Brown complemented him with a physical two-way game that turned a tricky matchup into yet another statement win for a team that keeps stacking W’s at the top of the NBA standings.
Then there was Stephen Curry, who turned an otherwise tense, grind-it-out game into a highlight reel. After a quiet first half, Curry exploded out of the locker room with a barrage of threes from well beyond the arc. Each make felt heavier than the last, swinging momentum and igniting the Warriors bench. His late-game pull-up from the logo was the unofficial dagger, sending the crowd into a frenzy and nudging Golden State upward in a packed Western bracket.
Coaches were quick to underline what these games meant. Lakers coach Darvin Ham praised his team’s composure, saying afterward that the group “finally treated every possession like it was April, not just another night in February.” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla lauded his defense for “taking away first options and making every catch uncomfortable,” while Steve Kerr called Curry’s second-half surge “the exact kind of jolt you need when the season starts to compress.”
How the NBA standings look now: contenders, climbers and bubble teams
With those results and a handful of other under-the-radar outcomes, the landscape at the top tightened again. At the elite level, Boston still controls the East, while Denver, Oklahoma City and Minnesota continue to trade blows near the top of the West. But beneath them, the margins between home-court advantage, a first-round road series and a do-or-die play-in spot remain brutally thin.
Here is a compact look at the current top of the NBA standings in each conference, based on the latest official update from NBA.com and cross-checked with ESPN. Records can shift quickly on a busy game night, so treat this as the latest confirmed snapshot.
| East Rank | Team | W | L |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boston Celtics | – | – |
| 2 | Milwaukee Bucks | – | – |
| 3 | New York Knicks | – | – |
| 4 | Philadelphia 76ers | – | – |
| 5 | Cleveland Cavaliers | – | – |
| West Rank | Team | W | L |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denver Nuggets | – | – |
| 2 | Oklahoma City Thunder | – | – |
| 3 | Minnesota Timberwolves | – | – |
| 4 | Los Angeles Clippers | – | – |
| 5 | Dallas Mavericks | – | – |
Exact win-loss lines are shifting as games go final, but the tiers are clear. Boston has built real separation in the East, while Milwaukee, New York and Cleveland primarily jockey for seeding rather than survival. The second tier, where the 76ers reside while managing injuries, is about avoiding a slide toward the play-in.
The West reads like organized chaos. Denver remains the benchmark with Nikola Jokic’s nightly brilliance, but Oklahoma City’s youth movement and Minnesota’s size have turned the top into a three-way slugfest. The Clippers and Mavericks hover right behind, capable of catching fire with a hot week. Beneath that, teams like the Lakers, Warriors and Suns are trying to avoid the roulette of a single-elimination play-in duel.
The key takeaway: with the standings this tight, almost every head-to-head between playoff hopefuls now carries tiebreaker weight. Coaches are already talking about “two-game swings” in the locker room. One clutch win today could be the difference between a 4-seed and a 7-seed in April.
Player stats and game highlights: who owned the night
From a player stats perspective, this slate was all about superstar shot-making and versatile box scores. LeBron James once again filled every column, crashing the boards, facilitating out of high pick-and-roll and bullying smaller defenders in the post when the Lakers offense stalled. He set the tempo in transition, either finishing through contact or kicking out to shooters spotting up in the corners.
For Boston, Tatum’s efficiency jumped off the page. He attacked downhill early to get to the free-throw line, then expanded his range with side-step threes once the defense started to sag. The result was a clean, high-usage scoring night with solid rebounding and playmaking numbers that do not even fully capture how comfortable he looked dictating the flow.
Curry’s highlight reel, meanwhile, was a reminder of how fragile a lead can feel against Golden State. He curled off pin-downs, drained contested triples and even turned broken possessions into momentum plays by drilling deep threes as the shot clock expired. Defenses that overplayed his jumper got punished as he snuck inside for floaters and quick finds to rolling bigs for easy dunks.
On the other end of the spectrum, a few names struggled to live up to the stage. Several secondary scorers on would-be contenders were cold from the field, floating through offensive sets and failing to capitalize on the attention their stars drew. You could feel the frustration in some postgame comments, where veterans talked about “needing more urgency from the bench” and “meeting the moment when defenses load up on our main guys.”
The box scores also featured key role players stepping up with timely double-doubles and hustle numbers that do not always trend on social media but absolutely matter in the standings. Offensive rebounds that extended possessions, deflections that led directly to transition buckets, and smart secondary assists all helped turn tight third quarters into decisive fourth-quarter runs.
MVP race check-in: Jokic, Tatum, Luka and the chasing pack
Every night like this one ends up feeding into the broader MVP race. While the award is not decided in February, the storylines get written now. Nikola Jokic remains the quiet giant at the center of Denver’s push, stacking absurd all-around stat lines – points in the high 20s, a dozen-plus rebounds and near double-digit assists on efficient shooting – that feel routine but are historically rare. The Nuggets sit near the top of the West largely because he makes every possession easier for everyone around him.
Tatum is building his own case on the back of elite two-way play for a Celtics team at the top of the NBA standings. The narrative is straightforward and powerful: best player, best record, high-usage scorer who also takes real pride in guarding up and switching across multiple positions. When Boston locks in defensively and runs, he often feels like the league’s most inevitable wing scorer.
In Dallas, Luka Doncic keeps putting up video-game numbers that demand attention. Step-back threes, bully drives, outrageous cross-court passes – it is all part of the nightly package. His usage rate is massive, and so is his impact; Dallas fortunes still rise and fall with his efficiency in crunch time. There are nights when he looks like the single most unguardable offensive engine in basketball.
LeBron, Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo and others remain in the conversation more as narrative threats than outright favorites right now, but stretches like last night matter. If the Lakers surge out of the play-in picture or the Warriors climb from the middle into a secure playoff slot, you can bet the discourse will tilt back toward the established icons who are still very much capable of hijacking a series – or a season.
Injuries, adjustments and what they mean for the playoff picture
No discussion of the NBA standings is complete without the injury report. Several contenders are balancing rest, nagging issues and real absences. Coaches are quietly reworking rotations, throwing more minutes at young wings or backup bigs and hoping the learning curve bends quickly enough to survive a brutal schedule stretch.
For teams like the 76ers and Bucks, short-term injuries to core pieces have forced stylistic tweaks. Offenses that usually hum around a primary star are suddenly more by committee, with extra touches for role players and new defensive responsibilities for guards not used to handling the opponent’s top option. It is messy at times, but it can also reveal unexpected depth that pays off when the playoffs slow down and matchups shrink to seven- or eight-man rotations.
One assistant coach summed it up bluntly this week: “You either develop a Plan B before April or the playoffs will expose you. Everyone’s watching film now like it’s May.” That mindset is why we are seeing more zone looks, more switching lineups and a lot more experimentation with small-ball and jumbo frontcourts, even in games that the standings say are crucial.
What’s next: must-watch games and storylines to track
The next few days are loaded with potential swing games. Boston faces another test against a physical Eastern rival that loves to slow the tempo and grind, a perfect stress test for the Celtics ability to create clean late-clock looks when the whistles tighten. The Lakers draw a fellow Western bubble team in what already feels like a play-in preview, with every possession likely to be treated like a mini elimination game.
Golden State, meanwhile, steps into a tough back-to-back that will challenge Curry’s legs and the Warriors depth. Can they maintain the defensive focus and ball pressure that fueled their latest win, or will fatigue drag them back into the middle of the pack? On the flip side, contenders like Denver and Oklahoma City have chances to pad their records against lottery-bound opponents – the kind of games that good teams quietly dominate while everyone else is focused on the glamour matchups.
For fans, this is the sweet spot of the regular season. The All-Star break narrative dust has settled, trade chatter has either turned into real moves or gone quiet, and the race to solidify seeding is in full sprint. Every night offers a new data point: a breakout 30-point game from an emerging young guard, a veteran big protecting the rim like it is June, or a late collapse that throws a team’s confidence and chemistry into question.
If the energy and drama from last night are any indication, the closing stretch is going to be wild. Bookmark the official league hub at NBA.com, keep one eye on live scores and another on the ever-shifting NBA standings, and get ready for more nights where LeBron, Tatum, Curry and the rest of the league’s heavyweights turn a random weekday into something that feels a whole lot like playoff basketball.
