NBA Standings shake-up: LeBron’s Lakers climb as Jayson Tatum, Curry and Jokic tighten playoff race
07.02.2026 - 15:17:28
The NBA Standings tightened again over the last 24 hours, with LeBron James pushing the Lakers back into the mix, Jayson Tatum keeping the Celtics cruising at the top, and Stephen Curry plus Nikola Jokic reminding everyone that the Western Conference crown is still very much up for grabs. It felt like an early playoff slate: high drama, wild swings, and stars deciding games in crunchtime.
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With less than two months to go, every possession is starting to feel heavy. Coaches are shortening rotations, fan bases are scoreboard watching, and the nightly shuffle in the NBA Standings has turned the regular season into a nightly elimination game. From monster box scores to subtle but crucial role-player performances, the last slate delivered plenty of material for the playoff picture, the MVP race, and the late-season narrative machine.
LeBron and the Lakers refuse to fade
LeBron James has made a career out of blurring the line between regular season and postseason intensity, and this latest stretch is no different. Los Angeles needed wins to stay clear of the lower Play-In seeds, and LeBron responded with another all-around masterclass, flirting with a triple-double while directing traffic like a coach on the floor. His combination of rim pressure and playmaking from the elbows kept the Lakers offense humming when it could have stalled.
Alongside him, Anthony Davis did the dirty work that does not always jump off the highlight reels but wins games in April and May. His rim protection forced opponents into tough floaters instead of clean layups, and he vacuumed up defensive boards to ignite transition. When Davis owns the paint like that, the Lakers perimeter players can sell out more aggressively at the three-point line, producing deflections and runouts that flip momentum in a matter of seconds.
Darvin Ham has leaned hard into bigger lineups and more defensive size, and at least for now, it is paying off. The Lakers are not just chasing wins; they are chasing a seed that keeps them away from the top juggernauts in round one. Every night they move even a half-game in the NBA Standings, you can feel the urgency in how LeBron sprints the floor, barks coverages, and attacks mismatches in isolation.
Celtics still setting the pace behind Jayson Tatum
On the other side of the bracket, the Boston Celtics continue to look like the league's most balanced machine. Jayson Tatum once again anchored a clinical offensive performance, mixing step-back threes with downhill drives that forced help and opened catch-and-shoot looks for his supporting cast. His box score line was the kind of efficient star turn that will quietly keep him orbiting the MVP race conversation: high 20s or low 30s in points, strong rebounding, and steady playmaking reads.
But it is Boston's defense that still defines its ceiling. With Jrue Holiday hounding ball-handlers, Jaylen Brown switching across three positions, and Tatum increasingly comfortable as a weak-side shot blocker, the Celtics turn routine possessions for opponents into grind-it-out halfcourt puzzles. You could feel that last night: one or two late-clock heaves forced by smothering rotations became four- or five-point swings the other way once Boston got out in transition.
Joe Mazzulla downplayed the standings talk after the game, insisting that "the habits matter more than the seed right now" (paraphrased). But the reality is simple: the Celtics are building cushion at the top of the East, and that buffer shows up clearly when you scan the latest NBA Standings on the official league page.
Curry, Jokic and the Western arms race
Meanwhile in the West, Stephen Curry and Nikola Jokic put on the kind of performances that remind everyone why they own multiple MVP trophies. Curry bombed away from downtown, bending the defense from the logo and beyond, using off-ball screens to generate chaos and then punishing defenders the moment they lost track of him. Even when his shot chart cools for a stretch, the gravity he commands opens wide lanes for cutters and roll men.
Jokic, on the other hand, continues to weaponize patience. The box score once again had that video-game quality: big-time points, double-digit rebounds, and a frighteningly efficient assist total that came from simply making the right read over and over. When the Nuggets run their halfcourt sets through the high post with Jokic holding the ball, everything slows down for Denver and speeds up for the defense, which is exactly why they looked so calm in crunchtime.
Michael Malone praised Jokic's poise afterward, essentially saying that as long as No. 15 is on the court, Denver feels like it has control of the tempo even if the score is tight. In a Western Conference where seeding could come down to a single game, that sort of late-game composure is worth as much as a trade deadline acquisition.
NBA Standings snapshot: top of the mountain and the Play-In traffic jam
The nightly scoreboard has become a live reshuffle of playoff routes. A win streak can launch a team out of the Play-In zone; one bad week can send a supposed contender tumbling into dangerous territory. Here is a compact look at how the upper tier of each conference is shaping up, based on the latest official updates from NBA.com and ESPN:
| East Rank | Team | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Boston Celtics | Holding strong, building cushion |
| 2 | Milwaukee Bucks | Chasing, defense still a question |
| 3 | Philadelphia 76ers | Health-dependent, high ceiling |
| 4 | New York Knicks | Physical, playoff-style wins |
| 5 | Cleveland Cavaliers | Quietly consistent, sneaky threat |
| West Rank | Team | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Denver Nuggets | Jokic-driven stability |
| 2 | Oklahoma City Thunder | Young, fearless, rising fast |
| 3 | Minnesota Timberwolves | Defense-first identity |
| 4 | Los Angeles Clippers | Star-heavy, volatile ceiling |
| 5 | Dallas Mavericks | Luka-led, offense on fire |
Below that top tier is where the tension really lives. The Lakers, Warriors, and a couple of upstart squads are wedged in the 7–10 zone, staring at a Play-In that can turn a whole season into a 48-minute coin flip. Every head-to-head matchup between those teams effectively counts as a double game: you gain a win and hand a loss directly to your rival.
Coaches like Steve Kerr and Darvin Ham have been blunt about it: there is no more hiding weak lineups or treating back-to-backs like schedule losses. The margin for error is gone. One flat night against a lottery team can undo a week of hard-earned progress in the NBA Standings.
MVP race: Jokic in front, but Tatum, Giannis and Luka are not going away
Scroll through the league-wide player stats and one name still jumps off the page: Nikola Jokic. He is stacking near triple-double averages again, with scoring in the high 20s, elite rebounding, and assist numbers you almost never see from a center. His efficiency from the field, combined with his low turnover rate despite sky-high usage, keeps him in pole position in most MVP ladders.
Right behind him, though, Jayson Tatum is making his case the old-fashioned way: wins. His scoring may not always top the nightly leaders, but the combination of volume, efficiency, and two-way responsibility is hard to ignore. He spends entire fourth quarters guarding bigger wings, then turns around and hits contested step-backs on the other end. That is the kind of tape that resonates with voters.
Giannis Antetokounmpo remains a nightly wrecking ball, putting up monster lines built on relentless rim attacks and improved playmaking reads. If Milwaukee can tighten its defense and make a late push toward the No. 1 seed, his candidacy will surge again. And then there is Luka Doncic, whose scoring explosions and absurd usage rate have turned every Mavericks game into must-watch TV. When he posts lines north of 35 points with double-digit assists, it feels almost routine at this point, which is exactly how iconic seasons can get taken for granted in the real-time discourse.
Stephen Curry is more of a dark-horse candidate at this stage, but when he detonates for a barrage of threes, it still moves opinion. Voters remember the moments when a player quite literally tilts a game by himself, and Curry still owns that capability like almost no one else.
Hot hands and cold spells: last night’s top performers
Beyond the MVP heavyweights, the last slate was full of role-player fireworks and under-the-radar performances that shifted games. A couple of guards caught fire from three, stretching defenses out to 27 feet and opening driving lanes for their stars. A veteran big logged a rugged double-double, throwing his body around on the glass and sealing off defenders to clear space for cutters. These are not always the players splashed across social media, but the film room notices.
Coaches repeatedly pointed to energy and focus in their postgame comments. One opposing coach essentially admitted that once LeBron started hunting mismatches and spraying the ball to shooters in the corners, his defense "lost the physical battle" in the final six minutes. Another praised his young backcourt for not being afraid of the moment, stepping into big threes and attacking closeouts instead of simply dumping the ball back to the star.
Of course, not everyone thrived. A couple of high-usage wings struggled to find rhythm, forcing contested pull-ups early in the clock and drifting away from team concepts on defense. With the season deep into the grind, fatigue and nagging injuries start to show up in shot selection and defensive engagement. The box score only tells part of that story; the body language often fills in the rest.
Injuries, depth charts and the playoff picture
Injuries remain the silent axis on which the playoff picture spins. Several contenders are monitoring day-to-day issues with core rotation players, limiting minutes or holding them out entirely on back-to-backs. The impact on the NBA Standings is subtle at first: a random loss here, a blown lead there. But when you add up a dozen such games over a season, you are talking about jumping or dropping two or three seeds.
Teams with deeper benches are starting to lean on that advantage. Some coaches are experimenting with bigger lineups to protect the paint while trusted shooters get healthy. Others are sliding wings into small-ball five roles, betting on speed and switchability instead of size. It is all about survival until rosters are whole again.
Trade-deadline moves and buyout additions are also beginning to show their value. A veteran shooter spacing the floor for a star guard. A defensive specialist taking on the toughest wing assignment so the franchise player can conserve energy. Those incremental tweaks often do not spike social media engagement, but they show up when you study late-game possessions in tight contests.
What’s next: must-watch games and a ruthless run-in
The calendar is about to hit that stretch where every matchup between playoff hopefuls feels like a mini series. Lakers vs. Warriors, Celtics vs. Bucks, Nuggets vs. Thunder, Mavericks vs. Clippers – those are not just regular-season games anymore. They are seeding tiebreakers, confidence tests, and early scouting missions for potential first-round battles.
For fans, the assignment is simple: keep one eye on the nightly schedule and the other on the live NBA Standings. A big night from LeBron, Tatum, Curry, or Jokic does not just pad the player stats column; it can completely reroute a team's path to June. Those tiny shifts in the table will decide who gets home-court advantage, who has to survive the Play-In, and who might be heading for a dreaded first-round collision with a powerhouse.
Stay locked in as the schedule tightens and the stakes rise. The coming days will serve up more playoff-style intensity, more statement wins, and more clarity – or chaos – in the race for seeding. And if the last 24 hours are any indication, the stars are more than ready to keep turning the NBA Standings upside down, one crunch-time possession at a time.
