The 40-before 20 clubs for the 2025-2026 NBA season have been determined.
With the Boston Celtics losing to the Denver Nuggets on Wednesday night, only three teams will qualify under Phil Jackson’s tried-and-true NBA championship contender rules. For those who don’t know, as I draw every year, the legendary coach once asserted that a championship-caliber NBA team had to win 40 games before losing 20 to be seriously considered a team capable of winning that year’s Larry O’Brien Trophy. It’s a principle that goes hand in hand with great teams who develop good habits over the course of a long regular season and Get enough of a lead in the standings to avoid the Jets getting burned in all 82 games.
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Over the past 46 years, more than 90 percent of championship teams won 40 games before losing 20 games.
Here are the top 40 teams for the 2025-2026 NBA season:
Under the 40-before-20 rule, one of these three teams is likely to win the 2026 NBA championship in June.
Of course, we don’t necessarily view 40-before-20 as the final, be-all and end-all rule. It’s just a matter of established precedent and the fact that great teams tend to win 40 games before losing 20. But in the modern context, 40-20 may not be as convincing as it once was. In the past three years alone, the No. 8 seed (2023 Miami Heat), No. 5 seed (2024 Dallas Mavericks) and No. 4 seed (2025 Indiana Pacers) have all qualified for the NBA Finals. Of course, none of them won it all. But if not for Tyrese Haliburton’s Achilles injury in Game 7 of the 2025 Finals, perhaps the story of this underdog Pacers team would have ended differently.
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If you make it to the finals alone, whether you win the top 40 or the top 20, you have a chance to win them all. Why? Because we still have to play games. One of those years where a team that failed to advance 40-before-20 would finally break through and win the championship again. I think “40-before-20” should and will hold true in most cases, but not always.
At this point, the 2026 season will be one where the outlier team will be the last one standing.
Here are a few NBA teams that missed out on the 2026 Top 40 but still look capable of winning it all this summer.
Which NBA team doesn’t win 40 games before losing 20 games to win the 2026 NBA Championship?
As long as they have three-time league MVP Nikola Jokic, I believe the Denver Nuggets, who win the 2023 championship, will always have a chance to win the NBA championship. This year, the Denver Nuggets give Jokic the best team on paper. In fact, health is arguably the biggest reason why the Nuggets haven’t reached the 40-top-20 mark. For all intents and purposes, health may also ultimately determine whether this version of Denver reaches the top.
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This will likely depend on Jayson Tatum’s availability, but you should doubt the Boston Celtics at your own risk. In what was supposed to be a transitional year, Joe Mazzula’s team has been atop the Eastern Conference standings all year. As expected, both Jaylen Brown and Derrick White performed well. Primary backup Payton Pritchard has been upgraded. Breakout talents like Neemias Queta have provided the impetus for Celtic’s resurgence. If the Celtics can regain their looks with plenty of opportunities to make the playoffs before the playoffs, the Celtics have a good chance of winning their second championship in three seasons.
I’m also very bullish on the New York Knicks. The defensive limitations of Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns aren’t enough for me to overlook what the Knicks are capable of. As of this writing, the Knicks have won 12 of their last 16 games. Any team that can put together a performance like this midway through the season deserves to be taken seriously as a title contender. Last spring, the Knicks were within striking distance of their first NBA Finals appearance in a quarter-century. Maybe this is the year they make a comeback.
If this is indeed the kind of NBA season where a team outside of the 40-before-20 club wins the championship, I’d hazard a guess that one of the three teams mentioned above will be the one to win.
This article originally appeared in To Win: Here are the 2026 NBA 40-before-20 title contenders, according to Phil Jackson
