With a month gone in the 2025–26 NBA season, it’s time to see how each team is faring relative to expectations. Some squads are where we believed they would be through 15 games. The Thunder are chainsawing through every opponent. The Nuggets’ revitalized bench has proven to be the anticipated spark plug needed in order to have a real shot against OKC. Kevin Durant has proven as valuable an addition to the Rockets as we all thought. The East is much more chaotic given the lack of any heavy favorite, but expected contenders like the Knicks and Cavaliers are off to strong starts that suggest they’ll be just fine.
But there are a few teams that have truly stood out relative to preseason expectations. Let’s take a look at the five most surprising teams from the opening month of the NBA season.
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The Pistons were one of last season’s surprises, too, as the organization shook off the cobwebs of the Monty Williams/Troy Weaver regime to make its first playoff appearance since Blake Griffin was wearing Detroit colors. Cade Cunningham emerged as a bona fide No. 1 option, the young players surrounding him were productive and the veterans signed by new general manager Trajan Langdon made for a perfect fit—as did new coach J.B. Bickerstaff. They didn’t make it past the first round but gave the Knicks a very respectable fight.
The Pistons made significant strides since they set a record by losing 28 games in a row in 2023 with this core of players. They were widely seen as a playoff team entering this season, especially with the injuries that struck top Eastern Conference contenders. Expectations were pretty high.
And yet! We sit here a month into the season and can’t help but marvel at the Pistons.
They’re first in the East with a 13–2 record entering Friday in the midst of a roaring 11-game winning streak. Those wins aren’t coming as a result of blessed shooting luck or an unholy streak of dominance by the team’s best player. Nor are they coming against a long line of sorry opponents. No, despite numerous injuries—including to Cunningham, who missed three games in the middle of the streak—and some quality opponents, the Pistons are running through the NBA right now. How? They’re bringing back “Deeeeetroit basketballllll” in the form of a physical, bludgeoning defense that gives no quarter.
The Pistons rank second in defensive rating for the season and first over the last 10 games. They rank fourth in opponent points per game and No. 2 in turnovers forced per game. Bickerstaff has the entire roster completely bought into the idea that scoring on them is a personal insult to be prevented at all costs. It’s not quite the Bad Boys Pistons or the all-time great unit that beat the Kobe-Shaq Lakers to win the franchise’s last title. But it’s a fierce defense that makes even simple actions a laborious chore for opponents.
Isaiah Stewart is holding strong to his claim of the most effective sub-7 feet rim protector in the league. Cunningham isn’t slacking off on that end despite a greater reliance on him offensively than last season. But these numbers wouldn’t be nearly as good as they are without Jalen Duren’s massive step forward this season. The fifth-year center out of Memphis has always possessed the build and athleticism to dominate the paint as a defender but showed merely glimpses of that talent over his first four seasons. The rest of the time he looked a step slow and a bit lost. Opponents also saw Duren as the weak link in the defense and was repeatedly targeted on that end.
No longer. Duren’s grasp of the defensive scheme has caught up with his remarkable physical gifts. He is averaging a career-high 2.2 combined steals and blocks per game; his individual defensive rating of 108.1 ranks seventh among centers playing at least 25 minutes per game. It’s a key development for both Duren and the Pistons with his rookie contract expiring this offseason. It also pairs wonderfully with the dominance he’s been able to flash offensively, with a trio of 30-point, 10-rebound games already this season.
The Pistons were expected to compete in the East this season. Now they’re showing why they should be considered among the favorites to win the conference—a critical and rather unexpected leap from this young team.
The Suns were not burdened with any expectations entering the season. It figured to be a bit of a transition season. Phoenix officially bid adieu to the failed Big 3 experiment that kicked off Mat Ishbia’s era of ownership by trading Durant and waiving Bradley Beal. The aftermath left zero options for the roster to be altered in any significant capacity. It led to the somewhat depressing realization that the 2025–26 campaign would likely be nothing more than a waste of a prime Devin Booker season as the organization resets following the dumpster fire of the Beal/Booker/Durant era. Most preseason predictions had Phoenix finishing near the bottom of the West and were devoid of pretty much any optimism.
Let it serve as an eternal reminder that everything can change when the games are actually played. The Suns are well above .500 after the first month of the season. What’s more, they’re pretty fun to watch. Booker is as good as he’s always been—an eternally smooth scorer and midrange assassin. He is shooting 50% on pullup two-pointers and averages nearly 28 points per game. It’s been enjoyable watching him go to work every possession after a few years of sharing the rock.
Devin Booker (1) is thriving as the clear No. 1 option this season. / Soobum Im-Imagn Images
But Phoenix has enjoyed a variety of other contributions from around the roster despite injuries to what were perceived to be the team’s key players. Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green were expected to score nearly all of the non-Booker points and provide important minutes around him. Yet, Brooks has played in only nine games and Green in only two. The Suns instead have been buoyed by a collective effort led by Grayson Allen. Above all rookie coach Jordan Ott has the team playing defense again. Last season the Suns ranked 27th in defensive rating. Through the opening stretch of this season, they rank 12th. It seems the roster is as motivated as Ishbia is to win his bet with Bill Simmons.
The good times may not last. But the Suns were considered among the most hopeless teams in the league entering the season and were expected to play like it. Instead they’ve proven to be a competent basketball team that give it their all every night.
The Clippers are teetering on the edge of absolute disaster and the calendar hasn’t even turned to December yet.
How this happened isn’t necessarily a surprise. Kawhi Leonard is once again struggling with injuries with only six games played. It turns out the signs that Beal was over the hill last season in Phoenix were true; the veteran guard put up career-low numbers across the board before suffering a season-ending hip injury. Chris Paul has been depressingly ineffective. Norman Powell’s production from last season is not being offset by the acquisition of John Collins. All of these were within the range of predictable outcomes.
But not this early! It’s been only a month and the Clippers are well below .500. James Harden has been fighting the tide as best as he can, but otherwise nobody has shown up. Ivica Zubac is the only player other than Harden and Leonard to average double-digit points. Los Angeles has lost eight of the last nine, with double overtime against a bad Mavericks team necessary to secure the lone win in that stretch. The team ranks in the lower third of the NBA in offensive rating and defensive rating. There isn’t much room for hope as things stand—and it’s quite possible the situation will further deteriorate. Derrick Jones Jr. will miss the next six weeks. There are a half-dozen players on the roster aged 33 or older who are playing at least 10 minutes per game. All the jokes from preseason that the Clippers are the “unc” team of the NBA were funny, but the heightened injury risk that comes along with relying on players with this many miles on their legs is a fact.
James Harden has been one of the few brights spots for the Clippers this season. / Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
Under most circumstances this would elicit some disappointment and a shoulder shrug. Snakebitten seasons happen. But there’s a pot of gold at the end of that rainbow in the form of a high draft pick in a good draft … right?
Wrong. The Clippers owe a pick swap to the Thunder in the 2026 draft. Which means, no matter how bad they are, Los Angeles will have to give up its pick and take OKC’s instead, which is going to come at the end of the first round. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel. If the Clippers finish with a terrible record they’ll have nothing to show for it except a season of ugly basketball.
It was hard to be really high on the Clippers entering the season given Leonard’s unreliability. But this is worse than anyone could have imagined before Thanksgiving. And the worst may yet be coming.
The Raptors have been mired in mediocrity for a few seasons now and tried to change their fortunes by trading for Brandon Ingram at the deadline last season. Unfortunately, Ingram was not physically ready for the challenge and injury prevented him from donning a Toronto uniform until this season. His integration was a bit rocky as the Raptors lost four of their first five games. But since then, they’ve gone 9–1, and it’s clear the team is starting to figure it out.
The effort is being led by Scottie Barnes. The All-Star wing is finally starting to resemble the terrifying defender he was projected to be coming out of Florida State. He’s averaging 3.1 steals/blocks per game while scoring 19.2 points on 50% shooting from the floor. Ingram has proven a tremendous help offensively, leading the team with 20.9 points per game while providing excellent minutes sans Barnes; Ingram-led lineups boast a positive net rating of 5.87. Overall, the Raptors have played well without Barnes on the court, which is a big change. Throughout Barnes’s career, Toronto has been worse when he sits. Now the combined efforts of Ingram, RJ Barrett and Immanuel Quickley ensure the ship doesn’t sink without the roster’s most talented player.
It’s all combined to make the Raptors one of the league’s most well-rounded teams. The offense is both prolific and efficient, ranking top five in shooting percentage and top 10 in points per game. The defense is middle of the pack points-wise but ranks top 10 in turnovers. They boast a talented starting five and enough versatility to match up with just about anyone. Visions of a championship can be difficult to foresee without a truly elite player, but the Raptors have a bunch of good players and that’s enough to win more often than not in the NBA.
Things are starting to turn around in Toronto.
It was hard to pinpoint exactly what to expect out of the Grizzlies this season. Last season’s campaign was bizarre on multiple fronts and ended with the firing of coach Taylor Jenkins with nine games left. The organization was clearly very excited about handing the reins to rookie coach Tuomas Iisalo but didn’t change the roster much during the offseason. The other teams on this list have been surprising relative to expectations; Memphis was all over the map in that regard and therefore felt like a difficult team to be surprised by.
Well, they managed it. The Grizzlies have surprised us all by putting out truly terrible vibes.
It’s not just the Ja Morant of it all, although that’s a significant issue. Morant’s unhappiness with the team and Iisalo is clear and matters have not improved since the star point guard was suspended by the team for detrimental conduct. It’s not just that the Grizzlies have once again been cursed by injury to begin the season and have dealt with numerous absences to key contributors, including Morant. It’s not just that Jaren Jackson Jr. continues to plateau instead of further developing his game. Memphis just doesn’t seem to care. At all. Watch any Memphis game and it’s a group of five guys running around. Not a team. They play together in the sense that they’re on the court at the same time, but there’s no cohesion, no extra effort, nothing resembling chemistry. It’s just a bunch of players who show up for work and then go home. The competition level is so lacking it’s impossible to evaluate Iisalo’s schemes and his short substitution patterns. There’s struggling to get players to buy in, and then there’s these Grizzlies.
The Grizzlies have no identity and it’s not for a lack of talent. Morant and Jackson are established stars. Cedric Coward is proving to be another draft hit. Santi Aldama, Jaylen Wells and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope are all competent basketball players. But they are collectively so disengaged from the game plan, there may as well be no game plan.
Looking at the key stats, it’s impossible to discern what the Grizzlies are trying to do. They rank 20th in three-pointers per game and 27th in points in the paint. Memphis’s offense is fourth worst in the league with 111.1 points per game and the defense allows 119.2 ppg. The team ranks in the middle of the pack for stats like turnovers forced and rebounds, while putting up horrid shooting percentage numbers (42.8% from the floor as a team this season, 29th in the NBA). What are their calling cards? What are their strengths? Nobody knows because the roster as a whole appears deeply uninterested in putting forth the effort required to know these things.
The Grizzlies bottoming out isn’t necessarily a surprise, but to have it happen in this manner is shocking. The way the first month has gone, a full-blown rebuild may be needed before Memphis finds anything resembling an identity.
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