NBA Power Rankings: The Nuggets and Jamal Murray march on, while Ingram's Pelicans stay steady - ESPN

We're approaching the halfway mark for the 2023-24 NBA season, and the trade deadline (Feb. 8, 3 p.m. ET) has every team in the league reevaluating its needs in the next month.

The usual Western Conference giants continue to struggle and teeter. The Golden State Warriors are still sinking despite the return of Draymond Green. And the Los Angeles Lakers are in desperate need of a boost, of something, as they've fallen below .500 despite a healthy LeBron James and Anthony Davis.

In the East, the Cleveland Cavaliers continue to climb the ranks and are anticipating a strong return from guard Darius Garland, who has been out since early December. And the Miami Heat are hunting for their typical second-half season surge with star forward Jimmy Butler leading the way.

We're 23 days from the deadline. Questions abound. What's going on with the Phoenix Suns? Will the Pistons win a fifth game? Will anyone knock down the Celtics? Let's take a look at this week's rankings.

Note: Throughout the regular season, our panel (Kendra Andrews, Tim Bontemps, Jamal Collier, Andrew Lopez, Tim MacMahon, Dave McMenamin and Ohm Youngmisuk) is ranking all 30 teams from top to bottom, taking stock of which teams are playing the best basketball and which teams are looking most like title contenders.

Previous rankings: Post-Finals | Nov. 1 | Nov. 8 | Nov. 15 | Nov. 22 | Nov. 29 | Dec. 6 | Dec. 13 | Dec. 20 | Dec. 27 | Jan. 3 | Jan. 10

Jump to a team:

ATL | BOS | BKN | CHA | CHI | CLE
DAL | DEN | DET | GS | HOU | IND
LAC | LAL | MEM | MIA | MIL | MIN
NO | NY | OKC | ORL | PHI | PHX
POR | SAC | SA | TOR | UTAH | WAS

1. Boston Celtics
2023-24 record: 31-9

Previous ranking: 1

Next games: vs. SA (Jan. 17), vs. DEN (Jan. 19), @ HOU (Jan. 21), @ DAL (Jan. 22)