The Nuggets play their 41st game of 2023-24 on Sunday, crossing the halfway point of the regular season.

And what a fascinating regular season it has been around the NBA. In celebration of the halfway point, it’s about time for a championship check-in. Who’s the biggest threat to dethrone Denver? Rather than a typical power ranking, which captures a specific moment in time, the 15 teams listed in this exercise are ranked by 2024 NBA championship capability based on the sample size so far.

That makes for more complex decisions taking into account ceiling, conference depth and trade deadline potential, rather than simply win-loss record. The latter would be too boring. So without further ado …

Winning and showing conference finals potential

15. Sacramento Kings (23-14): De’Aaron Fox was already ascending, and then a 32% career 3-point shooter suddenly added perimeter touch to his game. The Kings have defensive issues, but they’re fifth in assist-to-turnover ratio and have gained the requisite playoff experience to be taken more seriously, assuming they get back this season.

14. New Orleans Pelicans (23-15): They have depth. They have defense. They have shooting. They have a generational prospect starting to enter what should be his prime. But the Pelicans were in even better position this time last year, before Zion Williamson’s season-ending injury. They’ll go as far as he takes them.

13. New York Knicks (22-16): Whether or not they mortgaged too many of their young assets for O.G. Anunoby, the Knicks clearly got better in the short term. They won their first five games after the Toronto trade. A starting lineup featuring Anunoby’s plug-and-play clamps and former Nugget Isaiah Hartenstein replacing Mitchell Robinson at center registered a 20.9 net rating in those first five games together. Jalen Brunson’s Knicks can at least give the top seeds a scare.

Dysfunctional but dangerous

The three most difficult teams to rank — each floating around .500 and the edge of the Western Conference playoff picture, each anchored by an aging all-time great player and supplemented by other Hall of Fame talent. The floor is low, but the ceiling is still conceivably high.

12. Golden State Warriors (17-20): Coach Steve Kerr candidly said the Warriors deserved to be booed by their home crowd this week, noting the team has lost its spirit and confidence. If anyone can revive those qualities, it’s Draymond Green. And if anyone can derail this season even more, it’s also Draymond Green.

11. Los Angeles Lakers (19-20): Like Golden State, the Lakers could be one splashy trade away from turning their season around. That’s the effect of having LeBron James or Steph Curry on your roster, especially with time running out on their careers: The instinct has to be to treat every season as a win-now situation, even with a losing record as the trade deadline nears. Los Angeles has a bottom-10 offense to fix.

10. Phoenix Suns (20-18): The case for Suns over Lakers is ironically Phoenix’s unreliable health. Los Angeles has floundered even with James and Anthony Davis healthy and playing superbly, while the elusiveness of the Suns’ Big Three has loomed over them all season. That at least makes it easier to imagine a future in which things improve for Phoenix as is. There have been flashes in the seven games Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal have played together.

Too much star power to count out as an NBA Finals team

9. Miami Heat (21-16): The star power referenced here is not a singular MVP-caliber player, but rather a combination of factors that have conditioned NBA consumers to always put respect on Miami’s name. Erik Spoelstra is the closest thing the league has to a superstar coach, fresh off a historic extension. Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo still form one of the most dependable playoff duos in the game. And then there’s that devil magic, or Heat Culture, or whatever you want to call it. Miami could finish as the No. 8 seed in the East again, and it could still give Boston, Philadelphia or Milwaukee a slugfest. The Heat is the third-best 3-point shooting team in the East.

8. Dallas Mavericks (23-16): If there’s any player on earth capable of a 2018 LeBron-esque run of single-handed heroics to carry a decent team all the way to the Finals, it’s Luka Doncic. (That Cavs team finished 14th in net rating. Dallas is 13th currently.)

7. Philadelphia 76ers (23-13): Second-round failures and all, Joel Embiid is still the defending MVP in an era of great big men reclaiming their reputation as necessary centerpieces to any championship team. The Sixers are free of their James Harden baggage, and Tyrese Maxey is free to be an alpha guard. You don’t have to take them seriously, but you also won’t be surprised if they come out of the East.

Really, really, really good (if flawed)

6. Minnesota Timberwolves (26-11): No. 1 defense by a sizable margin. No. 19 offense. The Timberwolves have kept their Western Conference stranglehold all season and KO’d some imposing teams in the process. But until they prove they can score when opponents intensify their defense in the playoffs, healthy skepticism will remain.

5. Oklahoma City Thunder (26-11): The West is such a mess of talent relative to the top-heavy East that it simply has to factor into a ranking like this. The Thunder is an absolute wagon. It’s starting to feel like an NBA title is inevitably part of Oklahoma City’s future, but for now the roster is still a bulkier five-man away from being able to survive seven games of Nikola Jokic.

4. Milwaukee Bucks (26-12): The anti-Timberwolves. No. 3 offense, No. 21 defense. Motivated by last season’s first-round crash landing, led by a proven champion, bolstered by a ring-chasing sidekick who’s way more than that.

The leading contenders

3. Los Angeles Clippers (24-13): Not only do the Clippers have the most on-ball talent at the top of any NBA roster suddenly meshing seamlessly, but they’re also arguably the deepest team in the league. Since an 0-5 start to the Harden experiment, they’ve won 21 of their last 27. With Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, Ivica Zubac and Terance Mann (317 minutes) on the floor, their net rating is 15.9. With Norman Powell instead of Mann, it’s 28.4. Just remember: Michael Malone called it.

2. Denver Nuggets (26-13): They get the Larry O’Brien cushion. The title defense hasn’t always been smooth-sailing, but Denver is a game out of first place in the West despite Jamal Murray’s 14 missed games and Michael Malone’s 10-deep approach to the regular-season bench in an effort to balance repeat championship goals with player development.

1. Boston Celtics (29-9): One of the most impressive offseason retools of any starting lineup in recent memory.

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