As the 2025 NBA postseason progressed, brutal happenings -- Achilles injuries to stars Damian Lillard, Jayson Tatum and Tyrese Haliburton -- struck, changing the Eastern Conference landscape before we even made it to a transaction-heavy offseason.
Now that the aftershocks seem to have stopped, we can finally assess the state of the East -- a conference that desperately wants to dethrone the souped-up West despite a hierarchy that looks far different than it did even three weeks ago.
With that in mind, here are the 15 teams, divided into six tiers, ranging from teams expected to contend for the NBA Finals to those whose rebuilds are still the beginning stages.