Things to know about the NBA: At the start of the season, the Celtics are chasing the Spurs' best record of all time

The Boston Celtics are starting this season as NBA champions. And at some point this season, the Celtics could take over the top spot in another league standings.

In the NBA rankings of all wins and losses of all active franchises, the San Antonio Spurs enter this season with the best record. But the Celtics have a path to overtake the Spurs at the top in the coming months.

San Antonio's winning percentage is .596. Boston's winning percentage is .594.

Let’s assume San Antonio is 41-41 this season. If that happens, Boston would only need to go 47-35 to overtake the Spurs in the all-time rankings.

The Los Angeles Lakers enter the season as the third-best team of all time with a winning percentage of .591, meaning they also have a mathematical chance of finishing No. 1 or No. 2 this season.

In some order, the Spurs, Celtics and Lakers will likely be the top three teams for a while. Utah ranks fourth on the all-time list with a .540 winning percentage this season.

The Spurs finished each of the last 10 seasons — 2014-15 through 2023-24 — as the leader in winning percentage among active NBA teams.

Boston hasn't finished a season atop the all-time rankings since 1996-97. The Lakers took over the following year and held that spot for 17 seasons before San Antonio rose to No. 1.

Team milestones are coming

Among the team's regular-season milestones that are within reach this season:

– New York (26 fewer wins) and Golden State (31 fewer wins) are both nearing the 3,000-win mark all-time. Only Boston, the Lakers and Philadelphia have reached this mark.

—Indiana needs 45 or more wins this season to get back to the all-time .500 mark. The Pacers are 1,930-1,938 this year (so if they ever reach eight over .500 this season, they would be at .500 all-time).

– Denver has 46 wins out of 2,000.

– Memphis is two wins out of 1,000.

—Detroit will play its 6,000th game on Friday in Cleveland, its second game of the season.

Jordan, Wilt within Luka's reach

Dallas' Luka Doncic averaged 33.9 points in 70 games last season. This increased his career average to 28.7 per game, the third best in NBA history.

He could move closer to the top spots this season.

If Doncic doubles his numbers from last season again in the 2024-25 season, he will move closer to No. 1 Michael Jordan (30.12 per game) and No. 2 Wilt Chamberlain (30.07 per game).

And if he maintains last season's pace, he will overtake Jordan and Chamberlain for the best scoring average at some point in the 2026-27 season.

KD, 30K

Kevin Durant of the Phoenix Suns is nearing 30,000 points in his career and needs 1,076 points to reach the milestone. He would be the eighth player in NBA history to do it.

And he would be the most efficient 30,000-point scorer of all time.

Durant enters this season averaging 1.46 points per shot attempt, which is better than any of the seven players ahead of him on the all-time scoring list – LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki and Chamberlain.

His true shooting percentage (the advanced value that measures shooting efficiency) of 61.9% is also significantly higher than the seven players in front of him.

Happy 20th, CP3

Chris Paul begins his first season with the San Antonio Spurs and his 20th season overall. James will join Vince Carter for the most seasons played with 22, and Paul will become the 11th player in NBA history with at least 20 seasons.

“It’s surreal, actually,” Paul said. “It’s an incredible blessing. … I mean, a lot of my teammates are head coaches now. That's why I'm grateful that I'm not only still playing, but playing at a high level. It's fun.”

Paul is No. 3 on the all-time assists and steals list. He's within reach of Jason Kidd, who is No. 2 on both lists. Kidd retired with 12,091 assists and 2,684 steals; Paul enters this season with 11,894 assists and 2,614 steals.

Coaching milestones

Miami's Erik Spoelstra begins his 17th season as Heat coach, the third-longest consecutive tenure with any team in NBA history behind San Antonio's Gregg Popovich (entering his 29th year) and Jerry Sloan (who spent 23 seasons with Utah) .

Spoelstra passes Red Auerbach, who coached Boston for 16 seasons.

Other milestones this year include:

—Milwaukee's Doc Rivers is 41 wins away from tying Phil Jackson (1,155) for No. 7 on the all-time list.

– Indiana's Rick Carlisle's first win of the season will be his 944th, tying him with Bill Fitch for 11th all-time.

– Carlisle and Rivers are expected to play four meetings this season, which would bring their total to 92 straight games, including playoffs. That would be the seventh-highest number of any coach in NBA history. Gene Shue and Red Holzman faced each other 109 times, Rick Adelman and Sloan 104 times, Auerbach and Alex Hannum 100 times, Don Nelson and Sloan 98 times, Shue and Jack Ramsay 97 times and Auerbach and Al Cervi 95 times.

– Spoelstra is 10 wins behind No. 18 Nate McMillan (760) and 34 wins behind No. 17 Shue (784).

– Phoenix’s Mike Budenholzer has 16 wins out of .500.

—Popovich, the all-time wins leader, is 12 out of 1,400.

Speaking of pop…

According to Sportradar, there were a total of 350 head coaches at the start this season. Popovich has coached against 170 of them — nearly half the roster — and will add at least three more to his all-time coaching opponent matchup club this season.

On November 15, he will face JJ Redick of the Lakers for the first time (at least as a coach; Redick played 29 regular season games and seven playoff games against Popovich's Spurs). Popovich's first game against new Brooklyn coach Jordi Fernandez is an away contest on December 27th, and he will face new Charlotte coach Charles Lee for the first time on February 7th.

It continues upwards

A look at some players who could move up the all-time list this season:

–James Harden, Los Angeles Clippers: He starts 20th with 25,885 points and will likely move quickly toward the top 10. With just 826 points this season, he would pass No. 19 Kevin Garnett and No. 18 John Havlicek. 17 Paul Pierce, No. 16 Tim Duncan, No. 14 Dominique Wilkins and No. 13 Oscar Robertson. Harden is also 33 3-pointers shy of No. 2 Ray Allen (2,973) on the all-time list.

—Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors: The all-time 3-point king made 1,332 of 25,000 points in his career. He would be the tenth player to score that many points with just one franchise.

— DeMar DeRozan, Sacramento Kings: He has 1,418 points out of 25,000.

—Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks: The perennial MVP candidate needs 1,498 points to reach the 20,000 mark.

—Klay Thompson, Dallas Mavericks: He needs 19 3-pointers for 2,500 in his career.

Who is No. 1? It's always changing

Good luck guessing which team in the Western Conference will end up as the No. 1 seed in the playoffs.

This is unprecedented in the current playoff format: there have been seven different No. 1 seeds in the last seven seasons. Houston had that spot in 2018, Golden State in 2019, the Lakers in 2020, Utah in 2021, Phoenix in 2022, Denver in 2023 and Oklahoma City last season.

Westbrook 1 away from 200

Denver's Russell Westbrook is just one triple-double away from 200 in his regular season. But to emphasize how unusual his triple-double record is — he has 69 more than new Nuggets teammate Nikola Jokic, the MVP in three of the last four seasons — consider these, well, Nuggets:

– He has more than any other NBA team except the Lakers (211). The Nuggets have 198 for No. 2 on the list.

– Westbrook has more triple-doubles than players in Charlotte, Orlando, Atlanta, New York, Memphis and Utah combined (190).

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AP NBA: https://apnews.com/hub/NBA