The offseason is the most hopeful time on the NBA calendar. Before games start and chaos inevitably enters the picture, this is the stretch of the year when every team's best-laid plans are working perfectly.

That also makes this a good spot for a reality check.

Many of the teams that need hope most—the ones that landed in the lottery after last season—are going to be in the same position this coming year. Several will be there by design.

The 2025 draft is chock full of franchise-altering talent, and the league's worst teams will seek the losses that give them the best chance to get some of it.

But which ones might turn up their noses at high lottery picks and climb from the league's lowest rung?

10. Washington Wizards

One of the Washington Wizards' major offensive moves was trading away 23-year-old Deni Avdija, arguably their best player a season ago and one whose declining contract structure meant he'd only become more valuable as time passed.

They got back the No. 14 pick, Malcolm Brogdon (who they'll try to flip for more draft assets) and a 2029 first-rounder.

If that doesn't telegraph this team's lack of ambition for 2024-25, I'm not sure what does.

Washington is in the earliest stages of its rebuild, and it'll steer into the skid this season by handing No. 2 pick Alex Sarr plenty of playing time. His and Bilal Coulibaly's development are the team's top priorities, with Bub Carrington (the aforementioned No. 14 pick) coming in close behind.

What veterans remain on the roster–Kyle Kuzma, Brogdon, Richaun Holmes and offseason signee Jonas Valančiūnas—are only around as trade bait or short-term, adult-in-the-room mentors.

The Wizards are starting over, and it's going to be a long, loss-laden process. The best outcome for the upcoming season features some level of growth from the young players, but not so much that it adds too many wins to the team's total.

With a loaded 2025 draft class that could provide the cornerstone Washington lacks, finishing the season with the best possible lottery odds is Priority No. 1.

9. Brooklyn Nets

Unlike Washington, the Nets actually have a couple of quality players they may intend to keep around. Nic Claxton inked a new four-year, $97 million deal over the offseason.

But let's not lose sight of the bigger picture here. Brooklyn traded away Mikal Bridges for a haul of draft picks from the New York Knicks and should be expected to send Dorian Finney-Smith, Bojan Bogdanović and Cam Johnson packing at the earliest opportunity.

That will leave Claxton and chucker extraordinaire Cam Thomas to lead an inexperienced group for at least the last few months of the season.

Noah Clowney is an exciting developmental prospect, and Thomas will at least offer scoring eruptions. But the Nets are otherwise circling the drain.

That's part of the plan. In the wake of a deal with the Houston Rockets that returned control of their 2025 and 2026 first-round picks, the Nets are heavily incentivized to tank. Like the Wizards, they will be committed to winning the race to the bottom of the league's standings. In fact, Brooklyn should be even more motivated.

While the Wizards have Sarr, Coulibaly and Carrington as potential leaders of a new era, the Nets don't have anything close to a cornerstone talent. They need to find that guy in the 2025 draft, so making the playoffs would count as a disaster.

8. Portland Trail Blazers

Between Anfernee Simons, Matisse Thybulle, Jerami Grant, Deandre Ayton, Robert Williams III and Deni Avdija, the Portland Trail Blazers have a half-dozen legitimate NBA starters on the roster.

Other than the recently acquired Avdija, though, you can't point to any one of those players and assert they'll still be on the team in late February.

That's because Portland also has several young pieces in need of developmental reps. Led by Scoot Henderson, the Blazers already have something of a next-generation core on board.

Shaedon Sharpe, Toumani Camara and rookie Donovan Clingan join Henderson in Portland's youth movement, and that group should ensure the team won't profile as a playoff threat.

Ideally, the Blazers will trade most of their vets for future assets, perhaps retaining a couple of them as locker room leaders. At the very least, Portland needs to trim off a center or two so Clingan can take his lumps as he adjusts to life as a defensive anchor in the NBA.

The Blazers are further along than either the Wizards or Nets. Henderson and Sharpe both have star upside, even if neither has done enough yet to make that outcome a certainty.

The reason Portland still checks in so low is because it might be the only team in the West that isn't going to start the season expecting to challenge for a postseason spot. Other than the Utah Jazz, no other team in the Blazers' conference is a threat to tank.

Portland is going to fall short of the playoffs—partly by design, and partly by default.

7. Detroit Pistons

The Pistons could win twice as many games as they did a year ago and still come nowhere near the Play-In Tournament. That's important framing to keep in mind as we acknowledge Detroit probably will be a ton better than it was in 2023-24.

Cade Cunningham could make his first All-Star appearance, Ausar Thompson defended at elite levels as a rookie last year, and a host of veteran imports arrived over the summer to ensure the Pistons don't wind up with another league-low 14 wins.

Between Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr., Tobias Harris and Paul Reed, Detroit will be able to surround its youngsters with shooting and experience. And while that should lead to better success in the record books, the real point of all these vets is to ensure players such as Cunningham, Jaden Ivey, Thompson, Jalen Duren and rookie Ron Holland are set up to succeed.

For a couple of years now, the Pistons have cycled in a handful of longer-tenured pros to supplement a young roster.

It's fair to wonder whether this year's crop is really going to make more of a difference than the one from 2023-24 that featured Bojan Bogdanović, Alec Burks, Monte Morris and Danilo Gallinari. Fortunately for Detroit's long-term goals, it may not have to; Cunningham and the other members of the youth corps are all a year more experienced and may not need those training wheels quite so badly.

Ultimately, though, the Pistons are still young and unproven. Led by new top executive Trajan Langdon and head coach J.B. Bickerstaff, Detroit isn't operating with any win-now pressure. Though it'll be disheartening for fans who have endured five straight years in the lottery, that run isn't coming to an end in 2025.

6. Utah Jazz

Lest the Utah Jazz's currently respectable roster makes you consider them a postseason threat, keep in mind that this franchise has aggressively pulled the ripcord in each of the last two seasons.

Lauri Markkanen, Jordan Clarkson, Collin Sexton and John Collins can all try their best to keep the Jazz around the .500 mark for as long as they're allowed to, but recent history indicates this franchise will do what it takes to finish the season in the lottery.

That'll be the right decision for a couple of reasons.

First, Utah needs to see what Keyonte George, Taylor Hendricks, Cody Williams, Isaiah Collier, Kyle Filipowski and Walker Kessler can do. It's currently unclear that any of those early-20s prospects has what it takes to lead the Jazz into their next era. The team has every incentive to push them out of the nest to see which ones figure out how to fly.

Second, while the Jazz are loaded up with incoming first-rounders after trading Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert, most of those picks have relatively limited upside. The Cleveland Cavaliers and Minnesota Timberwolves are good because they have Mitchell and Gobert, respectively, and a lot of those future firsts could fall in the 20s.

This is why the Jazz need to maximize the value of their own picks, chiefly the one coming in 2025. If none of Utah's youngsters profiles as a star, maybe someone it can snag in the top five of next year's draft will be.

5. Charlotte Hornets

The Charlotte Hornets may not be a better team than the Jazz, but they deserve superior playoff odds because of their competition.

Maybe all three of the Wizards, Nets and Pistons won't do as much cellar-dwelling as we expect, but at least a couple of them are going to struggle.

In the West, other than perhaps the Blazers, the Jazz can't really be confident there's any team they'll top in the conference standings. Charlotte has two or three.

Beyond that, the Hornets will hopefully have a healthy LaMelo Ball for the first time since 2021-22 (when he was an All-Star). He'll be flanked by All-Rookie first-teamer Brandon Miller, who should improve in his second season.

Starting center Mark Williams could lead the league in rebounding if he plays enough, and veterans such as Grant Williams and Miles Bridges bolster a rotation with much more established talent than any team we've discussed so far.

The Hornets took an extremely young project, Tidjane Salaün, in the 2024 draft. That could mean they're adopting a longer-term approach as they rebuild under new management, which brings late-season tanking into play. But Charlotte already has legitimately promising youth in Ball and Miller, so it's harder to imagine it packing things in before several other East teams.

4. Toronto Raptors

Maybe Scottie Barnes has another leap in him after last year's rise to All-Star status. And perhaps Immanuel Quickley can prove he's a high-end starter in his first full season as the Toronto Raptors' point guard.

It'd probably take both of those issues breaking in Toronto's favor for it to crack the East playoff bracket. If that seems like a downer, understand the Raptors aren't exactly stocked with two-way contributors or reliable depth.

Sure, the Raps could juice the offense by handing minutes to Kelly Olynyk and Gradey Dick, but the defense would suffer. If Toronto skews toward stopping power by giving more time to Davion Mitchell or Ochai Agbaji, it'll have a hard time scoring.

More broadly, it's difficult to be sure anyone outside of Quickley, RJ Barrett, Barnes and Jakob Poeltl is ready to positively impact winning.

An injury to anyone in that quartet could force big minutes onto an unready recipient.

Outside of the Tampa Tank year in 2020-21, when Toronto really leaned into losing and walked away with Barnes in the subsequent draft, this isn't a franchise that tends to give up on seasons.

With big money already committed to their top four players, led by Barnes' max extension and Quickley's new $162.5 million deal, the Raptors don't profile as a conventional rebuilder.

That raises this team's floor above that of the worst Eastern Conference teams, even if it doesn't necessarily situate its ceiling all that much higher.

3. San Antonio Spurs

Victor Wembanyama eliminates the concept of a safe prediction for the 2024-25 San Antonio Spurs. His incalculably high ceiling is just part of it; nobody knows how great he might become—or how soon.

The other uncertainty has to do with how he might reach whatever heights he's destined for.

Will he become the greatest defensive player of all time, and will it happen this season? Will he average 30.0 points per game because his jumper becomes a reliable weapon? Could he unexpectedly evolve into the tallest passing hub anyone's ever seen? Everything's on the table for Wemby, and that means there's no way to know how good the Spurs can be.

Given the strength of the West, it's difficult to imagine how a San Antonio squad that won just 22 games a year ago will more than double its win total. A hypothetical 44 wins might not even be enough to make the Play-In Tournament.

But how do you dismiss the possibility Wembanyama might simply be a sure-fire MVP candidate from the second the season tips off? And how do you even go about projecting his impact when there's never really been anyone to look to as a blueprint for his career trajectory?

At some point, a player is going to turn the NBA upside down by dominating it in ways no one has before. Slotting the Spurs here, despite their relative youth and inexperience, and despite the immense improvement they'd have to enjoy to even sniff the postseason, is an acknowledgement that Wembanyama seems capable of absolutely anything.

2. Houston Rockets

The Houston Rockets' postseason hopes hinge on the organic growth of their young talent. Good thing they have the market cornered on up-and-coming players.

That sheer depth of high-end youth gives them so many opportunities for improvement. They don't even need all of them to pop. One or two breakouts will do.

If Jalen Green plays all year like he did last March, Amen Thompson may not need to make a leap. If Reed Sheppard is a Rookie of the Year front-runner right away, Jabari Smith Jr. won't be under any pressure to ascend to All-Star status.

Alperen Sengün. Tari Eason. Cam Whitmore. The list goes on—to the point that you almost forget the Rockets also have an impressive collection of more established veteran talent in Fred VanVleet, Dillon Brooks and the hopefully healthy Steven Adams.

Just imagine if, say, three or four of Houston's prized youngsters get significantly better. Shouldn't that be enough to add a handful of wins to last year's total of 41?

Let's also not forget the heap of draft picks in the Rockets' war chest. They sent out two of their own first-round assets for four of the Phoenix Suns' in an offseason trade with Brooklyn and have clean enough books to consider flipping some of that capital for a major upgrade.

The kicker: Houston might not even need an outside upgrade to make the playoffs.

1. Memphis Grizzlies

It's almost unfair to include the Memphis Grizzlies here, but rules are rules. They were in the lottery last season, even if it was only because of injuries and suspensions.

Prior to their 2023-24 gap year, the Grizz reeled off two straight 50-win seasons, finishing second in the West both times. There's no reason to expect anything less than that in 2024-25. If anything, the subtle gains Memphis' secondary stars made last year could lead to even higher levels of success.

Desmond Bane had to stretch his playmaking with Ja Morant suspended to start the year and sidelined by a shoulder injury shortly after his return. In his first professional season, 93.2 percent of Bane's made threes came via assist. That number steadily fell every season afterward and dropped all the way to 61.3 percent last year.

A career-low 48.3 percent of Bane's field goals were set up by teammates in 2023-24, a far cry from the 82.1 percent of them that were assisted when he was a rookie in 2020-21.

Jaren Jackson Jr. got a similar chance to explore some space on offense, and he enjoyed a major spike in isolation scoring. If any of those gains stick for Bane and Jackson, their efficiency should skyrocket upon Morant's full-season return.

And it's hardly an afterthought that these Grizzlies could also field a top-five defense, led by Jackson, who was named Defensive Player of the Year in 2022-23.

The Grizzlies are more likely to win the Western Conference than miss the playoffs.

Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.

Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.