Welcome to a time of NBA parity. The 2024 NBA playoffs ended as many will have expected based on the regular season. The Boston Celtics won a league-high 64 games and had the highest net rating , and they stood head and shoulders above the competition as they lifted an 18th championship.
A closer look at the standings points to how competitive the postseason race was, though. In the Eastern Conference, four games separated the second-seeded New York Knicks from the eighth-seeded Miami Heat. The Oklahoma City Thunder and Denver Nuggets tied for the top record in the Western Conference, where five games were the difference between the fourth and 10th-place finishers.
Fans have long pointed to what they consider to be the lack of importance to the regular season. The pendulum seems to be shifting thanks to the play-in tournament and the flattening of the gap between title contenders. An 82-game campaign spanning seven months is bound to feel like a slog.
These games should be a source of excitement along the way, though. The domino effect of Paul George signing with the Philadelphia 76ers has been so heavily analyzed that we don't really need to rehash it much here. To summarize, his departure in all likelihood shuts the Los Angeles Clippers' championship window — if it wasn't closed already thanks to Kawhi Leonard's persistent injury trouble.
The Sixers, on the other hand, are banking on George to be the final piece that brings a title to Philly. It will be interesting to see how Clippers fans handle the nine-time All-Star's first trip back in L.A.
This wasn't really an acrimonious divorce. Leonard chalked it up to the business of the NBA and said losing George was "no surprise." The Clippers were similarly diplomatic, citing in a statement the "significant" gap in contract negotiations and the consequences of the more punitive collective bargaining agreement.
George, for his part, was candid in explaining what led to him leaving. Although he preferred to stay in Los Angeles, he consistently found the team's contract offers to be lacking. PG details how contract negotiations with the Clippers affected his decision to leave LA.
pic.twitter.com/PU3Z5gZ94z Both sides had a reasonable case for how they approached the situation.
George thought he could get a better contract than what the Clippers were putting on the table, and he was proven correct. Their front office, meanwhile, had justified reservations about investing long term in a 34-year-old who missed prolonged stretches during his first four seasons in Southern California. George probably isn't persona non grata in Los Angeles, but emotions might be a little raw when he and the Sixers step onto the court at Intuit Dome.
This offseason provided a reminder of how there's no good way to wind down an NBA dynasty. It would've been great for the trio of Klay Thompson, Stephen Curry and Draymond Green to all spend their entire careers with the Golden State Warriors and retire around the same time. If the Warriors wanted to maximize what's left of Curry's post-peak, however, keeping those three together simply wasn't workable .
With Thompson specifically, Golden State couldn't position him in the same kind of role while paying him a similar salary to what he had in the past. The 34-year-old's comments after signing with the Dallas Mavericks laid bare how difficult adjusting to a new reality was. Thompson's departure doesn't alter his legacy with the Warriors.
He'll continue to be synonymous with the franchise's most successful era, and his jersey will eventually hang from the Chase Center rafters. The five-time All-Star is bound to get a warm reception in his first trip back to San Francisco, but he'll also be circling the date as an opportunity to show his old team he has a lot left in the tank. Addressing what the Sixers and New York Knicks did this offseason, Celtics star Jayson Tatum said on 7PM in Brooklyn that contenders in the Eastern Conference still "gotta go through us.
" That's the luxury you earn as the reigning NBA champion. Over the last few years, the Knicks have been in an envious position. Their fans were happy to root for a fun, competitive team again and they weren't consumed with fretting over whether New York could win a title.
Those days are over. The Knicks sent four unprotected first-round picks, a 2028 pick swap, and a protected 2025 first-rounder by virtue of the Milwaukee Bucks to the Brooklyn Nets for Mikal Bridges. Bridges isn't a star in the conventional sense, having failed to make a single All-Star team to this point.
But the sheer volume of what New York gave up to get him means the bar for success has been raised significantly higher in the Big Apple. How the Knicks measure up against the Celtics in the regular season will be an early barometer for how much of an impact Bridges could have on their title odds. Sticking with the theme, the Sixers are out of excuses as they mount another championship challenge.
Tyrese Maxey took his game to another level in 2023-24 and was named the NBA's Most Improved Player. Joel Embiid's production (34.7 PTS, 11.
0 REB, 5.6 AST) was actually better compared his MVP-winning season in 2022-23. Philly landed its third star with George.
And there isn't the kind of drama hanging over the entire organization like throughout the summer there was with Ben Simmons in 2022 and then James Harden in 2023. If it doesn't happen for the 76ers within the next few years, then it never will with the Embiid/Maxey axis. Because of Embiid's track record, how Philadelphia performs against its conference foes in the regular season may not be all that instructive.
He missed two of the team's four games against the Celtics in 2023-24. But the head-to-head battles with Boston will either be an early look at how a full-strength Sixers fare against the champs or whether the duo of George and Maxey sans Embiid is enough to keep them competitive when it counts. The Oklahoma City Thunder arrived ahead of schedule by winning 57 games and claiming the top seed in the Western Conference.
Losing to the Dallas Mavericks in the second round was a bit of a reality check. Dallas' victory was an upset in seeding terms, but the series was pretty much a toss-up before it tipped off. In Luka Dončić and Kyrie Irving, the Mavs had two of the best three players on the court, and sometimes the outcome of a playoff matchup can be that straightforward.
Rather than taking a big swing, Oklahoma City banked on swapping Josh Giddey for Alex Caruso to be the thing that will help avoid a similar outcome. General manager Sam Presti is following the Celtics' path to building a championship winner. While the Caruso trade wasn't done specifically with the Mavericks in mind, it's probably not a coincidence OKC now has two elite perimeter defenders on whom it can rely.
A Caruso/Lu Dort pairing is tailor-made to stymie an opponent with electrifying guards such as Dončić and Irving. Games between the top two picks in the draft are usually a lot of fun, and Alex Sarr's matchups against the Atlanta Hawks will carry some added intrigue after his pre-draft preferences were made known. The 19-year-old didn't work out for the Hawks and the general belief was that the Washington Wizards were atop of his list instead.
Alex Sarr on Hawks' Landry Fields saying potential No. 1 pick declined to work out for them: "I have a great team around me. .
.. I trust them.
I'm not going to get into the specifics of where I worked out and where I didn't." pic.twitter.
com/ufIFUD3J36 You can bet fans in Atlanta will be following Sarr's career a little more closely than they would've otherwise if Zaccharie Risacher had always been the clear choice at No. 1 and there weren't the lingering questions over what the Hawks would do. It's difficult for rivalries to organically grow in the NBA anymore.
Thanks to increased player movement, there's often little continuity or shared history between two teams from one year to the next. The Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves are an exception. Denver and Minnesota have crossed paths in the playoffs for two straight years, and their on-court dynamic is heightened by how much overlap they have in their front offices and coaching staffs.
Former Nuggets wing Bruce Brown raised some eyebrows when he posited the Timberwolves mounted the stiffest challenge to the eventual champions during the 2023 playoffs. Denver advanced in five games in the first round, so it wasn't exactly a back-and-forth affair. Brown's assessment looked much better in retrospect after the Wolves took out the reigning champs in six games, overcoming 2-0 and 3-2 series deficits.
Denver and Minnesota will both be looking to make a statement when the teams cross paths. This year could feature the least consequential games between LeBron James and Kevin Durant since? Even when they weren't direct rivals in the same conference, James and Durant have played starring roles on title contenders for so long their on-court encounters always felt relevant. Now, we could be approaching a new normal.
The Lakers haven't made any significant upgrades and they're leaning on a first-year head coach (J.J. Redick) who is totally unproven in the role.
James made a point to avoid laying out anything specific when addressing his expectations for the team in 2024-25. The Suns, meanwhile, had no choice but to basically run it back with the Big Three of Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal despite last year's first-round sweep to the Timberwolves. They had basically no salary cap flexibility, and trading any of their marquee stars would almost certainly make them worse in the short term.
In the case of both Los Angeles and Phoenix, you can see a path where either makes a deep playoff run with the stars aligning just right. The Lakers and Suns have some glaring flaws, though, and neither is a genuine championship favorite. Like last season, they could instead be battling to see who avoids the play-in tournament.
In the case of the Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat, you can't help but wonder whether their best days are behind them with their current core. Miami's first-round upset of Milwaukee made you quickly realize how old the supporting cast around Giannis Antetokounmpo was getting and how tough it would be to make any improvements. On the heels of a second straight first-round exit, the conversation has shifted to whether the Damian Lillard trade and hiring Doc Rivers actually did anything to help.
For the Heat, their run to the 2023 Finals might've been the last hurrah of the Jimmy Butler era. Their failed pursuit of Lillard last summer pointed to an internal belief that another star was needed, and those concerns were borne out when they were clearly undermanned against the Celtics last year without Butler on the floor. Beyond the fact they'll be vying for a top-six berth in the East, the shared desperation from the Bucks and Heat will raise the stakes a bit in their head-to-head tussles.
The Cleveland Cavaliers ensured they'd get the Orlando Magic in the first round of the playoffs and the strategy nearly backfired spectacularly. The Magic pushed the series to seven games and built an 18-point lead in Game 7 before the Cavs stormed back. It's interesting to contrast how Orlando responded to its postseason trip with how Cleveland reacted to winning 44 games and narrowly missing out in 2021-22.
The Cavaliers mortgaged their future to acquire Donovan Mitchell and significantly accelerate their time line. The Magic have gone for a more measured approach, holding onto their best trade assets and refraining from leveraging their sizable salary cap space into a blockbuster signing. Mitchell's three-year extension has bought Cleveland some more time to fulfill its lofty ambitions.
Getting passed by Orlando in 2024-25 would be a worrying sign, though, and one that might require drastic action. The Magic, similarly, might feel next summer is the time to get more aggressive if they're unable to overtake the Cavaliers in the East hierarchy..
