Photo by Kenny Giarla/NBAE via Getty Images
The Wizards took a back seat to the utter chaos of the 2024-25 NBA season.
The 2024-25 NBA regular season has officially concluded.
With the playoffs coming up this weekend after a yawn-inducing slate of play-in games, I want to take a look back at the wild ride that was the 2024-25 season.
Everything will be covered here — the most shocking trade in the history of sports, the closest MVP race in memory, the mind-blowing Western Conference standings and much, much more.
The worst draft in years
The first order of business in the 2024-25 NBA season was the draft. The Atlanta Hawks won the number one overall selection with just a 3% chance, and they took Frenchman Zaccharie Risacher with the pick.
This is probably going to be one of those drafts where you look back and can count the total All-Star selections on one hand. Risacher, Stephon Castle and Jared McCain are due a selection or two apiece, and maybe there’s a Giannis or a Jokic waiting in the wings as with recent weak drafts, but this was projected to be an underwhelming rookie class and has been so far.
That being said, if there’s anything the Wizards did well this season it was draft. Alex Sarr and Bub Carrington, while not franchise players, are definite keepers in this burgeoning young Wizards core. Kyshawn George is also a nice player to have on hand; I’m not totally sold on him as a central part of this team going forward, but he showed enough flashes as a rookie to get me to believe he has a long NBA career ahead of him.
The Wizards also plucked AJ Johnson from the Milwaukee Bucks in the Kyle Kuzma-Khris Middleton trade for free. As with George, I am a touch more skeptical than most of Johnson’s long-term projections, but hey: you got this guy for free and he’s showing flashes of freak athleticism — why not give him some burn, especially this late in a lost season?
Father and son
With the 55th overall pick in the draft, the Los Angeles Lakers selected Bronny James, pairing him with his father LeBron James. LeBron and Bronny then became the first father-son duo to play in the same game together, which was a genuinely tear-jerking moment.
I still play basketball in the backyard with my dad when I’m back home in Los Angeles. Sure, at 50 he doesn’t move like he used to (and most of our games end somewhere in the neighborhood of 11-1, Marco), but still being able to hoop with my dad makes me feel like I’m a kid again, and it’s arguably what I most look forward to every time I visit home. I can only imagine how LeBron and Bronny must feel when they take the court together.
League-shaking trades
The Kuzma-Middleton swap would have been one of the biggest moves of the trade deadline in each of the past couple of seasons. This year, the NBA landscape shifted so seismically that it barely even registered for most fans.
There’s one trade that will be granted its own section. You know which one I’m talking about. There were still some other moves that completely altered some franchises’ future outlooks.
Just as training camp was about to open, the Minnesota Timberwolves decided to shoot themselves in the foot by dishing Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks in exchange for Julius Randle and Donte Divincenzo. Minnesota made the move for financial reasons, but they were three wins from the NBA Finals last season and decided to part ways with their second best player.
At midseason, De’Aaron Fox got flipped to San Antonio to become Wemby’s costar in a three-team deal that saw Zach LaVine reunite with old pal DeMar DeRozan in Sacramento. Great move for San Antonio. The DeRozan-LaVine pairing
shockingly has Sacramento sitting in the play-in game with a 40-42 record.
Jimmy Butler’s messy divorce with Pat Riley and the Miami Heat culminated in a trade to Golden State. The Warriors are 23-7 and one of the best teams in the NBA with Butler in the lineup, while the Heat dropped 10 straight at one point following the trade and will play a road play-in game against the should-be-tanking Chicago Bulls. It looks like Butler took the kids in the divorce.
The most shocking, unexplainable trade in the history of sports
Picture this.
I’m minding my business on a Saturday night. My buddy Joey left my house around 11 PM and I started getting ready to call it a night early. Then Shams Charania dropped a nuclear bomb on me and everyone else who’s even somewhat in tune with NBA basketball.
I immediately called my 17-year-old brother up on FaceTime, and he and his friends circled up around the phone like the Jedi Council to break down the unfathomable event to which we were collectively bearing witness.
The Dallas Mavericks traded LUKA F^$#%*!] DONCIC!!!!!!!!!
Yes, this is real. Sources tell ESPN: Full trade:
- Lakers: Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber, Markieff Morris
- Mavericks: Anthony Davis, Max Christie, 2029 LAL 1st
- Jazz: Jalen Hood-Schifino, 2025 Clippers 2nd, 2025 Mavericks 2nd
https://t.co/bltojdTaQj
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania)
February 2, 2025
It’s been over two months and I am still in genuine disbelief. There’s nothing new I can add to this conversation at this point. Yes, it was the most rash and foolish decision I’ve ever seen a professional sports organization make. Yes, it is nothing short of professional malpractice that Dallas never shopped Doncic around to maximize the return. Yes, it was grossly unprofessional and tone-deaf to insult Doncic on his way out the door.
It was at least vindicating to see the Mavericks organization repeatedly punch itself in the face over and over and over and over again. Check out what Mavericks owner and governor Patrick Dumont had to say, via the
Dallas Morning News:
“If you look at the greats in the league, the people you and I grew up with — Jordan, Bird, Kobe, Shaq — they worked really hard, every day, with a singular focus to win,”
I mean I guess, yeah, those players all WAIT A MINUTE. WHO WAS THAT LAST ONE????
Is there perhaps a second person also named Shaq to whom Dumont is referring? If he was referring to Shaquille O’Neal as a person who worked hard and was singularly focused on winning, then that should tell you everything you need to know about Dumont’s lack of consideration or knowledge about NBA history.
I could go on and on about the insanity of the Luka Doncic trade. My grandpa, who hasn’t really followed the NBA in decades save for reading my articles, called me within a half hour of the trade to talk me through how it was even crazier than the Lakers’
Wilt Chamberlain trade. My head is still spinning.
What are Mavs fans saying these days? Right.
Fi-re Ni-co!
Ludicrous firings
Recent reporting seems to indicate that the dismissals of Memphis Grizzlies head coach Taylor Jenkins and Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone were both inevitabilities. That doesn’t make the timing of either layoff any less bewildering.
The 44-29 Memphis Grizzlies fired Jenkins with nine games left to play. Jenkins is the franchise’s all-time leader in games coached and wins as a coach, and his was not seen as a particularly vulnerable position considering the impending postseason. That being said, a “now they tell us” piece (as Bill Simmons would call it)
from The Athletic revealed that the only surprise in the firing was the timing, and Jenkins was almost certainly going to be out the door barring a miracle championship.
Malone’s firing was far more shocking. Malone, like Jenkins, is his respective franchise’s all-time leader in both games coached and wins, but unlike Jenkins, Malone
guided his team to a championship two seasons ago. An
Athletic “now they tell us” piece revealed cavernous rifts between Malone and the Nuggets’ front office that resulted in not just Malone’s firing but also general manager Calvin Booth’s dismissal with just three games to play.
Malone’s firing tied for the latest head coach firing in NBA history and was the latest for any playoff-bound team.
Just like with the Luka Doncic trade, there will surely be more questions than answers regarding these two firings for the foreseeable future. I genuinely don’t know what to think of the Jenkins firing considering every other playoff team in the West is licking its chops and fantasizing about playing Memphis in round one.
For Malone, the only plausible explanation I can think of is that the bridge between him and the Nuggets organization had already been burned, and a potential surprise run to the conference finals or NBA Finals would complicate the inevitable firing process. I don’t think the LA Clippers are particularly scared of Denver in their upcoming playoff series.
The Wild West’s photo finish
The way the Western Conference playoff race shook out down to the final day of the regular season reminds me of the movie
Cars when Lightning McQueen’s tires blow out and he wins the race by sticking his tongue out to win by a fraction of an inch.
Here were the playoff scenarios when every team had two games left to play:
There are 15 postseason seeds still to be determined with two game days left in the regular season. All 30 teams will be in action tonight and again on Sunday.
The seed possibilities entering tonight's games
pic.twitter.com/acD2OLuv66
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR)
April 11, 2025
It got so messy that with a game to play, the LA Clippers could only finish fourth, fifth or seventh — not sixth. Somehow.
The NBA just confirmed the Clippers cannot finish 6th, so there will be no Battle of LA in the first round.
It will be either a 4/5 or 7th place finish for the Clippers, with a win over Golden State guaranteeing top-5.
pic.twitter.com/7jaCUtdayh
— Joey Linn (@joeylinn_)
April 12, 2025
The standings concluded with seeds three, four and five being the Lakers, Nuggets and Clippers, all with identical 50-32 records. Those three were a game up on the sixth-seeded Timberwolves, who themselves were just one game up on the seventh- and eighth-seeded Warriors and Grizzlies. Two games separated seeds three and eight.
The best MVP race in decades
This season’s MVP race has come down to two of the greatest offensive seasons of all time.
One of the two belongs to Nikola Jokic and is arguably the greatest offensive season
of all time, but Jokic’s Nuggets are wholly unthreatening. Jokic is AVERAGING A THIRTY-POINT TRIPLE DOUBLE on the season, but his Nuggets have had a bumpy season and, as I mentioned earlier, are probably going to be a tasty little warmup for the Clippers in the first round of the playoffs.
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, meanwhile, is pouring in 32.7 points, 6.4 assists and 5.0 rebounds per game for a Thunder team that won 68 games. Even if you do not subscribe to the “best player on the best team” MVP philosophy, SGA’s numbers are unassailable.
He’s also doing this while mostly just chilling with his buddies on the bench in the fourth quarters of games, as the Thunder have a +12.9 net rating this season, good for second best of all time.
I think when push comes to shove, considering just how dominant the Thunder have been, SGA will walk away with the award. If I had a vote (and hopefully I will someday if you guys keep clicking on my articles), I would lean Jokic, who is having, as I mentioned, the greatest offensive season of all time. Maybe it just comes down to my intrinsic pro-Balkan bias, but I think that a 30/13/10 statline while at least keeping his team competitive is ever so slightly preferable to SGA’s robotically efficient 33 points per game.
Dueling disasters
The Phoenix Suns and Philadelphia 76ers both spent this season defecating on James Naismith’s grave. Both situations were self-inflicted.
Wizards fans, I needn’t remind you what personnel decision locked the Suns in NBA Guantanamo Bay and single-handedly threw the Kevin Durant-Devin Booker era of Phoenix basketball in the garbage. Perhaps someday we will have the “Mat Ishbia rule” protecting teams from taking a financial crowbar to their own kneecaps the way the
Ted Stepien rule today protects teams from casting all their draft picks into the wind.
The Suns finished with a 36-46 record and failed to even make the play-in tournament with two first-ballot Hall-of-Famers averaging a combined 52.2 points per game. Kevin Durant, you are a Houston Rocket, and Devin Booker,
you are a Detroit Piston.
Injuries played more of a role in Philly’s disastrous season, but they are nonetheless in almost as dire a situation as the Suns. Joel Embiid managed a meager 19-game outing and shot 44% from the field before being shut down for the season. Embiid has played nothing like his past MVP self, is on the wrong side of 30, and has a three-year $200 million extension about to kick in. GULP!
Paul George is even deeper into his thirties, is on the first year of a four-year, $210 million contract, and was arguably worse than the infinitely-maligned Tobias Harris in the 41 games he farted out in between podcast episodes. GULP!!
Rookie Jared McCain and Tyrese Maxey are the future of this team, but that designation comes with a couple of catches. For one, both were shut down for the season, Maxey with 52 games under his belt and McCain with just 23. It’ll also be nearly impossible to build a competent roster around the two with Embiid and George on crutches soaking up half the salary cap every season. The two have such prohibitive contracts and injury histories that they are already negative assets a year into George’s contract and year before Embiid’s even begins.
The basketball gods can not reward Philly with Cooper Flagg after they stumbled ass-backward into probably keeping their lightly-protected first round pick this year. The gods actually literally cannot send him to Phoenix, as the Suns don’t control their first round pick until the year 2097.
Here lies basketball in Phoenix and Philly.
Only one can capture the Flagg
Duke’s Cooper Flagg is the consensus top prospect in this year’s draft, and taking a look at some of the rosters teams were wheeling out at the end of the season… boy, can you tell.
The tankathon ranged from the Wizards (“Our roster is not competitive enough to win 20 games”) to the Jazz (“Lauri Markkanen, our doctor is going to diagnose you with a sore [insert body part]”) to the Sixers (I swear they are just making up guys and putting NBA uniforms on them).
The Wizards failed (?) to finish with the worst record in the NBA, as the Utah Jazz edged them out (?) to finish 17-65 on the last day of the season. As a result, Utah will be selecting no later than fifth overall, while the Wizards are still in play for sixth. Check
here for the full odds ahead of the draft lottery on May 12.
Other things worthy of a mention
Here’s a lightning round of other important storylines and notes from the season that I thought needed a mention:
- Pour one out for Victor Wembanyama, whose 2024-25 Defensive Player of the Year case was the most open-and-shut case I’ve ever seen for an end-of-season award before he was lost for the season due to blood clots. Wemby played in just 46 games yet still blocked 30 more shots than the qualifying blocks leader, Brook Lopez. Hoping for the best for Wemby!
- On that note: if Draymond Green wins the DPOY this year, I will riot.
- Ivica Zubac will likely not win the Most Improved Player award, which is a travesty. Perhaps my pro-Balkan bias is showing once again, but Big Zu has emerged as a top three-to-five center in the NBA this season and is the number one reason (other than Kawhi Leonard’s long-anticipated healthy run) that the LA Clippers are possibly the scariest non-Thunder threat in the West.
- Shoutout to LeBron James, who is still one of the best players in the NBA despite turning 40 during the season. I still haven’t even graduated college yet and I can already feel my body breaking down. There’s levels to this.
- James will also likely finish this season, his twenty-second, with an appearance on the All-NBA Second Team. The only other player to play 22 seasons in NBA history is Vince Carter, who averaged 5.0 points per game for the 2020 Atlanta Hawks. Like I said. There’s levels to this.
- If you want to get an early look into next season’s awards, I’m thinking Bilal Coulibaly will be my Most Improved Player pick for 2026. He is a uniquely terrifying defender already, and if he can round out his, uh, rough offensive game into at least something credible, and the Wizards climb up to low-to-mid 30s in wins, I think Coulibaly is a real MIP candidate.
- Former Wizard Jonas Valanciunas has achieved the vaunted feat of playing in six consecutive play-in tournaments. For those counting at home, this means Valanciunas has played in every single play-in tournament since its inception.
- I’d be remiss not to mention Bub Carrington’s game 82 buzzer-beating game-winner, which is the most mind-blowing (non-heave) buzzer-beater that I’ve seen since Kawhi Leonard’s in 2019. It’s worth mentioning that that shot capped a season in which Bub was the lone rookie to play all 82 games (Detroit’s Ron Holland missed one game due to suspension).
- On that note, I always like to give a shoutout to the guys who played all 82 games. Props to Bub, Jalen Green, Mikal Bridges, Malik Beasley, Jarrett Allen, Harrison Barnes, Jaden McDaniels, Buddy Hield, Julian Champagnie, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and, most importantly, Chris Paul. Paul turns 40 in a couple of weeks and became the first player in NBA history to start all 82 games in year 20 or later.
So that’s a wrap on the 2024-25 regular season, which gifted us with more outrageous moments on a weekly basis than we usually get from a whole season. I’m 3000 words in and haven’t even mention the hysterical
Donte DiVincenzo-Isaiah Stewart fight, Luka Doncic crying during his homecoming video tribute, the feisty Portland Trail Blazers or a hundred other notable occurrences.
As always, feel free to drop a comment on this post or mention me on Twitter @MarcoGacina (if you’re even still on that, which I barely am) with your thoughts. I’ll be replying to everything.
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