The 2024-25 NBA season's biggest disappointments

I'm not mad. Just disappointed.

Now that the dust from free agency has mostly settled (although I’m unironically obsessed with finding out how much money the Chicago Bulls give to Josh Giddey), it’s time to look back and shake our heads in dismay at the 2024-25 season.

We covered the season’s happiest surprises at the end of the regular season, and since I purposefully do those before the playoffs start to capture joy before the inevitable flameouts, we do have some overlap. Time is cruel to us all.

The Achilles tendon (and other broken body parts)

Sometimes, basketball sucks, I wrote after Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles. He was one of three stars (the others being Damian Lillard and Tyrese Haliburton) whose careers were irrevocably changed in the 2025 playoffs. Leaving aside the impact of those three Achilles injuries, almost every playoff series came down to a war of attrition instead of talent, which was a huge bummer after an epic regular season.

Injuries were the year’s biggest theme. I could list all the players impacted, but that would depress me and inflate this article’s already prodigious word count, so I won’t. You know who was hurt (hint: everyone). Injuries had a direct impact on much of the rest of this list.

People Who Know Things are scrambling to figure out what’s going on. The leading theories right now involve 1) the year-round commitment to youth basketball at the expense of both rest and well-rounded multi-sport athleticism, and 2) the historically high mileage and sheer number of sudden explosive movements required of the highest-wattage stars.

Unfortunately, we don’t know anything for sure, and we definitely don’t have any realistic solutions (shortening the season is something that neither players nor owners want, so please stop talking about it). I expect injuries to appear on next year’s list, too.

Gambling

This was the first year that public backlash against the pervasiveness of gambling grew loud enough to penetrate the white noise sussurations of Adam Silver’s money waterfall.

Ads upon ads upon ads have people seeing FanDuel logos in their sleep, which I suppose is the whole point. Players, refs, and coaches receive death threats regularly. There are now nearly 200,000 searches for things like “Am I addicted to gambling?” each month. It’s wrecking finances, homes, families.

But allow me a moment of ugly honesty. The vastly negative human repercussions from unchecked sports wagering don’t bother me nearly as much as the certainty that gambling is affecting on-court play.

Federal investigations into players like Jontay Porter, Terry Rozier, and Malik Beasley suggest that, hey, maybe making large financial misincentives to playing well available at your fingertips isn’t great for the sanctity of the game. (Porter pleaded guilty; Rozier was cleared of wrongdoing by the league, although not yet by the feds; Beasley’s investigation is ongoing.) Who could have guessed?

The league and its gambling partners have loads of safeguards built into player and referee performance to ensure that everything is on the up-and-up, but it’s impossible to police with 100% certainty (and how can you watch coach performance?). We haven’t had a major gambling scandal yet, but we all know it’s coming.

The Suns, Pelicans, and Sixers

Three teams that entered the season with high hopes. Three teams that exited to varying degrees of embarrassment and sadness.

The Phoenix Suns believed that a new coach (Mike Budenholzer) and a retooled supporting cast could elevate the Kevin Durant/Devin Booker/Bradley Beal trio to at least a conference finals. Instead, Phoenix went 3-17 in the 20 games KD missed and failed to qualify even for the play-in. The vibes were ugly. Durant was unhappy with the team, Booker was unhappy with Bud, everyone was unhappy with Beal.

Extremely active owner Mat Ishbia decided after the season that the right move was for him to become even more active. So he fired a bunch of people, replaced them with some Michigan State guys whose credentials mostly amounted to attending Michigan State (only a slight exaggeration), and then traded Kevin Durant to a conference rival (not that they’ll be competing for the same things anytime soon). We’ll see how that goes.

The Sixers were, by turns, injured and ineffectual. The ticking time bomb that is Joel Embiid’s lower body went off. Paul George played half of a not-very-good season, and Tyrese Maxey struggled to hold up under his largest offensive load yet.

Although the season was an abject disaster, there were more silver linings for Philly than you’d expect. First round pick Jared McCain looked like a star (until his meniscus exploded), midseason addition Quentin Grimes played out of his mind (although he may have made himself too much money in the process), and the Sixers beat the odds to hold onto their top-six protected first-round pick with some truly magnificent tanking down the stretch (although rich offers weren’t enough to persuade San Antonio to trade down one spot). The 76ers’ future success depends on Embiid and George rounding into something resembling their typical form, but at least they have some young talent to work with if things truly fall apart.

Young talent was part of the problem for New Orleans. Although the Pelicans weren’t expecting to compete for a title, they did hope to make the playoffs and put Zion Williamson into the playoffs for the first time in his career. Instead, the Pelicans’ voodoo hex continued to make itself known, as every single one of their rotation players missed at least 26 games except rookie center Yves Missi. None of Williamson, the since-traded Brandon Ingram, or defensive sensation Herb Jones played more than 30 games.

The s*** cherry on top was Dejounte Murray tearing his ACL after the team traded Defensive Player of the Year finalist Dyson Daniels and two first-round picks for him.

Wait. If that was the s*** cherry, what do we call their universally-panned trade to move up 10 spots in the draft a few days ago? The poop sauce?

I try to keep an open mind on draft-day trades, since I don’t know anything about college prospect evaluation. But Shamit Dua of

In The N.O.

had some damning reporting about the process behind giving up a highly-valuable unprotected pick next year to move up ten spots to take a center who doesn’t appear on paper to be a great fit with Zion:

When Senior Vice President Troy Weaver made the call to Atlanta’s Bryson Graham, Graham couldn’t believe what was actually being offered. Graham asked for clarification multiple times to confirm the unprotected pick was indeed part of the deal. It got to the point where Hawks General Manager, Onsi Saleh, called Joe Dumars directly to confirm for himself. The Hawks waited nervously for Dumars to confirm, hoping he would not realize what was going on and walk the trade back. But the Pelicans persisted and the Hawks got their steal.

I really like a lot of players on the Pelicans, particularly Trey Murphy. And both of Nawlins’ rookies have serious upside, regardless of how they were procured. But this franchise has always been the living embodiment of Murphy’s Law. Now led by Joe Dumars and Troy Weaver, they’re purposefully walking under ladders, seeking out black cats, and smashing every mirror they can find.

Is it bad luck if it’s self-induced?

The Grizzlies, Rockets, and Cavaliers

While absolutely nothing went right for Phoenix, Philadelphia, and New Orleans almost from the jump, Memphis, Houston, and Cleveland all soared at various points throughout the season, making their inevitable flameouts that much more disappointing.

Memphis was the most peculiar. After rising as high as second in the West behind a funky, cut-heavy offense, the Grizzlies proceeded to free-fall down the standings before firing their coach, Taylor Jenkins, with just days left in the season. They were subsequently swept by the Thunder and rarely looked competitive even when Ja Morant was healthy, ushering in an offseason of change (goodbye, Desmond Bane!).

Houston’s disappointment was clearer. They were really good all season, finishing with the second seed in the West thanks to an entrenched defense and rabid offensive rebounding. Then, they lost in the first round to the Golden State Warriors. Sure, the Warriors were better than your typical seven-seed, thanks to the addition of Jimmy Butler. But that’s a bad way to go.

(The bright side for Houston: their bitter defeat created the momentum for what’s been an incredible offseason, highlighted by the addition of Kevin Durant and subtraction of Jalen Green.)

Cleveland was the toast of the East, riding new coach Kenny Atkinson and a balanced approach from its quartet of stars to the conference’s top record. Then, ailments to Darius Garland and Evan Mobley sank the Cavs’ hopes in the playoffs as they lost in the second round.

Injuries were one reason for losing, but the Cavaliers once again failed to meet the moment. Ty Jerome may have cost himself millions with his disgusting play, Jarrett Allen got killed by Myles Turner, and the team defense in general struggled tremendously against Indiana’s potent attack.

Nothing was as disappointing as Cleveland’s excruciating Game 2 meltdown (which was somehow nearly two months ago!), in which they blew a seven-point lead with less than a minute remaining.

The Cavs should steamroll through the East in the regular season next year once again, but we now have two playoffs in a row where they simply haven’t been good enough.

Nico Harrison

The Dallas stuff has been covered in excruciating depth here and everywhere else, but I can’t make a list of season disappointments and not include the Luka Doncic trade.

Disappointment is far too mild a word for the gut-punch Dallas fans woke up to on that fateful day. I’m glad for the fans that they at least have Cooper Flagg to look forward to, but miraculously winning the lottery hardly excuses one of the most despised trades in NBA history.

We’ll see how long Harrison can hold onto his job, but given that he survived the initial furor, future disappointments feel inevitable.

Dwyane Wade’s statue

After 1,600 words of melancholy and regret, let’s end on a lighter note.

If it can happen to Cristiano Ronaldo, it can happen to anyone. But you’d think that at some point in the chiseling process (or however you make statues these days; I never took pottery), someone would have taken a step back, cocked their head, and asked, “Hey guys, are we sure this is what Dwyane Wade looks like?”

Instead, this monstrosity emerged intact:

Wade has no one to blame but himself. By his own admission, he visited the sculptor four times during the creation process (so, yeah, they knew what he looked like). And to his credit, Wade hasn’t had a bad thing to say about it, deflecting the deluge of social media jokes and posts (including a good one from Twitter/X legend

ArtButMakeItSports

) in his typical affable manner:

"If I wanted it to look like me, I'd just stand outside the arena and y'all can take photos," Wade said Monday. "It don't need to look like me. It's the artistic version of a moment that happened that we're trying to cement."

It was the first statue unveiling in Miami Heat history, and for Heat fans everywhere, it was a huge disappointment.

(For everyone else, it was pretty hilarious.)