The 2024-25 NBA season's happiest surprises

The season is winding down, but the intensity is ramping up.

As we enter the final dozen or so games of the season, almost nothing important has been decided, leaving a lot of room for juicy action. You don’t need reality TV when you’ve got three weeks of NBA left, filled with jostling would-be contenders, insane tanking maneuvers, and players fighting for awards and contracts.

Before we get into the typical end-of-year hoopla, I wanted to acknowledge some things that surprised me this year! We’ll get into disappointments in the summer after the playoffs have driven final nails into coffins, so don’t you worry.

And hey! If you liked hearing my nails-on-a-chalkboard voice the first time around, Wes Goldberg of the esteemed RealGM Radio asked me back on his show. (I assume all his other real guests had to cancel.) That’s a happy surprise!

You know I love grading things, so we spent an hour re-grading last summer’s biggest moves. Towns to New York, Paul George to Philly, Randle and DiVincenzo to Minnesota, Tyus Jones to Phoenix, etc. You can watch on RealGM’s brand-new YouTube channel, or spare yourself the pain of having to see me by listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Check it out to see how my thinking has changed as the season has progressed.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

1) The turbo-charged Pistons

We can’t talk surprises without bringing up the Pistons first. I’ll admit to being happily wrong about Detroit. Even with my respect for what new coach JB Bickerstaff can bring to a young team, I thought the Pistons needed another year of seasoning before they were ready to make some noise.

Well, the Pistons are here, and they’re loud as hell.

Ausar Thompson is one of my favorite watches in the league, Malik Beasley may win my Sixth Man of the Year award, and Jalen Duren — who I had almost given up on despite his youth — now looks competent and occasionally downright predatory on defense (thanks, JB!). The team works hard and plays fast.

But none of this would be possible without Cade Cunningham's leap.

Cunningham still has work to do, but the strides he’s taken this season are breathtaking. He’ll be a candidate for an All-NBA team. Cunningham is healthier, and it shows in new burst and jumpiness. I haven’t seen him look this athletic since he’s been in the league:

The Pistons have been really, really bad for a very, very long time. The league is better off with meaningful Detroit basketball.

2) Epic trade deadline

Just a few short months ago, people around the league predicted a quiet trade deadline. A lack of publicly malcontented superstars and the crushing effects of the first and second aprons seemed like a recipe for fizzle. Instead, we had fajita-level sizzle!

The out-of-nowhere Doncic trade was the headliner, instantly becoming the most infamous move of all time. In total, teams traded nine current or former All-Stars, nearly every franchise was at least tangentially involved in a move, and more players had to find a new apartment than ever.

Doncic, Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, De’Aaron Fox, Brandon Ingram, Zach LaVine, D’Angelo Russell, Andrew Wiggins, Khris Middleton, De’Andre Hunter, Quentin Grimes, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Caris LeVert, and so many more (and that’s excluding big offseason names moved like Karl-Anthony Towns, Klay Thompson, and Mikal Bridges!).

As a fan, seeing so many fun faces in new places is awesome. As a writer, I couldn’t have asked for better grist for the mill. The aprons may have complicated things, but that simply sparked creativity, with far more multi-team deals than we usually see.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way.

3) The Cavs ah he-yeah!

Even as someone who has been relatively sanguine about Cleveland’s chances in the Donovan Mitchell era, I certainly didn’t see this coming.

I broke down Cleveland’s offense earlier this year (with a far longer than it needed to be Jersey Shore introduction), but the quick-and-dirty version involves faster possessions, quicker decision-making, more off-ball motion to create space, and a dollop of fantastic shooting. Kenny Atkinson and staff have devised an egalitarian system that puts guys in positions to succeed without straining the top dogs (it helps they’ve been healthy — knock on wood).

Add it up, and the Cavs have the league’s best attack by a mile. They didn’t even need to break up Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen (as so many were calling for), helping them maintain a top-10 defense.

Most people expected the Cavs to be good. Instead, they’re coquettishly eyeing a historically great regular season, handily surpassing even Boston in the standings. That’s one heck of a surprise.

4) Seeding drama

We have some serious seeding races coming down the stretch. The introduction of the play-in tournament a few years ago has made this a more common occurrence (there’s now real benefit to being each incrementally higher seed, particularly 6-10), but this is an unusually clustered year even so.

Boston might be the only team comfortably ensconced in their spot (second in the East); while OKC and Cleveland will win their respective conferences, they are within one game of each other for determining who would have hypothetical home-court advantage in the Finals, perhaps giving them a little more incentive down the stretch than we typically see in one-seeds.

Virtually every other playoff and play-in team is still fighting for its spot; even New York’s three-game lead over Indiana for third in the East feels unsafe, given their slide during Jalen Brunson’s ongoing injury absence. The surging Golden State Warriors could rise as high as second or fall as low as eighth (and technically, they haven’t even clinched a play-in spot yet).

5) Lonzo!

Due to knee surgery, I haven’t been able to play basketball for five months and counting, and it’s driving me crazy. I’m not sure how Lonzo made it 1,013 days between regular season games.

His career looked like it might be over. He needed the rare cartilage transplant and an even rarer meniscus transplant to give himself a fighting chance. Eventually, however, he made it. He made it!

While Ball hasn’t had the smoothest season back, playing only 35 games this season due to various injuries, just seeing him on the court at all has been a pleasant surprise. He even earned himself a two-year, $20 million contract with the Bulls (although they perhaps wisely made the second year a team option), giving himself another payday. Nobody knows better than Ball that the future isn’t guaranteed.

While Ball’s box-score stats won’t impress, it’s worth noting that advanced metrics still love him for all the little things: the hit-aheads, the cutting, the heady help defense. For whatever it’s worth, the Bulls’ have a net rating of +10.6 (92nd percentile for all lineups) when Ball plays with Josh Giddey in almost 1,000 possessions — not a huge number, but not a tiny sample size, either.

Watch him lace a clutch three and then dance in the corner. That’s the joy of a man taking nothing for granted:

From the outside, Ball has always seemed like a good dude. I’m so happy that his career has continued after an interminable pause.

6) Portland and Brooklyn, fighting the good fight

Following a rebuilding team requires some contradictory impulses. Fans of Portland and Brooklyn know that losing more games to improve their lottery odds is likely the best thing for the squad’s long-term goals. But it’s still far more fun to root for wins, and both Portland and Brooklyn have vastly outplayed preseason expectations.

They aren’t in quite the same situation. Portland already has a strong youthful core, and they’re succeeding without sacrificing development. Although the Blazers don’t have that one surefire superstar on the roster yet, guys like Deni Avdija, Toumani Camara, Donovan Clingan (this year’s rookie), Shaedon Sharpe, and Scoot Henderson have shown real developmental strides throughout the season. Several or all of these players may be significant parts of the next really good Blazers team.

Brooklyn isn’t in quite the same place. It’s possible nobody on the roster is still a Net in two years. But it’s a different kind of joy watching borderline NBA players like Keon Johnson and Ziaire Williams and Jalen Wilson scratch and claw their way to unexpected victories under the (apparently incredible) tutelage of first-year coach Jordi Fernandez.

It’s easy for me to say, as an outside observer with no vested interest in the lottery, but I much prefer when teams are feisty rather than resigned to their fate. There’s a different basketball universe where these two squads, particularly Brooklyn, are unwatchable disasters. I’m glad we’re in this one.

7) Houston, we have liftoff

The Rockets were the 11th seed just last season; right now, they have a tenuous hold on the second seed in the West thanks to an offensive rebounding-centric offense and a horde of mean, physical stoppers leading the league’s second-ranked defense.

Questions about their ability to score in the playoffs remain, but this season is almost found money for Houston. Their core is overwhelmingly young and talented. Amen Thompson is one of my favorite watches in the league (why am I getting déjà vu?), Alperen Sengun and Jalen Green are defending in a way they never have before, Tari Eason and Dillon Brooks are roughing people up, and Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams are providing productive, often hilarious veteran presences:

Like Detroit, Houston is ahead of schedule, and we’re all better off for it.