The 2024-2025 NBA season is finally over, and honestly, it was a roller coaster ride for the players and the league’s fans.
The past year of basketball wasn’t short on drama; instead, it was full of it. Superstars were dealt out of nowhere, and many injuries halted championship aspirations for some perceived contenders.
Let’s look at the good, the bad, and the ugly stuff from the 2024 NBA season.
What good, bad, and ugly things happened from the 2024-2025 NBA season?
Good: No More Dynasties
With the Oklahoma City Thunder winning it all, the NBA has crowned a new champion for the seventh straight year. The last team to win back-to-back titles was the Golden State Warriors in 2017 and 2018. This is what Commissioner Adam Silver wanted—league parity.
Nine different franchises have hoisted the Larry O’Brien trophy since Silver became commissioner in 2014. Perhaps OKC can become a dynasty mainly because they will still boast an almost intact roster next season.
Can another team win it all next year?
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Bad: Fans Want A Big Market Team Playing At NBA Finals
A quick scroll through multiple social media platforms, especially X.com (formerly Twitter), and you’d see many fans clamoring for at least one big-market team on the NBA’s grandest stage. That did not happen in the 2024-2025 season, with the Thunder and Pacers—both small-market teams—making the NBA Finals.
Once the Pacers and Thunder clashed, celebrity sightings were almost non-existent. If the Knicks somehow made it instead of the Pacers, Hollywood A-listers from the East Coast will dominate the sidelines and the news.
With harsher luxury tax penalties in the current CBA, fans can expect smaller-market teams to thrive under Silver’s reign for years to come.
Ugly: Playoff Injuries
What do Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard, and Tyrese Haliburton have in common? No, not their jersey numbers. It’s suffering from the same Achilles injuries in the playoffs. From 1990 to 2023, 45 players suffered an Achilles tear. In the 2024-2025 NBA season alone, eight players went down with this type of injury.
It’s not just these weird Achilles injuries, though. Ja Morant and Stephen Curry were sidelined in the NBA playoffs, and their teams suffered due to their absences.
Is it because of the grueling 82-game schedule? Perhaps there’s an argument in that area. However, it’s important to note that players today are much faster compared to previous eras. The league is full of giants who run at full speed down the court and could effortlessly make a Euro step like it’s nothing. All these players are testing the human limits at their humongous sizes.
Good: The Mid-Range Game Is Back
This old and dying skill on the basketball court made a huge comeback this year, and the league can thank Shai Gilgeous-Alexander for that. Since the Golden State Warriors, particularly Stephen Curry, emphasized the three-point shot, the rest of the league tried to emulate their success and decided to shoot a ton of threes.
SGA and the rest of the Thunder squad aren’t overly reliant on threes. They are keen on attacking mismatches and settling for shots that are much closer to the rim. Whenever they needed a basket, you can count on Shai to deliver a mid-range jumper rather than settle for a step-back three. It’s effective and beautiful to watch at the same time.
Bad: Everyone Wants To Shoot Like Steph
We all understand that hitting a three is much superior to making a two-pointer, but most teams have overdone it in the 2024-2025 NBA season. You can see countless fast-break opportunities that ended in a three-point attempt instead of a closer shot at the basket. Even on a half-court offense, most teams will try to fake an attack towards the basket but will inevitably dish out the ball to open shooters behind the three-point line.
Big men who have no business shooting it that far because they don’t have it in their offensive repertoire suddenly felt like they had the confidence of Stephen Curry whenever they receive the ball from behind the three-point line. The trend becomes repetitive and sometimes boring to watch.
Ugly: The Celtics Attempted Way Too Many Threes During The Season
3,955 – that’s how many threes the Celtics had launched in the 2024-2025 NBA season. At 48.2 attempts per game from behind the arc, they were on top of the leaderboards in this area, outpacing the Warriors by almost six attempts per game. Was it a pretty sight? Well, that can be subjective.
Coach Mazzulla built an entire offense around that idea, but it also robbed fans of the elite individualism of players like Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown. Both guys are top-tier one-on-one scorers, but they often had to settle for threes after a separation instead of a mid-range shot or a poster dunk.
Good: International Players Are Still Huge Winners
Four players born in Canada have played in the 2025 NBA Finals. SGA is arguably the best Canadian-born basketball player of all time, having won the 2024-2025 regular season MVP and NBA Finals MVP. He had one of the best individual seasons in basketball ever.
It’s not just him, though. Serbia’s Nikola Jokic and Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo were the number two and three MVP candidates this season. In the last seven years, all of the league MVP winners were born outside the United States. The top five players in the league right now are all international players. This trend might continue until the end of this decade.
Bad: The 2024 Draft Class Was…Something
First of all, congratulations to the Spurs’ Stephon Castle for winning the Rookie of the Year. While he isn’t projected to become a star, there’s hope he could become a very good starter for San Antonio for years to come.
For the rest of his batchmates? Well…not much stood out. First overall pick and Atlanta Hawks forward Zaccharie Risacher was decent, but you can easily find guys around the league who could play like him. Wizards’ big man Alex Sarr tends to fall in love with his jumper rather than getting down and dirty in the post. Third overall pick Reed Sheppard spent most of his rookie year down in the G League.
It is sad to say that there were players picked in the lottery who haven’t played much for their teams in the 2024-2025 NBA season. This class would be lucky to have one or two all-stars a few years from now.
Ugly: Phoenix Suns Big Three Failure
Even though the Suns had one of the league’s highest payrolls, they only finished with a 36-46 record in the 2024-2025 NBA season and missed the play-in tournament entirely. Suns owner Mat Ishiba tried to buy his way to a championship, but the trio of Durant, Booker, and Beal never clicked for the second year in a row.
They tried playing Devin Booker at the point guard spot, and unsurprisingly, he wasn’t a good fit at that position. KD missed some time due to injuries, and so did Bradley Beal. The team’s fans wanted Durant gone, and that has since materialized.
Good: Luka Doncic Trade Was The Talk Of The Basketball World
Before the Luka Doncic to the Lakers trade, many pundits lamented that the NBA viewership was steeply declining, and interest had waned for the past few years. That all changed on one random February night after the Mavericks surprisingly dealt their superstar to the Lakers, which left the entire basketball community stunned.
The trade was a bad basketball decision by Dallas, but a welcome ratings booster for the league. How big of a trade was that, you may ask? That was supposed to be the NFL’s week, but the Luka deal almost completely made everybody forget about the impending Eagles vs. Chiefs clash in Super Bowl LIX.
That trade was a HUGE win for Adam Silver and the rest of the NBA.
Bad: Officiating Inconsistencies
Fans have long clamoured for the league to penalize referees who don’t do a superb job of officiating a game. For example, in Game 7 of the 2025 NBA Finals, Pacers guard TJ McConnell was constantly grabbed and fouled by multiple Thunder players, but the referees failed to call a foul on most of these instances.
With replays readily available on most social media outlets, you can’t blame fans for quickly uploading short clips of all the missed calls that happened in the 2024-2025 NBA season, especially on star players. People want Adam Silver to make his beloved referees accountable for their mistakes. Fine them or suspend them, no in-betweens!
Ugly: Fire Nico
“Fire Nico” has become the de facto chant for fans who are dissatisfied with their favorite teams’ performance, regardless of the sport. Whether it’s basketball or not, the infamous chant has become synonymous with bad front office management.
This was the battle cry for Mavericks fans after GM Nico Harrison traded Luka Doncic to the Lakers in exchange for the often-injured Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a lone first-round pick. Mavs fans cried, cursed, and even brought out a coffin outside of their arena to ‘mourn’ their loss, all while chanting “Fire Nico” wherever they go.
Remarkably, even though the 2024-2025 NBA season has concluded, Dallas never did fire Nico Harrison.
Good: The Old Generation Continues To Ball Out
Even with the rise of young players, it’s hard to ignore the fact that there are still many older guys in the league who continue to play well despite being on the wrong side of their 30s. The primary example of this is LeBron James, who, at 40, is still one of the best players in the world.
Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, Kevin Durant, and DeMar DeRozan are still going strong even though they are all 35 and older. To a lesser extent, Chris Paul, Mike Conley, Al Horford, and Nicolas Batum still provided some value minutes for their teams last season.
Ain’t that crazy?
Bad: NBA Media Going Nuts!
The 2024-2025 NBA season was arguably one of the most dissected and scrutinized seasons ever. A lot of basketball analysts, personalities, and former players have had their own ridiculous claims about several topics, such as the face of the league, whether this player is a superstar or not, who’s the rightful MVP, plus more.
Social media truly magnified what all these analysts say about the game. The discussions have been endless, and nobody has been held accountable. One ugly incident about the NBA media having too much power was when LeBron James confronted Stephen A. Smith on the sidelines during a Lakers game. That was a hideous sight that never should have happened.
Even ex-NBA players suddenly start appearing on TV and spewing hate toward current players. Most of their comments are borderline disrespectful, and the NBA needs to address this sooner rather than later.
Ugly: The All-Star Game
Four teams, one winner. The 2025 NBA All-Star game was a disaster—arguably the worst one the league has had throughout its history.
Do you remember who won the game and who was crowned MVP? You don’t know, do you? We can’t blame you if you don’t remember. For years now, the league front office has wanted to forgo the East vs West format due to players not giving their 100% effort, but the four-team format was unappealing to watch.
International players vs. the USA might be worth a try, but that doesn’t entirely solve the problem that the All-Star Game currently faces. There’s no quick fix for this, and expect that the All-Star Game will stink for years to come.
