The Lakers’ February trade for Luka Dončic added some spice to the NBA season.
Every season has its surprises but 2024-25 has packed more than many, up and down the standings, on the court and off.
They started on the brink of training camp, when Minnesota caught us napping when it sent big man Karl-Anthony Towns to the New York Knicks for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo, and continues to this day with Oklahoma City’s marvelous season. The Thunder nearly ran the table on the East, going 29-1, and have a Kia MVP candidate (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander) looking to oust a three-time winner having his best season yet.
There have been some unexpected disappointments along the way — we’re looking at the Suns in Phoenix, the Sixers in Philadelphia and all the guys in street clothes in New Orleans lately. But for our purposes here, “surprise” shall connote something a little more upbeat or special.
Here is a countdown of this season’s Top 5, from the least to most unexpected:
5. Steph, LeBron, KD & Ponce
The first three are household names for most of America’s sports fans. The fourth would be Juan Ponce de Leōn, the Spanish explorer reputed to have been searching for the mythological “fountain of youth” when he hit land in what he eventually dubbed Florida.
Sadly, Ponce died in 1521, which means he didn’t get within 500 years of the waters in which Stephen Curry, LeBron James and Kevin Durant have been bathing this season. All three have pushed what typically has been considered an NBA player’s peak beyond anything previously seen.
Oh, the league has had its aging wonders in the past. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Tim Duncan, Dirk Nowitzki and others pushed to and beyond 40, still contributing but as slightly diminished versions of their former selves. But these three? What we have seen this season?
Never happened before.
Durant (sixth), James (11th) and Curry (12th) all rank in the top dozen of this season’s scoring leaders at, respectively, 36, 40 and 37 years old. Compare that to 10 years ago, when only Dwyane Wade, then 33, and James, at 30, were among the NBA’s top 12 scorers. Go back 20 years and Shaquille O’Neal, as No. 12 at 33, was the only scoring leader outside his 20s (James ranked third that season).
Whatever it is — modern medicine, changes in the NBA game that enables older players, or their sheer refusal to leave the stage and the paychecks — Curry, James and Durant keep going where no NBA geezers have gone before.
4. Cleveland snags the No. 1 seed
OK, not quite yet. But the math is compelling, with just one of 16 possible scenarios that could play out between now and the end of Sunday’s action — Cavs going 0-4, Celtics 4-0 — opening the East’s top door to Boston. Otherwise, the Cavaliers will win the conference for only the fourth time and the first without James on board.
In the process, they have improved by 14 victories over last year’s total (48), climbed from fourth place to first and strung together three separate winning streaks of at least 12 games. Two lasted at least 15, something only five previous NBA teams have managed.
Offensively under new coach Kenny Atkinson, the Cavs soared from 16h (114.7 points per 100 possessions) to first (121.4). They have had 19 games with at least 130 points (the franchise’s old mark was five).
The past two springs have brought some foundering — a 51-victory team getting bounced in the first round in 2023, a five-game ouster in the 2024 conference semifinals — but Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, Darius Garland and the rest now look ready for their close-ups all the way into June.
Are the Cavaliers' ready for a deep playoff run?
3. Grizzlies switch coaches
Even sputtering teams rarely make coaching changes so late in the season, accepting their fates and using the summer to regroup. So it was a stunner when Memphis, at 44-29 and with just 17 days and nine games remaining, chose to fire Taylor Jenkins and promote assistant Tuomas Iisalo into the interim role.
But Grizzlies GM Zach Kleiman decided the change couldn’t wait (“Urgency is a core principle of ours”). So he made the move without consulting the players, he said, and rolled the dice on the little-known (in NBA circles), 42-year-old native of Helsinki, Finland.
Iisalo is unproven here but not overseas. He played 14 seasons in his homeland but, as a coach, wound up in Germany, where he helped Telekom Baskets Bonn improve from 12-22 to 26-8 in 2020-21. After a 32-2 mark the next season, he was named Coach of the Year. The success continued when Iisalo and most of his core players joined Paris Basketball, earning a championship and another coaching award.
Kleiman brought him to Memphis this season, plopping him on Jenkins’ staff with a mandate to revamp the offense. It largely worked, despite reported consternation from star guard Ja Morant. But 12 days in, after a 2-3 start, the long-term benefits remain to be seen.
Asked about the likelihood of shedding that “interim” tag, Iisalo told reporters: “My and my whole team’s timeline is one day at a time, so there is no need to go into the future.” But all signs point in that direction, with the Grizzlies hitting this postseason with only the fourth European coach at the helm of an NBA team.
Just hours after this story was published, the Denver Nuggets sent shockwaves through the NBA, announcing their decision to fire coach Michael Malone.
2. Detroit’s historic rise
The bellowing, always loud, finally packs a punch again. “DEE-troit, BAS-ketball!” booms through Little Caesars Arena with purpose now, the team’s P.A. announcer, John Mason, touting the NBA’s biggest turnaround this season and one of the biggest ever.
No team in league history had more than tripled its victory total from one year to the next until the Pistons this season. They dragged the NBA’s worst record, 14-68, into the offseason. They then hired coach J.B. Bickerstaff as arguably 2024’s top free-agent acquisition (other than OKC’s signing of Isaiah Hartenstein) and are 43-36 with more wins available through Sunday.
Led by Trajan Langdon, the front office added a group of helpful veterans in Tobias Harris, Malik Beasley, Tim Hardaway Jr., and Dennis Schröder. More improvement came from within, notably lead guard Cade Cunningham.
The No. 1 pick in 2021 is getting mentioned as a Kia Most Improved Player favorite, but less for his stats boost (25.9 ppg, 9.1 apg from 22.7 and 7.5) than for his durability and all the winning. Guard Jaden Ivey has been out more than three months with a leg fracture, but Jalen Duren, Ausar Thompson and chippy Isaiah Stewart had taken strides, too.
Beasley, a journeyman with his sixth team, leads the NBA with 305 3-pointers. It’s a category in which the Pistons rank only 20th, but their 1,003 are the most in franchise history. Meanwhile, they lead the NBA with 6.9 dunks per game
Since Jan. 1, the Pistons have gone 29-18 with defensive efficiency (110.5) that is third-best in the league. They’re doing this without a natural rim protector but with a lot of focused effort.
“Detroit basketball is about being physically and mentally tough,” Bickerstaff said recently. “It’s about being gritty. It’s about winning all the dirty things, all the nasty battles, not being afraid to take those on. That’s who we are. We’re different from a lot of other teams and that’s given us an advantage.”
The Pistons have turned themselves into a playoff team after a dismal 2023-24 season.
1. The Luka Dončić-Anthony Davis trade
“Surprising” hardly captures this NBA landscape-altering transaction. Better adjectives: Stunning, shocking or breathtaking. Many fans woke up to the news on Feb. 2, plenty wondered what sort of silly hoax was being perpetrated on social media.
There are Dallas Mavericks fans for whom “A.D.” always is going to mean “After Dončić” first, Davis second, in the way they mark time henceforth. Riddled by injuries, a team that reached the NBA Finals last June has barely been scraping by as a SoFi Play-In Tournament possibility. The Mavs are 12-18 since the overnight bombshell.
The Lakers, however, have thrived, going 20-11 overall and 16-11 with Dončić on the floor. The relocated Slovenian boosted his career numbers by averaging 30.1 points, 8.4 rebounds and 8.6 assists in March.
James earned the West’s player-of-the-month honors in February and the group looks ready for a spring run. Austin Reaves, left on the trade table by Dallas, has emerged as a top No. 3 option and the Lakers are getting contributions from Dorian Finney-Smith, Gabe Vincent, Jarred Vanderbilt and others.
The results might never surpass the sheer shock value of the trade, but they’re getting close.
With the Lakers playing well now that everyone's returned healthy, can they continue to optimize their offense despite lacking size?
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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