Despite this essay being about what has been the most evident torch passing in The NBA to a new class of superstars, it feels important to start in 2019. The Toronto Raptors were coming off their first championship and entering the offseason with a chance to build back even better. They had beaten The Golden State Warriors, albeit with an unprecedented level of injuries that took down Kevin Durant and left the team in hobbled condition. Some would say that they were lucky or that their win deserved an asterisk. How did they choose to fight the criticism? They traded their star player.
In July 2019, many were stunned by the announcement that The Raptors’ Kawhi Leonard was leaving for The Los Angeles Clippers. The same trade would feature involvement from The Oklahoma City Thunder, trading Paul George for the then unexceptional Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Add in a bunch of draft picks, and one would think that The Clippers won the deal. In their defense, they would achieve their first Western Conference appearance under this roster. It was closer to a one-and-done where subsequent years found the team becoming more wrapped up in complaints of load management and post-seasons where Leonard (despite being hailed as the star player) was a no-show. While 2025 found Leonard to be in better shape, it was too little too late as they lost in the first round to The Denver Nuggets. Meanwhile, PG-13 had been traded to The Philadelphia 76ers where, funnily enough, he was injured before the postseason started.
In theory, The Clippers should be considered the winners in that trade. For most of the regular season in those six years, it could be suggested. However, LAC has been mired in constant trades and rebuilding that has never amounted to more than a new arena called Intuit Dome. Efforts to hang onto Leonard grow increasingly baffling as The 213 Era has been closed as an unmitigated failure. In its place is James Harden, himself a symbol of failed promises as a former member of The Brooklyn Nets’ Big Three. Some say he’s good, but I refuse to accept him as any team’s second best anything.
In a year that found me growing frustrated with the home team, I jumped around to teams that carried promise. I was particularly charmed by The Nuggets, who, if nothing else, had the endurance to take down anyone who stood in their way. In all of my naivety, I believed that 2025 would find the league’s first repeat winner since 2018. There were enough great players in the league that somebody had to have a hot streak of luck.
I just didn’t expect it to be The Thunder. In my mind, they were still the team that four years prior set a home record for biggest loss. Then again, I didn’t expect to be enraptured by The Detroit Pistons a season after they set a league record for the longest losing streak. If 2024-25 presented any messages, it was the sign that success wasn’t achieved overnight. Much like how The Milwaukee Bucks have failed to get anywhere close to a conference finals in the years since, there’s always an opportunity to surprise and really leave your mark. In an age where everyone is complaining that “nobody is watching,” there needed to be a good excuse to make people want to tune in.
The modern conversation has been less defined by the new class and more by the old guard’s inevitable end. Lebron James is now old enough to have played NBA games with his son. Many are also questioning how much longer Steph Curry can lead The Warriors to any level of success. There is a need to find somebody worth caring about, and, rightfully, the media has turned their eyes onto hot topics like Anthony Edwards (The Minnesota Timberwolves). After testing the waters in prior seasons, 2025 felt like the year that everyone got their first glimpse of the future. This was a world where all four of the conference finals teams would potentially win their first trophy (or, in the case of The New York Knicks, their first in decades).
The simple answer is that this may all boil down to luck. To watch The Indiana Pacers throughout the postseason is to witness one of the greatest Cinderella stories in modern history. More specifically, watch every Game 1 and ask yourself if reality is stranger than fiction. In each case, Indiana was down by a significant margin going into the closing minutes. However, the willpower would pull through and, most famously, found Tyrese Halliburton shooting a deadly three in Game 1 against The Knicks before imitating Reggie Miller’s chokehold – an irony made funnier because Spike Lee was at Cannes during the event. The deadliness propelled them above New York to a level they never recovered from. Just when The Knicks thought they were safe, in came Halliburton with the ability to scorch the earth below him.
As with every postseason, it’s hard not to get caught up in injuries and setbacks that keep a team from reaching their full potential. It’s survival of the fittest at its most chaotic. Days after Jayson Tatum of The Boston Celtics was promoted as the real-life Superman for the upcoming James Gunn film, he confirmed that a repeat victory was unlikely with an injury. Similarly, Halliburton would find himself in a compromising position as he pushed himself through two leg injuries during The Finals. Unfortunately, this came with the soul-shattering torn ACL during the first quarter of Game 7 that ended his season. While the hypothesis as to whether The Pacers would’ve won otherwise remains up for debate, it was one of those shockers that ended a narrative that was only as tempting as their opponent.
Despite neither team being from major markets, there has been a considerable push to make them more of a household name. Unlike many other teams, The Thunder often were seen in commercials as a group doing comedic bits. Where most commercials relied on the stoic nature of a leader, the ads often made OKC seem closer to a community full of teammates who liked each other. They couldn’t be called groundbreaking, but watching Alexander, Chet Holmgren, and Lu Dort complain about wearing the same wardrobe had a chemistry that translated well to watching the sport. They looked to be friends, more youthful by design and a perfect contrast to the more subdued nature of their competitors.
As someone who didn’t watch a significant amount of The Thunder’s regular season, these commercials helped establish their credibility. While I ignored their first-round match-up against The Memphis Grizzlies (in part because of their overwhelming Game 1 win), their series against The Nuggets proved to me why they deserved to win. For as much as I was rooting for Denver to win despite missing a proper coach, there was something to watching Nikola Jokic grow exhausted while these young stunners kept running in circles around them. Even with a team as well-built as The Nuggets, The Thunder had an incredibly diverse bench that knew how to rotate in and out so that nobody was ever beyond their breaking point. Whereas Denver was so understaffed that Jokic often played as coach during timeouts, The Thunder had a focus and confidence that was unmatched. This was so much the case that their Timberwolves match-up was even more of a freight train that ended less ceremoniously.
On the one hand, The Pacers had a more exciting story going into The Finals. They were the underdogs who started the season on a losing streak. To end with a never-ending row of highlights that promos wouldn’t let you forget, they were maybe the biggest source of doubt I’ve seen in a finals match-up in years. Every time I rooted against them, they would come back with a force. They bodied the entire eastern division and left behind a warning in Game 1 against The Thunder that they meant business. Again, it’s hard to know how serious that threat would’ve been in different circumstances, but it was thrilling to watch two teams that had the drive to outlast each other.
A statistic that was shared following the end of Game 7 was that this was the first time in history that seven different teams had won in consecutive years. The parity speaks to how the league continues to get more interesting as time goes on. It also means that it may be difficult to ever see a dynasty in the foreseeable future. Every time I think this will happen, something creates a roadblock. I keep wanting to build revenge narratives, and I think that The Pacers are especially prime for their own knife sharpening. Even with Halliburton out for a considerable portion of the next season at best, there have to be ways to work around this disadvantage.
At the same time, I have slowly become a Thunder convert over The Playoffs. To circle back to the opening, I think that they symbolize what building a team can achieve. For as much as I can look at Luka Doncic being traded to The Los Angeles Lakers and see a missed opportunity, I look at The Thunder pull together players who aren’t necessarily all-stars by popular standards and work for years to develop something unstoppable. As a Clippers fan, I think the 2019 trade was especially helpful in their demise and reflected how hiring the best player doesn’t always mean you’ll have the best team. Ironically, even the trades that OKC acquired ended up leading to some key role players. I know in theory, no great team is solely built or bought, but a mix of the two. However, I think that the balance is delicate. The same could be said for The Houston Rockets, who have finally found their groove in the Post-Harden years.
All in all, this was a great year for postseason basketball. While I must apologize for not being as attentive to the larger season as I usually am, what games I did see were a reminder of what hard work does. Most of all, it was the best showcase yet of why I should be more willing to give smaller teams a chance and embrace the underdog narrative. For as much as I was rooting for The Pacers to lose, they presented some of the most entertaining hoops of the bunch. I don’t know what this says about next season, but one can hope that it’s just as intense and unpredictable as what just happened.
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