When Denver’s nuggets were eliminated in game 7 against Oklahoma City Thunder, he marked the unofficial change of the NBA.
The Boston Celtics lost Jayson Tatum for the season, and the whole next season, racing the way for the New York Knicks to arrive at the Eastern Conference finals. The Indiana Pacers got hot at the right time again, easily discarding Milwaukee Bucks of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games each.
The Timberwolves of Minnesota took care of the businesses against LeBron James and Stephen Curry on their way to the western conference finals.
In the direction of the NBA playoffs of 2025, it was certainly felt that the seal “Face of the League” was at stake. Now, one of the Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Brunson, Anthony Edwards or Tyrese Haliburton will have a genuine crack when he won his first NBA title.
It seemed that the stars were aligned for the Lakers to make the NBA finals. Luka Dončić’s trade came out of nowhere in the 11th hour of the season, but allowed Los Angeles to match two best players in the league on the same list. It did not work.
Similarly, the Golden State Warriors sacrificed their future to try to continue winning significant basketball games in the Curry era when they added Jimmy Butler to the Miami Heat mixture. It didn’t work either.
The heroes of the regular season in excess such as the Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Rockets and Detroit Pistons also proved to be regular seasonal merchants, simply not enough talents to advance in series of seven highly competitive games.
But this is healthy for the League. At some point soon, LeBron will not play anymore. Curry is likely not far away. We have seen what has happened with Kevin Durant’s SuperTeam attempts in recent years.
The NBA will soon face the same problem when Michael Jordan was official. You need a new face of the league. He needs a new Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, Allen Iiverson and Shaquille O’Neal.
Surely, we can already predict some of those stars in creation. An NBA championship in the rear pocket of Gilgous-Alexander, Brunson, Edwards or Haliburton certainly help their case to take the torch when James, Curry and Durant have gone.
Even later, you could see realistic paths for unicorn players such as Victor Wembanyama and the defensive player of the year Evan Mobley to dominate this league.
While these NBA playoffs have had their fair part of explosions, there is a change of guard just before us. It is a young man’s league. These four removable equipment prove it.
