When I sat down to plan this column out, I initially wanted to title it, "Is the NBA Entering Another Era of Malaise?" And I had good reason to. The regular season feels like it means less than ever, almost one-third of teams wanted to lose in the second half of the season, and we were a handful of games missed from the three defining players of the season all being ineligible for the MVP.
But whether you like it or not, the playoffs are how seasons get remembered if you're a major North American sports league not named the NFL. I don't particularly remember people heralding a new golden age of MLB before last year's amazing playoffs. If this year's playoffs are excellent for the NBA, it will be a great antidote to the perception of a league in decline relative to other sports.
On the eve of the playoffs, let's instead give the 2025-26 regular season a "The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" treatment.
The Good
New TV broadcasters
For people in my millennial generation, the departure of Inside the NBA from TNT last year felt like the end of an era, and it was an unwelcome end. For almost the entire century to this point, national games and the entire playoffs have been on Turner or ABC/ESPN networks.
Fast forward to the final day of the regular season, and I breathed a sigh of relief when reminded that Amazon Prime has every game of the Play-In Tournament. They, along with NBC, have brought a new energy to coverage that's been sorely needed.
Of course, we'll have plenty of Ernie, Kenny, Shaq, and Chuck in the playoffs as part of ESPN coverage — which still feels like a verboten phrase — but it's okay to admit that other studio shows have a fresher perspective about the league at the moment.
The burgeoning Spurs vs. Thunder rivalry
Because this is a site for sports fan commentary and not full journalistic objectivity, I'm going to be completely honest about something. I don't like the Thunder.
I don't like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander's foul-baiting. Lu Dort's entire game makes me wish the concept of a Charles Oakley-esque enforcer was still feasible in today's league outside of Isaiah Stewart. I don't like that they could be the defining team of the next 10 years while seemingly having no personality. I'm jealous that they have such a bench and development pipeline that injuries don't really matter to them.
During the season's first couple months, OKC looked like a complete death machine, and I was ready to throw in the towel on the next couple of titles. Then, Wemby and the Spurs came along in the NBA Cup and began to burnish a slingshot to Goliath. By Christmas, San Antonio was 3-0 against the Thunder, Wemby was talking up "ethical basketball," and I wanted to see the two teams play about another 10 times.
However, their most recent meeting was before the All-Star Break with none of OKC's top players in action. With respect to the Nuggets, Lakers, Wolves, and Rockets, Thunder/Spurs is the West Finals we need.
The Bad
The 65-game rule
What a cluster-you-know-what. As I intimated in the intro, the NBA was incredibly close to having SGA, Wemby, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic, and Cade Cunningham all ineligible for end of season awards. As it stands, Doncic and Cunningham aren't able to be All-NBA representatives.
I fully understand the games played threshold for MVP. But not for All-NBA. That should be a documentation of the players who shined the brightest during a given season. In years to come, it's going to be quite odd to say that Cunningham was the most important player on a No. 1 seed in the East, but couldn't be first- or second-team All-NBA because he got a collapsed lung with a month to go in the regular season when that one-seed was effectively sewn up.
The end of Steph Curry title contention
As the 2024 Olympics showed us, Steph and LeBron move the needle for fans, even past their peak. It's not great for the league or us fans when a legend like Curry is on a middling 10 seed that has kept trying to cling to relevancy. The best case for the Warriors (who could be eliminated by the time you read this) is probably two play-in wins and a five-game beatdown at the hands of OKC.
And at the same time, I can't imagine a world where Steph asks for a trade to a contender or back home to Charlotte. Golden State even being a 6-seed with a healthy team and aging Jimmy Butler next year feels like a big stretch. We're in team basketball purgatory for one of the most influential players to ever lace them up, and I don't like it.
The Ugly
Everything about Giannis and the Bucks
That escalated quickly! For years, it's felt like Giannis would bridge the generational superstar gap between the Steph/LeBron/Durant era and the Luka/Wemby/Ant/SGA group. The Greek Freak was never a poster child for load management and often reiterated his commitment to play in Milwaukee. Plus, a healthy Giannis with middling talent and a flawed roster was a guarantee for 45+ wins.
In a few months, Milwaukee has gone from a rebuilding year with play-in aspirations to a five-alarm dumpster fire with an unhappy superstar who may have poured gas on trade rumors as part of a brand and equity deal with a lightly regulated gambling company. To be clear, the Bucks own the brunt of the blame for shortsighted roster moves and talking themselves into Doc Rivers in early 2024. But Giannis hasn't helped his case. There are now serious questions about his durability in the next stage of his career, which will probably happen on a different team.
Tanking alongside the specter of expansion
The tanking epidemic was easily the story of the regular season, and it's a massive part of why the regular season feels devalued. And it's affected my enjoyment of the league. If you're a basketball fan, how could it not? A far-from-trivial amount of games the last half of the season were walkovers. The only non-playoff or play-in teams who gave a damn after the All-Star Break don't have a first-round pick in June.
The league knows it has to do something, and that's a good sign, all things being equal. But I'm not sure any type of lottery odds changes or machinations really matter. As long as the regular season is six months and 82 games long and players enter the league through a draft that distributes the best prospects to the worst teams, I'm afraid some form of tanking will exist.
Worse yet, I'm not sure I have any faith in Adam Silver to radically punish teams. I'm talking real money. Take away salary cap exceptions. Fine teams millions. Cut into the TV revenue pie. Make life miserable for owners and GMs who sacrifice the competitive integrity of the sport.
But I also think Silver is trying to be everything to everyone because even amid this season of bad vibes and tanking, he's trying to make expansion a thing. There's really no modern precedent for an expansion team being a contender before its fourth or fifth season.
So, even though a third of the league didn't want to win the final three months of the season, the league is going to add a couple more teams to the pie who aren't going to matter before the start of the next decade. All so the owners can each get a few hundred extra million dollars on top of TV money.
Seattle deserves an NBA team, so expansion seems perfect for them on its face. So, move the Pelicans instead. Done and dusted.
What the league absolutely should not do is expand to Las Vegas, the nation's 40th biggest media market, smaller than Hartford, Cincinnati, and Austin. Sure, there's casino and tourism money, but two major professional teams (and soon to be three) are already in Sin City. As we progress further into an era of stagnation for the vast majority of Americans, Las Vegas isn't going to mean as much. It can't support teams in every league, even with visitor money.
However, none of the bad or ugly are reasons to tune out for the postseason. If anything, the playoffs have a chance to wash away the aftertaste of a messy regular season. The ingredients are there. A potential Thunder/Spurs showdown in the West. A loaded East with genuine question marks. Great basketball has a way of making you forget the ugliness that preceded it.
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