The NBA is officially in the stretch run.
With the All-Star break in the rearview mirror, every team has around 25 games left to play.
Contenders will be using the next month and a half as a gradual ramp-up to playoff basketball. The bottom-feeders will lick their wounds, prioritize developing youth over winning anything in March or April, and hope for a fortunate bounce from their draft lottery balls. All the while, there will be franchises fighting tooth and nail for their playoff lives, surprise breakouts from previously-unknown names, and unexpected twists and turns in the race for end-of-season awards.
In other words: There’s plenty to enjoy even as the field of meaningful games gets whittled down with each passing day. With about seven weeks remaining in the 2024–25 NBA regular season, here are seven of the most interesting story lines to watch as the league enters the home stretch.
How Luka Doncic, Jimmy Butler settle into new roles
Luka Doncic and Jimmy Butler were the two biggest names moved at the trade deadline this season (you may have heard), and the clock is already ticking for them to settle into their new homes. Both were acquired by teams interested in making a deep playoff run right now; there’s less pressure on Doncic than Butler to help deliver that right away, but the pressure remains. The Los Angeles Lakers only have so many good years of LeBron James left and the Golden State Warriors acquired Butler with the idea that he’d provide an instant boost to their immediate championship hopes.
So far, so good on that front for both parties. It took Doncic a few games to warm up in his new threads after missing nearly two months with a calf injury, but his stellar outing to lead L.A. past the Denver Nuggets earlier this month shows Doncic is, indeed, feeling like himself again. Golden State has won six of its last seven games since landing Jimmy Buckets. He hasn’t been quite as statistically impactful as Doncic, but he has served as a shot in the arm for a Warriors team that was struggling to tread water leading up to the deadline.
Short-term results aside, these two stars' ability to mesh with their new environments before the postseason kicks off will help shape the Western Conference playoff picture.
Can the Mavericks make it to the postseason in one piece?
The Dallas Mavericks are suddenly under immense pressure to win right now thanks to GM Nico Harrison’s decision to trade Doncic with the justification that the incoming Anthony Davis is a better asset for winning a championship in the near future. Unfortunately, the blockbuster trade didn’t change the franchise’s injury woes. Dereck Lively II went down for at least a month with a fractured ankle in January and hasn’t been given a timeline to return. Shortly after Davis arrived, he hurt his groin and remains out indefinitely. Daniel Gafford hurt his MCL right before the All-Star break and is expected to be out until at least April.
ANTHONY DAVIS IS HERE 😤
— NBA TV (@NBATV) February 8, 2025
6 PTS, 4 REB, 3 AST, 1 BLK in just FOUR MINUTES 😳 pic.twitter.com/6n7ALQs8vc
In theory, Harrison’s vision could prove dangerous in the postseason, with Kyrie Irving’s electric shotmaking and playmaking generating buckets while Davis roams the back end flanked by two great rim protectors and the two of them surrounded by a cadre of solid wings. But if even one key piece is hurt, everything falls apart. The Mavs not only have to hope their players currently injured get healthy in time for postseason play, but that they don’t also suffer further injuries—no sure thing when the team is built around Irving and Davis, both of whom average more than 20 missed games per season for their careers.
Should the roster reach playoff basketball mostly or entirely healthy, there’s a real chance Harrison’s plan falls into place and the Mavs make a run. If not, it’s going to be a very long offseason in Dallas.
Pistons’ incredible turnaround
The Detroit Pistons had such a remarkably terrible 2023–24 season—finishing with 14 wins and a whopping 68 losses while setting an NBA record for most consecutive defeats—that improvement this season was expected. They met those expectations in the first half of the season, then really started playing well heading into the All-Star break. Exiting the break, they’ve caught absolute fire. Entering Thursday, the Pistons are riding an eight-game winning streak—more than half as many victories in a row as they managed all of last season.
It is a heartwarming story of perseverance from the team’s core after barely anybody on the roster looked playable by the conclusion of last year’s disaster. Now Cade Cunningham is an All-Star, Jalen Duren and Ausar Thompson look like hits, and so did Jaden Ivey before he broke his leg in January. Offseason acquisitions, highlighted by elite sharpshooter Malik Beasley, have meshed well and opened up the floor for their teammates. In a span of months the Pistons went from one of the worst teams in NBA history to setting themselves up to host a playoff series—merely one game separates them from the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference, currently held by the Indiana Pacers.
Detroit’s season is already a roaring success, but whether the team can keep the good vibes going and play postseason basketball after such a miserable season is one of the more fun story lines to keep an eye on.
76ers’ endless spiral
The Philadelphia 76ers are trudging through a Murphy’s Law–type season where everything that could go wrong, has gone wrong. Joel Embiid has been hurt since Day 1 and will likely have to undergo knee surgery again to get right. Paul George has been a shell of his former self in the first year of a max contract. First-round pick Jared McCain impressed before going down for the year with his own knee injury. Tyrese Maxey is averaging a career high in points per game, which is a positive, but he has been unable to win games on his own. This string of poor luck and poor play has resulted in the Sixers exiting the All-Star break at 20–34. And then they lost their first four games after the break.
Now, Philadelphia is in a precarious position. The franchise owes its 2025 first-round draft pick to the Oklahoma City Thunder—but not if it falls in the top six picks. Entering Thursday, the Sixers owned—you guessed it—the sixth-worst record in the league. In theory, it would be in Philly’s best interest to pull the plug, rest as many starters as possible and tank the rest of the season in order to have a high lottery pick to make up for a miserable year. That comes with the inherent risk of the pick still falling out of the top six and going to the Thunder anyway, which would be the worst-case scenario and is not unlikely given the lottery odds involved. But the rest of the East is so bad that the Sixers could push for the 10th seed and make the play-in tournament, allowing for the miniscule possibility of a miracle playoff run that sets up a far more optimistic summer.
For a team well below .500, the Sixers have a fascinating web of potential outcomes for their last 25 games.
Cooper Flagg race will be tight
Cooper Flagg has proven himself worthy of all the hype going into his freshman year at Duke, and as things stand, he looks every bit the part of a generational prospect who will transform the fortunes of whatever NBA team he ends up on. And entering Thursday, it looks like it will be a tight race to the bottom of the standings in pursuit of the No. 1 pick in hopes of landing the Blue Devils phenom.
There are four teams firmly in the mix to “Capture the Flagg”: the Washington Wizards, Charlotte Hornets, Utah Jazz and New Orleans Pelicans. Of those four squads, only the Pelicans have won 15 games this season. The San Antonio Spurs (24 wins, but just lost Victor Wembanyama for the season) and Toronto Raptors (18 wins) could also sneak into that grouping with spectacularly poor finishes. But those four teams are the primary contenders for Flagg, and the lengths they’ll go to earn the worst record could prove egregious.
Because Flagg is why teams tank. Some teams prepare for years for this exact opportunity, to draft a prospect who could end up a top-five player. It transforms the present and future of an entire organization when such a player comes along. Well, he’s here. Flagg could end up good enough to justify the years of losing these woeful franchises have endured.
Cavaliers, Thunder fight for NBA’s best record
Owning the best record in the NBA after 82 games played isn’t viewed as important as being the last team standing in June. We live in a world where the first, second and third priority is winning a championship. That should not take away from how impressive it is for a team to emerge from a six-month war of attrition having won more games than any other franchise. It doesn’t always translate to a title, but it is a remarkable accomplishment on its own—a sign that the season was undeniably successful regardless of what happens in the postseason.
This year features a very entertaining fight for the regular-season crown between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Thunder. Entering Thursday, Cleveland is just a game ahead of Oklahoma City in the standings. Per Tankathon, the Thunder have a slightly harder slate of opponents over the last month and a half, ranking 11th in remaining schedule strength to the Cavaliers’ 18th-ranked slate. But both teams have proven to be excellent and it would be no surprise to see them stay neck-and-neck as the season winds down.
Neither franchise is on a historic win pace or anything of that ilk. But there’s pride in being the very best. It’s been fun watching Cleveland and Oklahoma City jockey atop the standings to this point—it should be even more fun in the coming weeks.
Last gasp of the Durant/Booker/Beal era in Phoenix
The Phoenix Suns were oft-mentioned at this year’s NBA trade deadline but didn’t really end up doing much. They came away empty-handed in their pursuit of Butler, then Kevin Durant nixed a potential transaction that would’ve seen him return to the Golden State Warriors. So Phoenix resumed plodding through an uninspiring season, playing .500 basketball and trailing the Sacramento Kings for the final play-in spot in the West entering Thursday. And should that continue, it seems all but certain the franchise will look to trade KD again this summer; ESPN’s Brian Windhorst recently reported the Suns “are going to trade him and he knows that.”
It seems, then, these last 20-plus games will serve as the final days of the Durant/Devin Booker/Bradley Beal core that the Suns put together in 2023. Should that prove true it’ll be the end to an incredibly expensive and underwhelming era of Phoenix basketball. The trio combined to make $150.6 million this season. In 526 minutes spent together on the floor, the three-man lineup of Beal, Booker and Durant posted an offensive rating of 112.5 and a defensive rating of 114.1, good for a net rating of -1.6—plain mediocre.
It is a little depressing that things turned out like this because, when they are rolling, all three All-Stars are capable of making sweet music offensively. But it was also predictable. Throwing together three score-first stars on a roster ill-equipped to cover its deficiencies was always going to lead to this: an incredibly average product despite decent health and shooting among the “Big 3.” Barring a miracle, these will be the last games that Durant, Booker and Beal play while wearing the same uniform.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Seven Story Lines to Follow for the NBA Stretch Run.
