NBA First Tip Questions
A new season brings answers, but what is an answer without a question?
After months of wait, the NBA season tips off Tuesday night with a marquee doubleheader. The opening game of the 2024-25 NBA season will pit the defending champion Boston Celtics against the newly competent New York Knicks. The two sides are projected to be vying at the top of the Eastern Conference, and the showdown should act as a measuring stick for the Knicks’ substantive offseason moves.
The late game is a battle of Minneapolis’ past and present. The Los Angeles Lakers will face the Minnesota Timberwolves in a game with far less championship consequence but far more star power. LeBron James isn’t what he used to be, but he’s still the box office draw in the league, and while Anthony Edwards is an up-and-coming star, he has yet to truly breakthrough into the tier of player who warps the hardwood to his will.
As with the start of any season, there are far more questions than answers. Everyone, generally, thinks they know how the season will play out, but until the games start coming and don’t stop coming, the ball gets tipped and we all start runnin’, we’re wandering in the dark.
Boston Celtics: Can they repeat?
No team has repeated as NBA champion since the Golden State Warriors won in 2017 and 2018, and the current title repeater drought feels at odds with NBA history. While there was a six-season gap between back-to-back champions from 2003 to 2008, the Spurs won three titles over that spell, just never back-to-back.
However, a six-season drought is hardly out of the norm. There was a gap from 1970 to 1987 without a repeat champion, but the Lakers and Celtics were basically taking championship turns from 1980 through 1986. How something feels is almost as important as how something is, and right now it feels like repeating is as hard as ever.
That’s all fine and dandy, but these Boston Celtics are the best bet to repeat since the Warriors did. If you go through NBA history, teams that repeat as champions are generally worse in their title defense. The narrative around this phenomenon is that since the team is a champion they now know how to win the big one and are saving themselves for when it matters most. It’s a tired story, and it’s generally just not true.
The truth is it’s really hard to win a championship and a substantial amount of luck goes into any title run. Most teams need good health, career years, and favorable matchups to traverse an 82-game season and then 16 playoff victories. This means the teams capable of repeating are so good that they can weather a downtick in luck and still remain at the top.
Fortunately, the 2023-24 Boston Celtics were that good. Their net rating of +11.6 was historically great, equal to the 2017 Warriors, and their simple rating of +10.75 was the fifth highest ever. Since 2000, the NBA champion has averaged a regular season net rating of +7.2. And since 2019, it has been 6.3. The Celtics can afford to be worse and still be good enough to win it all. That doesn’t mean they will, but this is realistically the only team since the 2017 Warriors that anyone should have been pegging for a successful title defense.
New York Knicks: Will the trade juice be worth the asset squeeze?
The New York Knicks, after years of impulsivity and impotence, are finally a fully functional franchise. The franchise known for whiffing on free agents, overpaying fading stars, and needlessly sending draft picks out the door has built one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference by nailing free agent signings, handing out excellent contracts, and sending a massive amount of picks out the door.
The last part of the equation is what makes these next few seasons so consequential for the Knicks. From an asset standpoint, they’re tapped out. After nailing their free agent courtship of Jalen Brunson, the Knicks have used their stockpile of picks, young players, and value contracts to surround Brunson with OG Anunoby, Mikal Bridges, and Karl-Anthony Towns. It’s an impressive collection of talent that pairs elite two-way wings with a dynamite lead ball handler and one of the most dangerous stretch-fives in the league.
For as promising as the Knicks are on paper, and probably 2K simulations as well, the core of Brunson, Bridges, Towns, and Anunoby needs to be good enough to win a title because high-level reinforcements aren’t on the horizon. This isn’t a criticism of the Knicks. Almost every modern contender has had to push their chips in and pray things break their way. At the end of the day, the purpose of every rebuild is to reach this point, and the Knicks should be commended for seizing their moment.
Regardless of how the Knicks look against the Celtics on opening night, there’s every chance they will be one of the best teams in the league over the next few seasons. Unfortunately, with the way the modern sports media industrial complex treats teams who are great but ultimately fall short, the Knicks are officially in championship or bust mode. In the NBA, risk is leveraged towards the teams that go for it. The Knicks have gone for it, and only time will tell if their string of moves will have been worth it.
Minnesota Timberwolves: Will they take a step back?
The Minnesota Timberwolves were one of the league’s biggest surprises last season. Led by a resurgent Rudy Gobert, the Timberwolves had by far the league’s best defense and almost stifled their way to the one seed in the Western Conference. A run to the Western Conference Finals on the heels of two impressive playoff series against the Suns and Nuggets were the cherry on top for the best season in franchise history.
Unfortunately, the Wolves’ core that powered their run won’t be coming back in its entirety. They lost the perpetually underrated Kyle Anderson in free agency and then flipped Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. With Gobert, Mike Conley, Anthony Edwards, Jaden McDaniels, Naz Reid, and their new additions, the Wolves still have a talented roster, but there’s a real chance they’ll take a step back.
Gobert and Conley are in their decline phase and Edwards hasn’t yet shown he’s capable of leading a high-powered offense on his own. Even with improvement, Edwards is still probably a season or two away from reaching that point. Randle has shown the ability to keep an offense afloat and DiVincenzo had a career year last season, but it’s quite likely the Knicks got their absolute best.
If everything breaks the Wolves' way there’s a pathway to contention, but there’s also a world where they drop from the top of the Western Conference towards the play-in. I’m not forecasting a collapse, but this is a team that tore up a successful blueprint to prioritize future financial flexibility. It’s a defensible long-term decision, however, it isn’t without risk.
Early in the season, it’ll be interesting to see how well the frontcourt trio of Gobert, Randle, and McDaniels works on offense. DiVincenzo’s shooting will help alleviate some spacing concerns, but he plays the same position as Edwards. The Wolves, barring injuries, will have 48 minutes of competency, but it’ll be interesting to see what ends up being their most potent lineup. How quickly they find it if at all, could determine if they’re hosting a first-round playoff series or battling to avoid game 83.
Los Angeles Lakers: Will LeBron’s career end on a whimper?
The Lakers aren’t a particularly interesting team on a macro level. They went 47-35 with a net rating of +0.6, suggesting they outperformed their true talent level, and that was despite getting fully healthy seasons from LeBron James and Anthony Davis. To build on all that mediocre momentum, they fired Darvin Ham, hired JJ Redick, and did nothing of note in the offseason outside of drafting Dalton Knecht.
Somehow, the Lakers are wasting the most valuable resource in the NBA– star-level players. In no world should the Lakers be this middling with James and Davis, but they’ve managed to do just that. The roster just isn’t good enough and no single podcaster can save them. All of this is a shame because James is defying all aging curves and remains an extremely productive player even as he approaches 40.
The question for the Lakers is if they have the wherewithal to put together one last title-worthy team around LeBron. For 20 years, he has dragged franchises and the league on his back, and it’d be nice to see him end his career with dignity. LeBron won’t get the perfect ending, but he deserves a better one than the Lakers are providing him.