Biggest Winners and Losers from 2024-25 NBA Season's First Month
Preseason expectations for NBA teams are not supposed to meaningfully shift fewer than 20 games into the season. But some squads are already forcing us to recalibrate our priors anyway.
Jumping to profound conclusions around Game No. 15 or so can be a good thing! Unless, of course, it is a bad thing! The mission here is to spotlight both ends of the spectrum—the biggest winners and the yikes-iest losers.
Selections will be shaped relative to those preseason expectations we just referenced. But scorching-hot and arctic-cold starts do not guarantee inclusion. We are also on the prowl for the situations that seem most sustainably awesome or concerning.
The Dallas Mavericks, as one example, have disappointed when comparing their performance to last season's NBA Finals cameo and this past summer's overall grandeur. That could render them an early-season loser. But they have enough positive indicators and built-in caveats for us to trust that they'll figure it out. Ergo, they are spared from this microscope.
Other teams are not so lucky.
Winner: Cleveland Cavaliers
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Squandering their undefeated record at the hands of the Boston Celtics on Tuesday night does nothing to diminish the Cleveland Cavaliers' dominance to start the year and all it says about what they can do for the rest of this season.
In some ways, actually, the loss amplifies just how pretty they're sitting.
Isaac Okoro and Dean Wade did not play. Nor did Max Strus, who has yet to take the floor this season. Darius Garland went 3-of-21 from the floor. The Celtics drilled 22 threes—a lot even by their standards.
Cleveland hung tough anyway, clawing its way back from a 21-point deficit to make it a real game down the stretch.
Sure, there may still be a gap between the Cavs and the Celtics. (Boston has yet to see Kristaps Porziņģis suit up.) But the competitiveness amid unideal circumstances reinforces Cleveland's overall surge into title contention.
Its top-two offense is not a fluke. Garland is making an All-NBA leap. Evan Mobley is broadening his offensive horizons. Donovan Mitchell is effectively reading the room on a possession-by-possession basis. The roster is deep—and going to get deeper.
The Cavs, in short, are who almost nobody believed them to be: The second-best team in the East that just might be the second-best team in the entire league.
Loser: New Orleans Pelicans
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Every New Orleans Pelicans injury report seems to get progressively longer and exponentially more depressing.
I won't overload you with the full breadth of issues. You could read and then re-read a hard-copy of the Oxford dictionary before I finished. The state of the Pelicans can be summed up in two numbers:
Oof size: EXTRA LARGE.
New Orleans entered the season with everyone wondering whether it would or could trade for a substantial upgrade at the 5. And we all wanted to know what the future held for Ingram ahead of 2025 free agency.
Those curiosities endure. They're now just ensconced in morbidity.
What would acquiring any additional talent—playmakers, shooters, bigs who complement Zion—do at this point? What can the Pelicans get for Ingram? Do they just call it a season and lean into a gap year? Does that still entail trading Ingram? Or does it make more sense to deal CJ McCollum? And what, if anything, can you get for him?
We are dangerously close to "Trade Zion!" becoming the trendy default, if we aren't there already. OK, yeah, sure. What are you getting for him while he's injured? And when he remains an extremely unique talent who limits how you can flesh out rosters around him?
Pretend to know where New Orleans goes from here if you like lying to yourself. Without an end to the Pels' injury woes in sight, no avenue is remotely palatable, let alone a panacea.
Winner: Golden State Warriors
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General impressions of the 2024-25 Golden State Warriors varied entering the season. And yet, even the most optimistic outlooks would admit to some variation of "This team will not be a contender unless it upgrades its second-best-player slot."
So much for that.
Golden State sits at the top of the Western Conference. The defense is anarchic hellfire, and the offense is floating around the top 10 in points scored per possession.
That the Warriors are here, at all, is even more incredible when considering they've faced two potential pivot points: moving Jonathan Kuminga to the bench, and electing to keep their overall rotation running, approximately, 67 players deep. Both decisions are panning out so far.
Calls for Golden State to find a No. 2 scorer will persist anyway. And they might be fair.
They could also be flat-out wrong.
Surrounding Stephen Curry and Draymond Green with bonkers defense, high-IQ depth and various degrees of spacing could just be a recipe for another title. And for those who doubt its merit, a similar model has already culminated in a banner.
The 2022 Dubs churned out a championship team without a conventional No. 2. This iteration of Golden State is different. But its ceiling may be the same.
Loser: Milwaukee Bucks
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Hiding behind Khris Middleton's absence and the cloak of "There's still plenty of time!" is starting to ring hollow for these Milwaukee Bucks.
Sure, Middleton's eventual return should help an offense that's desperate for another outside-in creator. And yes, technically, it remains early.
But these Bucks might also just be cooked.
Milwaukee's offensive performance should be most jarring. Its sorry excuse for a defense actually ranks higher on a per-possession basis. But the former seems fixable.
Middleton has to debut at some point. (Right?) Other dudes will start hitting more shots, including Damian Lillard, who has dipped below 33 percent from deep. Bobby Portis Jr. might be less detrimental. Giannis Antetokounmpo continues to exist.
The pathway to a noticeably better defense is tougher to reconcile. The Bucks look old and unathletic. Middleton isn't helping them in those departments. Andre Jackson Jr. and AJ Green have turned in some nice moments. But, uh, no serious contender is viewing them as a cure-all.
Unimpressive pace, maddening inconsistency and dire ball containment on defense might just be baked into the fabric of this roster. And if that's the case, there's little hope for Milwaukee to establish itself as a viable threat to win it all—even if it's willing to roll its 2031 first-rounder into trade packages.
Winner: Los Angeles Lakers
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Plenty of people will claim the Los Angeles Lakers' impressive start is littered with noise. There is merit to that stance.
Los Angeles is comfortably over .500 but has used a pair of winning streaks and home-court perfection to get here. Its defense is floating near the bottom 10 despite facing an average number of top-10 offenses. And while it has the third-best record in the Western Conference, it only has the ninth-best net rating.
None of this is enough to exclude the Lakers.
Almost nobody had them hovering near the top of the West entering the season for any amount of time. It does not matter how they've compiled their record—and, by the way, they are 4-3 against teams .500 or better. It just matters that they're scraping out victories.
Head coach JJ Redick has visibly altered the way they play and the pecking order within that style. Anthony Davis is unlocked and a legitimate top-five MVP candidate.
LeBron James looks and feels so good he's already lying about Dalton Knecht, who also looks pretty good. Oh, LeBron also joins Nikola Jokić as the only players averaging at least 23 points and nine assists.
D'Angelo Russell looks reborn, again, after moving to the bench. Austin Reaves is banging in pull-up jumpers and continues to shoot north of 70 percent at the rim. Both bigs and non-bigs are crashing the offensive glass.
Depth (and defense) remain defining issues. It is tough to envision the Lakers emerging from the West without making trades. But the prevailing consensus was they needed a star acquisition. They instead look like a team good enough to consider smaller, more realistic upgrades rather than nuclear moves.
Loser: Philadelphia 76ers
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Any discussion about the Philadelphia 76ers must be couched with the caveat that Joel Embiid, Paul George and Tyrese Maxey have yet to play a single second together.
Somehow, someway, the Sixers are a dumpster fire even by those standards.
Embiid is back...and still doesn't look right. George is back, too...and displaying his limitations as an on-ball creator that Los Angeles Clippers fans will be only too happy to sermonize about to any Sixers fan prepared to listen. Tyrese Maxey looked overtaxed in the early going...and is now sidelined with a right hamstring issue.
The defense has improved lately, but Philadelphia continues to foul like whoa and rebound like the opposite of whoa. The offense is dead last in points scored per possession.
Rookie Jared McCain is a shining light, so there's that. But there is also the team meeting that took place following the Sixers' Nov. 18 loss to the Miami Heat, in which Maxey called out Embiid, and for which the "This is fine" meme specifically exists.
Time is on the Sixers' side because the East remains a farce. Philly enters Wednesday's game against the Memphis Grizzlies tied with the Washington Wizards for the conference's worst record...and just four losses out of sixth place.
Still, legitimate qualifiers and all, almost nothing about these Sixers hints that they're about to turn the corner. And caveats only get you so far when, as Bryan Toporek notes for Forbes, swathes of the fanbase are already wondering whether their should-be contending team is better off staying #InThePooperForCooper.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.
Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac. Draft-pick obligations via RealGM.
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