The Biggest Regret for the NBA’s Most Disappointing Teams
What do each of the NBA's most disappointing teams regret the most about this season? Pop a dramamine and grab the nearest paper bag or desktop trash receptacle, because we're about to ride the Let's Find Out roller coaster.
Just so we're clear: There is seldom one root cause when an entire season—and, potentially, future—goes up in flames. It is instead a series of decisions and failures to act that compound upon each other to create the short- and long-term hellscapes we see now.
This exercise does not seek to rehash the distant past. It spotlights the biggest, baddest, most brutal misfire for each squad dating back no further than this past offseason.
Undoing these mistakes would not necessarily rewrite what we've seen during the 2024-25 campaign. Most of the time, in fact, it would change very little about the here and now. These pangs of regret are more about the future.
Dallas Mavericks
1 of 5
Biggest Regret: Trading Luka Dončić
Watching the roster suffer injury after injury as it slowly, painfully tumbles out of the Western Conference playoff picture should be enough for Dallas Mavericks president of basketball operations Nico Harrison and managing governor Patrick Dumont to express remorse or at least the faintest hint of skepticism over dealing away a 25-year-old perennial MVP candidate without planning to rebuild.
From the sound of things so far, though, they have not yet entered the regret phase. Let us go through all their most common justifications for the move and count all the ways in which they're wrong.
- Luka doesn't take good enough care of his body and might not be as available as he gets older. Ah, so this explains why the Mavs prioritized getting the notably durable, over-30 Anthony Davis.
- But he's going to cost so much money! Generational superstars tend to do that. And it's not like Davis makes the mid-level.
- Dallas wants to position itself for title contention both now and in the future. Last I checked, MVP candidates in their prime help you do that. And this talk about the "future" is objectively inane when the team's two best players are now both 32 or older (and also currently injured), and when you landed just a single first-round pick as part of the Dončić return.
- We needed to make midseason trades last year to become a Finals participant! That is, uh, how building and optimizing a team works.
- But the Boston Celtics got better after making their initial Finals appearance in 2022 and then the Eastern Conference Finals in 2023. They also happened to add Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porziņģis in the 2023 offseason. This past summer, you added Naji Marshall and Klay Thompson. It's not the same thing.
We could go on. And on. But we won't. Karma is torpedoing both Dallas' present and future enough on its own.
New Orleans Pelicans
2 of 5
Biggest Regret: Continuing to perpetuate a roster dynamic beyond salvation.
Injuries have ripped through the New Orleans Pelicans roster, creating the bottom-four cellar-dweller we see now. The end result may be a blessing in disguise: more information on Trey Murphy, plenty of reps for Yves Missi and the type of lottery pick that gives the franchise access to a bunch of different paths worth traveling this summer.
Still, the Pelicans' affinity for half-baked measures and aversion to bigger swings helped increase their year-over-year fragility.
It was clear to everyone—for a while—that the Brandon Ingram-Zion Williamson lacked an idealistic outcome. And even if it didn't, New Orleans never once surrounded them with the necessary personnel to achieve it.
The front office has, at every turn, seemed more concerned with constructing a roster that could float itself independent of the injury-prone Zion. This is the type of hedging that usually gets people fired. It still might. And this isn't about mandating a specific direction. It's about embracing one at all.
If Zion is your focal point, then act like it, injury concerns be damned. If you don't trust him to be that guy—or rather, to be healthy long enough to be that guy—then flesh out a roster conducive to his scaling down. Or get rid of him. Don't continuously cling to your lack of full-strength reps as if it's an asset. And don't swing trades that can only ever amount to singles (Jonas Valančiūnas, CJ McCollum) or doubles (Dejounte Murray).
Faced with plenty of evidence their middle-ground path wasn't working, the Pelicans steered further into it over the offseason, not just by dealing for Murray, but more critically failing to trade Ingram until the deadline. They might yet gain control over their future anyway. The circuitous route to getting there, though, will hardly be efficient—and it was not at all deliberate.
Orlando Magic
3 of 5
Biggest Regret: Not doing enough to improve the offense.
Top-of-the-roster injuries to Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner and Jalen Suggs would have always derailed the Orlando Magic's 2024-25 campaign. But their decision to play it safe, again, over the offseason has helped submarine it.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope's addition was largely celebrated at the time. He added floor-spacing (in theory) without forcing Orlando to sacrifice anything at the defensive end. Well, his three-point accuracy has since imploded. More than that, he was never going to be the advantage-creating playmaker and scorer that the Magic's offense has loooong needed.
The end result isn't necessarily predictable, but it's totally believable. Orlando ranks 28th in points scored per possession, is one of the worst three-point shooting teams of the past 25 years and will need to make the playoffs by way of the play-in tournament.
This outcome may represent the nightmare scenario. Nobody saw things going this poorly. But the Magic had the flexibility and assets over the offseason and at the trade deadline to do more—to aim higher. The current situation is, to a major extent, of their own design.
Philadelphia 76ers
4 of 5
Biggest Regret: The Joel Embiid extension.
Choosing the Embiid extension over the Paul George signing erodes my soul a little bit. The former is (supposed to be) in his prime and not yet two years removed from winning MVP.
And yet, his overall deal may prove more crippling. After factoring in his three-year, $192.9 million extension, the Philadelphia 76ers now owe him over $248 million through 2028-29, his age-34 season. That commitment is tottering on ruinous when he barely ever looked like himself this season before getting shut down, and when the prognosis on his left knee can most charitably be described as unknown.
Chalking this regret up to the benefit of hindsight doesn't fly. Embiid has never been the poster-child for good health, and it's not like this particular injury is new. The big man limped to the finish line of the last regular season, labored through six playoff games and then struggled for much of the 2024 Olympics.
Philly offered Embiid the max extension after all of this. And it did so without the looming threat of free agency. Embiid was not scheduled to hit the open market until 2026 (player option).
The Sixers could have waited. If part of their logic came down to knowing he'd be eligible for a longer extension this summer, well, that merely underscores the problem. No, holding off on talks wouldn't have changed the disasterclass that became this season. But it would have given them more optionality for—and control over—their future.
Phoenix Suns
5 of 5
Biggest Regret: Trading their 2031 first-round pick without having a bigger move lined up.
Regrets abound for the Phoenix Suns, even when evaluating this season's situation against second-apron limitations and the cardinal sins of years past (mainly, failing to negotiate harder when they acquired Kevin Durant). Flipping their 2031 first-rounder to the Utah Jazz for three less-favorable picks in 2025, 2027 and 2029 towers over them all.
That deal initially implied the Suns had a Jimmy Butler agreement teed up, which in turn suggested they convinced Bradley Beal to waive his no-trade clause. So much for that.
Phoenix's grand plan instead featured using a 2026 first-rounder to salary-dump Jusuf Nurkić. That is underwhelming for a team supposedly all-in on now.
Suns governor Mat Ishbia recently reiterated to ESPN's Tim MacMahon that he cares not for distant draft picks. He cares about contending—immediately. The problem is, Phoenix has no clear path to instant contention. And they did nothing after jettisoning that pick to even attempting disproving it.
Most inexplicably of all, the Suns traveled this path knowing that Durant is a goner this offseason. You don't hock him around the league leading up to the trade deadline if you feel good about his staying. Mortgaging more of your future while staring that dissolution in the face, if not initiating it, stands to go down as generational recklessness.
Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@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.
