The 2024-25 NBA regular season has passed the halfway point, but there’s still so much basketball left to play! With the trade deadline, All-Star break, and postseason approaching, let’s take stock of the half dozen most intriguing questions for the second half of the schedule.
Is the Celtics’ slump just a post-championship malaise or something more?
Boston began its title defense just as it ended its championship season: by obliterating opponents on a near-nightly basis. The Celtics were 21-5 in mid-December—that’s a 66-win pace—with a plus-10.2 net rating.
But they’ve since fallen into a skid, with an 11-10 record over the past six weeks. Jaylen Brown’s efficiency has cratered, Derrick White is slumping, and Jrue Holiday is showing his age. Boston’s defense isn’t quite as connected as it was a season ago.
The Celtics have also fallen back to the pack in 3-point accuracy. They made 38.8 percent of their 3-pointers last season, which ranked second in the league, but they’re down at 36.4 percent this season, which ranks 13th. Given how many 3s the Celtics take, a difference of 2.4 percentage points of accuracy comes out to 3.5 “missing” points per game—and wouldn’t you know it, Boston’s scoring average is down 3.4 points per game.
This isn’t necessarily cause for panic, as plenty of victors throughout NBA history have pushed through a championship hangover. The Celtics have a plus-6.9 net rating during their swoon, which suggests a much better underlying performance than their middling record. But they look more vulnerable now than they did at any point last season, when they enjoyed one of the most dominant start-to-finish campaigns in NBA history. They’ll need to perk back up if they want to become the first team since the Kevin Durant–era Warriors—and the first Celtics team since the 1960s!—to win consecutive titles.
Will Jimmy Butler push a new team into championship contention?
The basic version of this question is Will Jimmy Butler be traded? We’ll learn the answer to that question soon enough, with Butler suspended again and just over a week remaining until the deadline. The more interesting question, though, is whether Butler can boost the Suns or another suitor in the title race.
It can be easy to overlook Butler’s actual basketball talent, amid all the drama and team suspensions and public trade demands. It doesn’t help that he’s often injured and doesn’t always approach regular-season contests with urgency; there’s a reason Butler hasn’t been an All-Star since 2022.
But the two-time finalist can still be a difference maker for a playoff contender. He draws a ton of fouls, rarely commits turnovers, and remains an excellent multi-positional defender, with the proven ability to raise his game in the playoffs. Since 2018-19, when he played for the 76ers, Butler ranks seventh in postseason box plus-minus. Five of the six players ahead of him have won titles in that span. Butler hasn’t, but he’s reached the Finals as the best player on a no. 5 seed and a no. 8 seed, which is an even rarer accomplishment.
Best Playoff Performers Since 2018-19
Will Nikola Jokic win his fourth MVP award?
Jokic is already one of the most decorated players in NBA history, but he could join even more exclusive clubs with another MVP trophy—which would be his fourth in five years. Only five players in NBA history (Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, and LeBron James) have won four MVPs. And only two of those players (Russell and James) won four within a five-year span.
Jokic’s individual case might be better than ever this season. He ranks third in points per game, third in rebounds, and second in assists, and he could become the third player to average a triple-double over a full season, joining new teammate Russell Westbrook (four times) and Oscar Robertson. He’s on pace to break the single-season PER record, set by … himself, back in 2021-22, his second MVP campaign.
But at the moment, Vegas odds don’t favor the Serbian center. Instead, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is projected to win his first MVP award. In NBA history, nine players have led the league in scoring while playing for the league’s best team, as SGA is now, and eight of them won MVP.
Scoring Champions on Team Wins Leaders
But Gilgeous-Alexander’s case doesn’t rest only on his 32-points-per-game average. He’s running neck and neck with Jokic in a number of advanced stats—he leads in estimated plus-minus, for instance—and the combination of a compelling narrative case and potential voter fatigue with Jokic makes SGA a prime candidate to win the award, after finishing as the runner-up last season. Recent MVP votes haven’t been very close, but this race could go down to the wire.
Can anyone beat the Thunder in the West?
Gilgeous-Alexander isn’t playing only for his own individual hardware; he’s also angling for team triumph. And the Thunder are overwhelming favorites to reach the Finals, with a 5.5-game lead over second place in the West. Their plus-12.2 per-game point differential is narrowly off pace for the best in NBA history. As of Tuesday afternoon, ESPN’s BPI gives the Thunder a 64 percent chance to win the West, with no other conference foe north of 12 percent.
But the West has a weird, inverted structure in the standings this season: The teams with the most recent playoff success all rank fourth or lower, while the top three—Oklahoma City, Houston, and Memphis—haven’t reached the conference finals with their current cores. That dynamic means the West could be ripe for upsets throughout the playoff bracket.
Relatedly, the Thunder’s greatest challenge in escaping the West could come as early as the first round. The Mavericks are currently mired in play-in territory—more on them in a moment—but they’re 3-1 against Oklahoma City this season after eliminating the Thunder last postseason. It’s safe to say that Dallas would be a nightmare early matchup for OKC. But it’s hard to draw too many conclusions about this season’s results because Luka Doncic, Chet Holmgren, and Isaiah Hartenstein missed all three of Dallas’s wins.
Will either of last year’s Western Conference finalists make another run?
It seemed as if the West’s next generation had arrived last spring as Doncic and Anthony Edwards dueled in the conference finals. But neither of their teams has sustained their rise this season. The Timberwolves have suffered from Mike Conley’s decline and struggled to incorporate Julius Randle in Karl-Anthony Towns’s place.
Dallas’s problem is completely different from that of Minnesota, which has by one measure been the NBA’s healthiest team. The Mavericks have tumbled down the standings due primarily to injuries. Luka hasn’t played since Christmas, when he was injured, incidentally, against the Timberwolves; Dereck Lively II is out for at least a month due to a stress fracture; and Kyrie Irving and P.J. Washington, among others, have missed time. The Mavericks were 19-10 before Luka got hurt but are only 6-12 since.
Forget the Western Conference finals—now it looks more likely that the seventh-seeded Timberwolves and ninth-seeded Mavs would meet again in the play-in round.
But it’s a long season, and there is reason for optimism for both teams. Minnesota is slowly but surely finding its groove as its new rotation jells; the Timberwolves have improved month by month, from a plus-0.6 net rating in October to plus-0.9 in November to plus-3.0 in December to plus-4.6 in January. And the Mavericks just need to get healthy to have a chance. The four-man unit of Luka, Kyrie, Klay Thompson, and Washington has an elite plus-10.4 net rating; just group them with one of Dallas’s centers, and they could shine down the stretch.
Will Tom Thibodeau wear out the Knicks before the playoffs?
I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I think the national media isn’t talking about New York enough. Perhaps it’s because the Knicks are a solid, competent franchise, while other blue bloods like the Lakers and Warriors are in greater turmoil.
But the Knicks are fascinating. They made three blockbuster trades in the past 13 months! They have the NBA’s second-best offense! They’ll likely place two players—Jalen Brunson and Towns—on All-NBA teams! Besides 2011-12, when both Carmelo Anthony and Tyson Chandler were third-team members, that hasn’t happened for a Knicks duo since the early ’70s, with Walt Frazier and Willis Reed.
There are two reasons to temper excitement about New York’s playoff chances, however. The first is its middle-of-the-pack defense, which might not be stout enough to, say, slow Boston’s offense in a second-round clash. The second is the incredible workload the Knicks’ best players are shouldering—because even for a Thibodeau team, this is a lot.
Mikal Bridges leads the league in minutes played. Josh Hart ranks second. OG Anunoby ranks third. And Brunson ranks fifth. Only Towns, who’s missed a handful of games, is missing from the top of the leaderboard. The next-highest Knick outside the five starters, meanwhile, is Deuce McBride, all the way down in 181st place; no other Knick is in the top 250.
As writer Tom Haberstroh recently noted, the Knicks’ starters are playing an incredible amount even when games are out of hand. According to PBP Stats, the Brunson-Hart-Bridges-Anunoby-Towns group has played 89 low-leverage minutes, while no other lineup in the NBA has more than 34.
These extra minutes haven’t taken a toll thus far. The Knicks are in good health: Iron Man Bridges and Anunoby have played every game, and Hart and Brunson have missed just one apiece.
But good health now is no guarantee of good health in the future, and the Knicks aren’t exactly pacing themselves for the nine-month season they’d enjoy if they reached the Finals. Just last year, they lost in the playoffs largely because they ran out of players, and Thibodeau seemingly isn’t making any effort to avoid a repeat disaster this spring.
