The NBA offseason is when hope springs eternal. But with more than four months between the Boston Celtics returning to the top of the mountain as NBA champions and tipoff of the next climb to seize the Larry O’Brien Trophy, the offseason can also just … feel eternal.
That’s one reason why so many fans get so psyched for the annual release of the NBA schedule. Beyond the specific national-TV-and-travel-related elements to analyze (and, invariably, rant and rave about), it also affords us the chance to sketch out some notes for a new group of storylines that we’re looking forward to following.
We finally know when each new draft pick will begin his ascent to stardom, when that premier free-agent signing or trade acquisition will begin fitting in precisely as the front office imagined, and when the 29 teams that didn’t hoist the Larry O’B will get the chance to reframe last season’s heartbreak into a necessary stumble on the road to better things. It’s the first step toward turning everything we’ve been thinking about into reality.
And if all that seems a little high-minded for what is ostensibly the posting of 30 82-game tables … well, it’ll kill some time, at least.
Let’s while away those minutes together, taking a quick spin through the calendar to highlight — in no particular order — some of the most anticipated games on the just-released 2024-25 NBA schedule, starting where we last left off:
Celtics at Mavericks: Jan. 25 (ABC)
An NBA Finals rematch! The NBA’s 2023-24 season finale saw Boston put the finishing touches on what looks like the solution for modern basketball and Luka Dončić sputter to the conclusion of the most difficult challenge of his glittering career to date. Will the summer addition of sniper Klay Thompson give Luka, Kyrie Irving and the Mavs a fresh set of answers against a defense seemingly devoid of weak spots? Or will a Celtics team that will bring back its entire title-winning rotation — and that will pay through the nose to do so — still be able to dismantle Dallas with unsolvable questions?
Warriors at Celtics: Nov. 6 (ESPN)
There’s plenty to like about this one. It’s a renewal of pleasantries from the 2022 NBA Finals, when Stephen Curry went into TD Garden and reminded us that there’s really nobody quite like him in a tour de force performance en route to an NBA championship:
It’s a return to this past March, when Draymond Green led a galaxy-brained defensive strategy to short-circuit the league-leading and rampaging Celtics offense: Let Jaylen Brown shoot. The All-Star swingman promptly torched the “disrespectful” gambit to the tune of 29 points in 22 minutes in what wound up being a 52-point ass-kicking — another statement victory for a player and team on their way to an NBA championship:
Shifting to current events, though … it’s the first time that Warriors head coach Steve Kerr and Celtics superstar Jayson Tatum will stand on opposite sides of the court after this summer’s imbroglio over Tatum’s lack of playing time on Team USA at the 2024 Paris Olympics.
Despite coming off his fifth All-Star appearance, his third straight All-NBA First Team selection, and leading the Celtics in points, rebounds and assists during their title run — and despite having been the second-leading scorer on the U.S. squad that won gold in Tokyo in 2021 — Tatum frequently found himself on the fringes of Kerr’s rotation. He logged just 71 minutes in Paris, and was held out of the lineup twice: in both the group-stage opener against Serbia and the semifinal rematch against Nikola Jokić and Co.
Viewed through one lens, Kerr’s roster management made sense: A roster that already had Curry, LeBron James, Kevin Durant and Anthony Edwards needed Tatum’s on-ball activity less than it needed the interior size of Joel Embiid, Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo, the point-of-attack defense of Jrue Holiday and Derrick White, and the jack-of-all-trades versatility displayed by Devin Booker, who started at small forward throughout the Olympic tournament.
“It’s not about anything Jayson is doing or not doing,” Kerr told reporters. “It’s just about combinations and the way that group has played together, the way Kevin has filled in since he came back from his injury. It’s just a math problem more than anything.”
Viewed through another lens, though, it was a snub — “an embarrassment for that poor kid all over the [expletive] world,” as Celtics legend Bob Cousy told The Boston Globe — and one that Tatum admitted made for a “tough personal experience,” even if it did end in his second gold medal. What remains to be seen, then, is whether Tatum takes the court with a little extra motivation to make this particular night just a bit tougher on Kerr. After all, Tatum did tell us not to stop disbelieving, right?
Nets at Hawks: Oct. 23
Wizards at Hawks: Oct. 28
Respectfully, I’m not sure how many Hawks games will wind up being must-see TV this season, but we’ll shine the spotlight here for two of them: the live-action debut of No. 1 draft pick Zaccharie Risacher, and the first NBA clash between Risacher and No. 2 overall selection Alexandre Sarr. (Who, you may remember, reportedly declined to work out for the Hawks because he didn’t want to wind up in Atlanta — even if it meant not being the first pick in the draft. Intrigue!)
Neither Risacher nor Sarr profile as the kind of immediate transformational game-changer as their countryman, 2023 top pick Victor Wembanyama, who will enter his sophomore season fresh off of helping lead France to silver at the 2024 Paris Olympics. But as potential candidates for the national team roster to help Vic vie for gold in Los Angeles in 2028, and as the two most highly touted prospects riding what Yahoo Sports NBA draft insider Krysten Peek has dubbed “The Wemby Wave,” the start of their respective careers bears watching … even if the Southeast Division teams they’re joining might not necessarily sustain our interest.
Mavericks at Timberwolves: Oct. 29 (TNT)
A rematch of the 2024 Western Conference finals! Yes, Dallas won that series in a gentleman’s sweep, and yes, Dončić and Irving combined for 72 points in a Game 5 blowout to advance to the championship round.
On the whole, though, the series was closer than you might remember — the Mavs’ first two wins came by a combined four points, and their third was a one-possession game with two and a half minutes to go — and you’d imagine the Wolves will be extremely eager to get their lick back after a summer spent licking their wounds. (Maybe we’ll also get a chance to see what sort of impact Rob Dillingham, the high-octane offensive guard Minnesota dealt for on draft night, will have in a context where the Wolves could’ve desperately used another bucket-getter.)
And speaking of those Wolves …
Timberwolves at Nuggets: Nov. 1 (ESPN)
It came one round earlier than the meeting with Dallas, but this was the best series of the 2024 NBA playoffs — a heavyweight slugfest between two Tim Connelly-crafted teams that saw: the upstart Wolves punch the defending NBA champions in the mouth in their own gym; the Nuggets respond to regain control thanks to one of the most breathtaking stretches in the career of Nikola Jokić (which is saying something); Minnesota get level by beating the absolute brakes off of Denver in Game 6; and the Wolves erase a 20-point, third-quarter deficit to dethrone the champs on their home floor. (Whew.)
The fundamentals of the matchup remain the same. Jokić will battle the triplet-towers frontcourt of Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns and Naz Reid, and Jamal Murray — fresh off an Olympic tournament better left forgotten for Canada — will try to find airspace against the suffocating perimeter corps of last season’s top-ranked defense. Nuggets head coach Michael Malone will continue his search for someone, anyone, to guard Anthony Edwards. (One thing’s for sure: It won’t be Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, because he’s gone.) We’ll also get a look at how some new pieces fit into the puzzle on the Nuggets’ side, though, like rising young wings Peyton Watson and Julian Strawther and veteran newcomer Russell Westbrook, who’s never met a situation that he can’t crank up to 11 in some form or fashion.
We enter the season wondering if the Wolves can replicate the magic of their most successful season in decades, and if the KCP-less Nuggets have lost a step in tilts against the best of the West. This ought to offer some insight into the answers to both — and plenty of excitement along the way.
Emirates NBA Cup semifinals and championship: Dec. 14 and 17
This time last year, I was skeptical that the insertion of a new tournament into the NBA’s existing regular-season structure would do much to add stakes and excitement to pre-Christmas basketball. Then Tyrese Haliburton introduced himself to the nation, we became intrigued by teams needing to run up the score to win group-stage tiebreakers, LeBron James and Anthony Davis treated this new thing like it mattered, and it seemed like everybody left Las Vegas feeling pretty good about the whole enterprise. (Or, at least, enjoying the ability to make fun of hanging a banner over it.)
[OLD DEVINE INTERVENTION VIDEO ABOUT THIS?]
I have no idea if this year’s iteration — now with a fancy corporate title sponsor — will be more or less compelling than the inaugural model. Chances are, though, whichever teams end up in the final four will be very good, on a real heater, or both … which is to say, eminently worth watching as we all rush to finish up our holiday shopping.
Knicks at Celtics: Oct. 22 (TNT)
76ers at Celtics: Dec. 25 (ABC)
After they raise Banner 18 to the rafters at TD Garden, the Celtics will open the defense of their title against a Knicks team that now features the tandem of OG Anunoby and Mikal Bridges on the wing to flank freshly extended team captain Jalen Brunson and a hopefully healthy Julius Randle. Not long after, Boston will face another Eastern challenger that swung for the fences this summer: the 76ers, who signed superstar swingman Paul George to slot in between minted gold medalist Joel Embiid and just-maxed-out All-Star guard Tyrese Maxey in what could turn out to be the league’s biggest Big Three. (Whether that’s enough to compete in what our colleague Tom Haberstroh has dubbed “a Big Five league” remains to be seen.)
First impressions don’t mean everything — especially since Boston will likely be without center Kristaps Porziņģis, who helped unlock the championship-caliber version of last season’s Celtics, for at least the start of the regular season — but they do matter. New York and Philadelphia both spent big to put themselves in position to topple the C’s, and want to make a statement; so do the champs, who’ll be eager to remind the upstarts of their place in the league’s hierarchy.
Speaking of which …
Pacers at Knicks: Oct. 25
… how about the team that actually did play the Celtics in the Eastern Conference finals, and a rematch against the team they beat to get there?
The Knicks are looking to prove that they’re better than the Pacers, and would’ve gotten past them if not for the deluge of injuries that left most of Tom Thibodeau’s club in traction by the final buzzer of Game 7. Indiana, for its part, will look to prove that its elite offense — helmed by NBA assist champion Haliburton and re-upped, perfect-fit forward Pascal Siakam — was no fluke, dangerous enough to leave even the full-strength Knicks reeling, and an engine capable of driving a deep young team toward another deep playoff run.
And, to keep this train of thought going …
Knicks at 76ers: Nov. 12 (TNT)
… I’ve got plenty of time for a rematch of one of the most compelling series of the 2024 playoffs, which saw Donte DiVincenzo elicit the rare double-bang from Mike Breen, Embiid come back from sending Sixers fans into catatonic shock to hang 50 on New York, Maxey snatch victory from the jaws of defeat at the World’s Most Famous Arena, Brunson slip out of the shackles of a physical Sixers defense to average 41.8 points and 10.3 assists over the final four games, Josh Hart briefly turn into a Splash Brother, and the ’Nova Knicks notch one more big victory at Wells Fargo Center.
Brunson looking up at his Villanova championship banners after his huge bucket with less than a minute left was cold blooded pic.twitter.com/vct3uj6mGC
— Tommy Beer (@TommyBeer) May 3, 2024
Now, another Villanova product will line up for the Knicks … and it’s one the Sixers actually drafted back in 2018, and whom plenty of Sixers fans have wanted to bring back to Philly ever since. How will the additions of Mikal Bridges and Paul George (and, for that matter, the subtraction of Isaiah Hartenstein) change the shape of this matchup? How serious a scare can either team put into the incumbent Celtics? How many crotch chops will Joel Embiid let fly? So many critical questions; such a long wait for the answers.
Knicks at Nets: Jan. 21
Despite the initial sting of his cross-borough defection for a reunion with his college buddies, I’m not sure Nets fans will be all that salty over Bridges’ return to Barclays Center. After all, his exit paved the way for Brooklyn to recoup a ton of draft capital and pivot to a proper rebuild after spending the last season and a half spinning its wheels following the end of the Kevin Durant-Kyrie Irving-James Harden experiment.
Still, though, it’ll be interesting to see how Nets fans in the stands at Barclays respond to a dude who briefly looked like he could be a foundational star for the franchise before all but openly lusting for a chance to go hang out with his friends … and whether their reaction gets drowned out by the type of visiting Knicks fans who made Bridges feel like he was already playing at MSG last season:
Now that they’ve regained control of their 2025 first-round draft pick, it’d behoove the Nets to lose as much as possible next season. If they could guarantee one win, though? It’d probably be this one.
Pacers at Bucks: Nov. 22 (ESPN)
Heading into the 2023-24 schedule, I’m not sure how many of us had “Milwaukee and Indiana will become a pretty wildly heated rivalry by season’s end” on our respective prediction lists/bingo cards. And yet!
The Bucks and Pacers played five games in two months early last season, and familiarity bred contempt.
Haliburton dissected Milwaukee’s porous perimeter defense, averaging 27 points and 11 assists per game to lead a Pacers attack that scored a scorching 122 points per 100 possessions against the Bucks. Indiana took four of those five contests, including their matchup in the in-season tournament semifinals, eliminating Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard and Co. from the competition — with Haliburton borrowing a familiar celebration in the process:
Giannis, who’d already scored 54 and 37 points in losses to the Pacers, responded by dropping a career-high 64 in their next meeting to secure the Bucks’ lone regular-season win over Indiana … and then freaked out more than a little bit about securing the game ball:
Giannis and Haliburton had heated exchange following Bucks-Pacers 😳
It involved Pacers taking game ball away after Giannis’ 64-point game pic.twitter.com/zsSGraLQVi
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 14, 2023
The bad blood spilled over into the postseason, where the Pacers knocked off a Bucks team playing without Antetokounmpo, who was sidelined by a calf strain, and that lost Lillard to an Achilles injury midway through the series (though he’d return for Game 6). Milwaukee saw its championship dreams scuttled in Round 1; Indiana set off on a conference finals run that nobody saw coming.
That’s an awful lot of drama for a single season. I’m excited to see what the writer’s room has planned to escalate matters for the encore.
Bucks at Celtics: Oct. 28
Heading into last season, it looked like Boston and Milwaukee were the class of the Eastern Conference.
The Bucks stumbled, though, looking shakier than their record under first-time head coach Adrian Griffin, struggling to find stability under midseason hire Doc Rivers, never quite unlocking the Giannis-Dame two-man game, and getting their four best players — Antetokounmpo, Lillard, Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez — on the floor for just 677 minutes across 41 games. The Celtics, on the other hand, lived up to their billing, storming to 64 wins and the top overall seed en route to the championship — a hellacious run fueled, in part, by the late addition of Jrue Holiday, whom Milwaukee had previously dealt to make room for Lillard. Ouch.
Did the bucks give them the championship?
— Joel Embiid (@JoelEmbiid) June 13, 2024
With a full training camp for Doc to implement his schemes, plus a full complement of healthy dudes — plus some low-cost, high-value reinforcements in the form of Gary Trent Jr., Taurean Prince and Delon Wright — the Bucks will be looking for another crack at the champs, to prove they deserve consideration among the small number of teams with a real chance to win it all. And the Celtics? Well, they’ll be looking to disabuse them of that notion with extreme prejudice.
Celtics at Thunder: Jan. 5
Not exactly rocket science here! Boston and Oklahoma City were the top seeds in their respective conferences last season, ranked first and second in the NBA in net rating last season, and, if not for the absolute hottest 3-point-shooting stretch of P.J. Washington’s life, may well have squared off in the Finals. (Though Ant obviously might’ve had something to say about that. “Having something to say” is kind of one of Ant’s signature traits.)
Fast-forward a few months, and the Celtics and Thunder enter the season with the NBA’s highest win-total projections and best odds of winning it all, according to the sharps in Vegas. They arguably boast more high-end talent than any other teams in the league, with Boston returning the pulverizing top six of Tatum, Brown, Porziņģis, Holiday, Derrick White and Al Horford, and OKC augmenting its phenomenal young core by swapping awkward-fit Josh Giddey for tailor-made role player Alex Caruso and signing stalwart ex-Knicks center Isaiah Hartenstein.
Projecting the way the playoff bracket will shake out eight months before it’s even set is a fool’s errand. Whether this turns out to be a Finals preview or not, though, I feel pretty confident that it’s going to be a damn good game — just like last year’s matchup in Oklahoma:
And hey, while we’re training our gaze on Bricktown …
Mavericks at Thunder: Nov. 17
I’m really interested to see how the Thunder’s new arrivals might change the nature of this matchup, which Dallas won in six games in the second round of last spring’s playoffs.
The Mavs weaponized Giddey’s shooting woes by essentially ignoring him in favor of zoning up to defang the devastating drive-and-kick game of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jalen Williams. What happens if it’s Caruso, a career 38% 3-point shooter who shot nearly 41% from deep on almost five attempts per game last season, in that spot? (Caruso gives OKC yet another ace-level defender to throw at the Luka-Kyrie pairing, too.) Dallas also dominated the boards, rebounding nearly 33% of its own missed shots and scoring 16.2 second-chance points per game in the series. Will the center combo of Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II be able to continue imposing their will on the boards with Hartenstein joining Chet Holmgren in the middle?
After an impressive offseason, Oklahoma City has been tipped by many as the favorite to emerge from the Western Conference. I’d expect the Mavs to welcome the opportunity to remind the Thunder, and the rest of us, that the road to the Finals still runs through Dallas.
Suns at Timberwolves: Nov. 17
After a bunch of complete-idiot pundits picked Phoenix in the first round of the playoffs — cough, cough — the Wolves absolutely dog-walked the Suns, sweeping them in four straight by a combined 60 points.
Anthony Edwards feasted. Bradley Beal withered. Karl-Anthony Towns credibly defended Kevin Durant. “Nickeil Alexander-Walker is the third-best guard in this series” was a take that wouldn’t have gotten you laughed off your barstool. Jaden McDaniels even fulfilled the prophecy:
That summary annihilation led to some changes in the desert, with Frank Vogel excised in favor of former Bucks bench boss Mike Budenholzer, and Tyus Jones imported on a steal of a deal to be the rocksteady tablesetter that the “Beal and Devin Booker will share point-guard duties” iteration of the Suns lacked last season. Is that enough to level the playing field in what wound up being such a lopsided matchup? Or will Edwards come off of his Team USA bromance with KD intent on re-establishing his place in the NBA’s pecking order?
Nuggets at Lakers: Nov. 23
Yes, this rivalry has been pretty one-sided of late, with Denver going 15-4 with two playoff series wins against the Lakers since 2021. Even so: Watching Jokić match wits and brawn with LeBron James and Anthony Davis is worth the price of admission, especially on the heels of the L.A. stars having a hand in Team USA outlasting Serbia in Paris.
You’d imagine the battery in the three-time NBA MVP’s back will be fully charged the next time he sees two of the dudes who denied him a chance to play for gold … and you’d imagine that James and Davis, coming off consecutive postseason exits at Jokić’s hands, will be looking to carry their good summertime vibes over into the new season after the last two ended unceremoniously at Jokić’s hands.
And staying in L.A. for a moment …
Whenever Bronny James makes his debut
It might not be in the Lakers’ opener; it might not even come until near season’s end. Such is life for the 55th pick in the 2024 NBA draft. Whenever it does come, though, you can bet an awful lot of eyes will be positively glued to what LeBron James’ son does in his first live NBA action, and what kind of first impression one of the most loudly discussed late-second-round picks in NBA history winds up making.
Mavericks at Warriors: Nov. 12 (TNT)
After 13 years, 951 games, nearly 3,000 3-pointers and four NBA championships in Golden State, Klay Thompson will line up against Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Steve Kerr and the Warriors for the first time.
I expect it to be exceptionally emotional. I expect Thompson, at once one of the most warmhearted people in the NBA and one of its most ferocious competitors, to try to stick a dozen 3-pointers in the faces of whichever decision-makers he blames for not offering him the kind of long-term contract that could allow him to ride off into the sunset with Steph and Draymond. I expect Steph and Draymond to show their longtime partner the ultimate respect of trying to rip his heart out, too. And I expect the Bay Area fans to cheer Thompson’s every move throughout like he’s still one of their own, because he always will be. (If only those cheers were still bouncing off the concrete walls at Oracle Arena. Alas.)
76ers at Clippers: Nov. 6
A half-decade after he joined the Clippers, Paul George will finally take the court at the long-gestating Intuit Dome, Steve Ballmer’s shining 18,000-seat palace in Inglewood. But he’ll come out of the visitor’s locker room to do it.
How will the Clipper faithful receive George, who averaged 23 points, six rebounds and 4.5 assists per game across five seasons in L.A.? Will they jeer at the more jagged memories — “Pandemic P” in the bubble, missing the 2022 play-in game after testing positive for COVID-19 and all of the 2023 playoffs with a sprained knee, shooting 10-for-31 from the field over the final two games of a first-round loss to Dallas back in April? Or will they offer a warm welcome to a player whose arrival alongside Kawhi Leonard helped cement the Clippers as a bona fide Western power, who made three All-Star appearances during his tenure, and who helped carry the Clips to their first Western Conference finals after Leonard went down in 2021?
My guess? Somewhere in between. The Kawhi-PG partnership fell short of expectations, and ended when George decided to leave Los Angeles for greener pastures (and a bigger bag) back east. But the tenure wasn’t bereft of success, and George’s choice — which reportedly came after a protracted and frustrating negotiation — is one a lot of fans can probably understand. Where that leaves the emotional tenure of PG’s return, I’m not sure; I’m just hoping Kawhi’s healthy enough to play in it, so we can see the former teammates guard each other for the first time in years.
Pelicans at Hawks: Dec. 2
I’m not sure the reaction to Dejounte Murray’s return to Atlanta will be an overwhelmingly emotional affair. After all, how much will Hawks fans feel compelled to mourn the end of a sub-.500 two-year run in which the team won a total of two playoff games and got outscored by more than 200 points in nearly 3,000 minutes with Murray and Trae Young sharing the floor?
Still: It might be fun to see the former backcourt mates play a game of Can You Top This? with massive frontcourt partners Zion Williamson and Jalen Johnson. Also, presumably the Pelicans will have a starting center by that time, which would be nice.
Jazz at Thunder: Dec. 3
This will mark the first meeting between Jalen Williams, now well established as a rising star in Oklahoma City, and Cody Williams, the Colorado swingman whom the Jazz selected with the 10th overall pick in June’s 2024 NBA Draft. The two share a bond that the younger Williams describes as “rare.”
“I’d definitely say a lot of siblings don’t have a relationship we have, not as close as we are,” Cody Williams told CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander earlier this year. “It’s really rare to find an older brother that wants their younger brother to be better than him. He really wants me to become the best basketball player ever and he does everything he can to help me.”
To hear Little Brother tell it, though, there won’t be much brotherly love once the Williamses step between the lines.
“We’re going to talk crazy during that game, I’ll tell you right now,” Cody Williams told reporters after the draft. “It’s something we dreamed about. As kids, obviously, we never really got to play against or with each other on the same team just because of the age difference. So I think being able to do that now is definitely a dream come true.
“I’m going to make sure I’m matched up on him when we’re playing them. Make sure, tell [Jazz head coach] Will [Hardy], put me on him. That’s the game plan.”
Big Brother — who just averaged 19.1 points, four rebounds and 4.5 assists per game as a sophomore, finishing fourth in Most Improved Player voting — sounds pretty OK with that matchup.
“It’d be fun,” Jalen Williams told ThunderWire with a laugh. “I would try to take his head off, and he would do the same thing.”
Spurs at Knicks: Dec. 25 (ESPN)
On one hand, I can understand fans of expected-to-be-elite teams that got left off of the NBA’s annual Christmas Day quintuple-header — the Thunder, say, or Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Bucks — feeling salty for being passed over in favor of a San Antonio side that won a measly 22 games last season, and whose biggest offseason addition is either first-round pick Stephon Castle or a 39-year-old Chris Paul.
However, allow me to present a rebuttal:
Staging Victor Wembanyama’s Christmas debut at Madison Square Garden in the opening game of the holiday showcase promises to be a gift that keeps on giving. Here’s hoping some enterprising social media producer talks Big Vic into wrapping some garland and tinsel around his arms and setting up shop at Rockefeller Center.
Spurs at 76ers: Dec. 23
The last time Joel Embiid saw Victor Wembanyama in an NBA game, he threw a moon at him:
The last time they saw one another this summer, Stephen Curry was the one hitting the moonshots. But still: Embiid left the conflict with gold, while Wembanyama walked away with silver … and some perspective.
Victor Wembanyama, with a silver medal around his neck:
“I’m learning, and I’m worried for the opponents in a couple of years.”
In FIBA or the NBA?
“Everywhere.”
— Mike Finger (@mikefinger) August 10, 2024
I will take all of the “Embiid vs. Wemby” you’ve got, thank you very much.
And hell, while we’re here …
76ers at Nuggets: Jan. 21
Team USA pulled out all the stops in recruiting Embiid for essentially one reason: to have a likesized monster to throw at Nikola Jokić in a matchup with Serbia. Worked like a charm: Embiid sloughed off some early sluggishness in the Olympic tournament to score 19 points with four rebounds, two assists and a block in 26 minutes in the semifinals, wrestling with Jokić and holding up his end of the bargain down the stretch as the U.S. pulled away with the win.
After some of the battles these two have had over the years, I will also take all of the “Embiid vs. Jokić” you’ve got, thank you very much … and if we can put to bed all the Twitter-fingers banter among fanbases about how Embiid hasn’t played in Denver since 2019, so much the better.
And as long as I’m in “I’ll take all of the This Guy vs. This Guy you’ve got, thank you very much” mode …
Spurs at Thunder: Oct. 30
… let us not forget how much fun it is when Big Vic and Chet kick the tires and light the fires:
Wembanyama won Rookie of the Year, finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting and was named First Team All-Defense, but Holmgren’s Thunder experienced the level of team success that Vic’s Spurs couldn’t even sniff, and will enter this season as one of the favorites to win the NBA championship. Even if most rivalries and feuds often seem prepackaged and media-contrived in this day and age, you can’t help but get the sense that each of these young skyscrapers wants what the other has. It ought to be a ton of fun to watch them try to take it by taking it to each other.
Pelicans at Grizzlies: Nov. 29 (NBA TV)
There’s the continuation of the Zion Williamson vs. Ja Morant meta-story, sure, and the general amplitude that comes with two teams hoping to rise up the standings squaring off. Honestly, though, this is mostly a physics question for me; I just kind of want to see what happens when Zion bangs into Grizzlies rookie Zach Edey, a 300-pound concrete slab of a center who is one of a scant few players in the league heavier than Big Z.
Maybe the answer is, “The same thing that happens to everybody else.”
But maybe it isn’t! I, for one, am looking forward to finding out.
Grizzlies at Spurs: Jan. 15
Similarly: I’m not sure when Victor Wembanyama last stood eye-to-eye with someone. He’ll be doing just that when he jumps tip against Memphis, though, with all 7-foot-4 of the No. 9 overall pick sidling up next to him. What happens when they try to go up over the top of one another? How does Edey hold up when Wemby tries to drag him out to the perimeter? At what point does Ken Watanabe emerge to tell the referees to just let them fight?
Also, now that he’s healthy, I’d like to see Ja Morant try to climb Wemby again:
And now that we’re on the Grizzlies …
Nuggets at Grizzlies: Nov. 17
I can’t tell if it feels like five minutes ago or five years ago that these were the top two teams in the West. (Some cursory research indicates that it was … less than a year and a half ago? That can’t be right.)
An awful lot has changed since then. The Grizzlies flamed out in the 2023 playoffs before nose-diving last season, as Ja Morant’s suspension and injuries — combined with injuries that sidelined critical big men Steven Adams and Brandon Clarke — helped send Memphis to the bottom of the Western Conference standings. The Nuggets, on the other hand, won the 2023 NBA championship and looked to have a great chance of repeating … right up until the Timberwolves knocked them out in the second round.
Now, after losing key wings Bruce Brown and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope in consecutive offseasons, the Nuggets are trying to reassert their primacy in a West that has risen up around them. With a healthy Morant to rejoin Jaren Jackson Jr. and Desmond Bane, the Grizzlies are aiming to prove to everyone that they’re back like they never left.
The rest of us? We just get to watch two awesome teams with very different styles of play ram into one another at 100 miles per hour. Sounds like a decent way to kill some time to me.
Source Agencies
