After revealing this season’s Most Valuable Player on Wednesday, the NBA will wrap up its 2024/25 award announcements within the next two days.
According to the league (Twitter link), the two All-Defensive teams will be announced on Thursday at 2:00 pm Eastern time, while the three All-NBA teams will be unveiled at 7:00 pm ET on Friday during TNT’s pregame broadcast ahead of Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals.
The All-NBA teams, in particular, will be worth watching, since those results can have a major impact on player contracts going forward. Pistons guard Cade Cunningham is the key player to keep an eye on — assuming he makes one of the three All-NBA teams, Cunningham’s maximum-salary rookie scale extension will begin at 30% of next season’s cap instead of 25%.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Former Warriors assistant and current Pelicans coaches chief of staff James Laughlin is leaving New Orleans to take a job overseas as the new general manager of Napoli Basket in Italy, per Donatas Urbonas of BasketNews.com. According to Urbonas, Laughlin spent five years in Golden State and the past four with the Pelicans.
- Chris Herring of ESPN updated his 2025 playoff MVP rankings ahead of the start of the second round, placing Knicks guard Jalen Brunson atop his list. With the conference finals underway, it’s unclear if Brunson would still claim that top spot — he scored 43 points on 15-of-25 shooting in New York’s Game 1 loss to Indiana on Wednesday, but also had more turnovers (seven) than assists (five) on the night.
- With the NBA set to crown a seventh different champion in seven years, Colin Salao of Front Office Sports writes that the league has entered an era of unprecedented parity and wonders if super-teams have become a thing of the past.
- Jonathan Wasserman of Bleacher Report shares his thoughts on the biggest winners at last week’s draft combine, singling out San Diego State’s Miles Byrd, Chinese big man Hansen Yang, and four other prospects.