2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Minnesota Timberwolves
After making it to the Western Conference Finals in 2024 for the first time in 20 years, the Timberwolves found themselves at the center of a battle over team ownership and facing an increasingly concerning long-term salary cap situation entering last summer.
Glen Taylor was fighting to stop minority stakeholders Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez from gaining majority control of the franchise at the same time that Anthony Edwards' Rose rule rookie scale extension took effect, which gave the Wolves a trio of max-salary players and pushed the team's salary above the restrictive second tax apron.
A year later, much has changed in Minnesota. Longtime Timberwolves star Karl-Anthony Towns, the club's No. 1 overall pick back in 2015, was traded to New York before the 2024/25 season began; Lore and Rodriguez ultimately won their protracted struggle with Taylor for ownership of the team; and Edwards is now the only maximum-salary player on Minnesota's roster after Towns was traded and Rudy Gobert took a pay cut on his latest contract extension.
But there was one notable constant that carried over from 2024 to 2025: the Timberwolves made it back to the conference finals for a second straight time this spring.
It wasn't just the first time in franchise history that the team had accomplished that feat in back-to-back seasons -- it was the first time the Wolves had won even a single playoff series in consecutive years. The club, which made its NBA debut in 1989, has compiled just six postseason series victories in its history, and four of them have occurred within the past two years.
As talented as some of those Kevin Garnett-led Timberwolves teams in the late 1990s and early 2000s were, you could make a strong case that this 2020s iteration of the Wolves is the best the club has ever been.
Still, there's work to be done, not just to get the Wolves to the next level but to make sure they don't drop off at all from their current level. In Julius Randle, Naz Reid, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Minnesota will have three of the NBA's top 15 free agents this summer and may not be able to bring all of them back. And even if the front office can retain that trio, more upgrades may be necessary to turn the Wolves from a perennial playoff team into a legitimate championship threat.
Figuring out how to take that next step will be the challenge facing president of basketball operations Tim Connelly this offseason.
The Timberwolves' Offseason Plan
Technically, there's a possibility that Connelly won't be the one making the roster decisions facing the Timberwolves this summer. He has an opt-out clause in his contract that gives him the ability to leave the team if he so chooses. However, there has been absolutely no indication he's thinking about taking that route.
Hoops Rumors’ 2025 NBA Offseason Previews By Team
In advance of the NBA’s 2025 draft and free agent period, Hoops Rumors has been previewing the coming offseason for all 30 teams, looking at their salary cap situations and the roster decisions they’ll have to make this summer.
Our Offseason Preview articles are linked below, sorted by conference and division. While a Trade Rumors Front Office subscription is required to read most of them, our Jazz preview is open to all.
Eastern Conference
Atlantic
Central
Southeast
Western Conference
Northwest
Pacific
Southwest
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: New York Knicks
After winning 50 regular season games in 2023/24 for the first time in over a decade, the Knicks came within one win of advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals last spring before injuries caught up to them.
Rather than running it back and seeing if a healthier version of that roster could make a deeper playoff run, the front office took an aggressive approach to the 2024 offseason, parting with five first-round picks in a trade for Mikal Bridges, then sending a pair of starters - Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo - and another first-round selection to Minnesota in a blockbuster trade that landed Karl-Anthony Towns in New York.
Those weren't the first major roster moves the Knicks made under president of basketball operations Leon Rose. New York made a nine-figure free agent investment in a pre-All-Star Jalen Brunson in 2022 that was viewed as a risk at the time. There was also a mid-season trade in 2023/24 for OG Anunoby that required the team to give up a pair of former first-round picks -- one was a former No. 3 overall pick (RJ Barrett) and one had just been a Sixth Man of the Year runner-up (Immanuel Quickley).
But the deals for Bridges and Towns represented all-in moves for the Knicks, who had stockpiled extra draft assets over the years, biding their time as they waited for the right opportunity to cash them in. The hope was that adding Bridges and Towns to a core led by Brunson and Anunoby, who both signed long-term contracts in 2024, would be enough to push the club to another level.
And you can make a case that's exactly what happened. The regular season was up and down, as Bridges took some time to adjust to his new team and New York - facing a restrictive hard cap after completing mega-deals - struggled to find effective depth to complement its talented starting lineup. But the Knicks won more games (51) than they had a year earlier, then beat the Pistons in the first round of the playoffs before upsetting the defending champion Celtics in round two.
Yes, Boston lost Jayson Tatum to a season-ending Achilles injury, but the Knicks already had a 2-1 lead and were on their way to winning Game 4 when that injury occurred. Their series victory over the Celtics wasn't a fluke. Unfortunately for the Knicks, their first Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 25 years ended in disappointment, as they couldn't recover from a pair of tough home losses to open the series and fell to the Pacers in six games.
Despite a pretty successful postseason run that included an unexpected second-round win, the Knicks decided a change was necessary after the conference finals loss and parted ways with head coach Tom Thibodeau. It was a somewhat controversial move -- while Thibodeau has faced plenty of criticism for relying too heavily on his top players and not using his bench enough, he helped change the culture in New York, where the club had posted seven consecutive sub-.500 seasons prior to his arrival.
The first order of business for the Knicks this summer is to hire Thibodeau's replacement. After that, they'll have to decide whether the roster needs another facelift or whether they'll move forward with the core they established last summer, betting on that group's ability to take another step forward under a new head coach and perhaps with some tweaks around the edges.
The Knicks' Offseason Plan
The Knicks' head coaching search has been unorthodox so far, to say the least. Rather than compiling the usual list of former NBA head coaches, current assistants, and perhaps some candidates from the college ranks, the Knicks sought permission to speak to at least five head coaches already employed by NBA teams.
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Golden State Warriors
As they scoured the market for another star last summer, the Warriors attempted to engineer an opt-in-and-trade scenario to acquire Paul George from the Clippers before the veteran forward instead declined his player option in order to sign a maximum-salary free agent contract with the Sixers.
Golden State subsequently shifted its trade-market focus to Jazz forward Lauri Markkanen, but came up short in that pursuit as well, with Markkanen signing a long-term extension in Utah that made him ineligible to be traded prior to the 2025 deadline.
Although Golden State's front office ultimately pivoted away from its star search and added a handful of quality role players - De'Anthony Melton, Buddy Hield, and Kyle Anderson - to the roster, Melton suffered a season-ending injury in just his sixth game with the team and the Warriors showed during the first few months of the season why the front office so badly wanted to trade for another impact player.
Stephen Curry was being asked to carry a heavy workload on offense, with secondary scorers like Andrew Wiggins and Hield having up-and-down years, Jonathan Kuminga missing an extended period due to an ankle injury, and midseason trade acquisition Dennis Schröder struggling to find his fit.
So, after striking out on the trade market during the 2024 offseason, and with his team sitting at .500 (25-25) through 50 games, general manager Mike Dunleavy Jr. went out and took a big swing at February's trade deadline, reaching an agreement with the Heat to acquire Jimmy Butler and then immediately signing the star forward to a two-year, maximum-salary extension.
The move was a risky one. As talented a player as Butler is, he was in his age-35 season, has dealt with a series of injuries over the years, and had earned a reputation for acting out when he felt his time with his current team had run its course, as was the case in Miami. Before being traded to Golden State, Butler had been serving an indefinite suspension imposed by the Heat for conduct detrimental to the team and withholding services.
However, Butler has also repeatedly shown he can be on his best behavior once his trade request gets met, which is exactly what happened in Golden State. In the 30 regular season games Butler played for the Warriors, they went 23-7 and posted the NBA's defensive rating. They then won a play-in game to earn the No. 7 seed in the Western Conference, knocked off the No. 2 Rockets in round one, and took the first game of their second-round series against the Timberwolves.
Unfortunately, Curry suffered a hamstring injury in that Game 1 win over Minnesota that sidelined him for the rest of the Warriors' postseason run, which didn't last much longer without their leading scorer on the court -- Golden State lost its next four consecutive games to the Wolves.
As deflating as the end of their season was, the Warriors were rejuvenated by the addition of Butler and now enter the 2025 offseason without the same urgency they had a year ago to find their Robin to Curry's Batman. Butler can be that player. The goal this summer will be to figure out how to supplement the team's veteran stars (Curry, Butler, and Draymond Green) with enough effective complementary pieces to get back into title contention.
The Warriors' Offseason Plan
With Curry, Butler, and Green on deals that run through 2027, the biggest contract decision facing the Warriors this offseason will be what exactly to do with Kuminga, who is eligible for restricted free agency.
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Boston Celtics
The Celtics enjoyed one of the NBA's all-time great seasons in 2023/24, racking up 64 wins and posting the fourth-best single-season net rating in league history in the regular season before winning 16 of 19 playoff games en route to the franchise's 18th championship.
Unsurprisingly, the Celtics decided to essentially run it back in 2024/25, retaining nearly the exact same roster, with one or two minor tweaks around the edges. Boston compiled 61 more regular season wins in 2024/25 and while they finished the year as the No. 2 seed in the Eastern Conference, the C's would've been the clear betting favorites over the No. 1 Cavaliers if they had met in a postseason series.
And it sure seemed like we were headed for a Celtics/Cavs showdown in the conference finals after no other team in the East finished within 10 games either of them in the regular season. Both clubs breezed through the first round and had plenty of momentum entering round two.
But while the Pacers were in the process of upsetting the Cavs on one side of the Eastern Conference bracket, the Celtics had their own issues with the upstart Knicks, who pulled off a pair of improbable comebacks in Boston to open the conference semifinals. Even after those two losses, the Celtics were still widely expected to take the series, especially after comfortably winning Game 3 in New York, but that early hole they dug came back to haunt them when star forward Jayson Tatum sustained a season-ending Achilles tear near the end of Game 4, another Boston loss.
The Celtics made it a little interesting by winning Game 5 at home, but without Tatum, they didn't have enough firepower to get past the Knicks in Game 6 -- their season ended that night in New York.
Whether or not the Celtics could've pulled off the comeback with a healthy Tatum is a moot point now. There are much bigger issues to worry about in Boston, where the team is facing a financial crunch and can't necessarily assume that its perennial All-NBA first-teamer will be able to play at all next season. Achilles recoveries typically take upwards of a year.
With a new ownership group incoming, there's not necessarily a mandate to slash costs, but it doesn't make sense for a Tatum-less Celtics team to continue operating over the second tax apron in 2025/26. Maintaining a team salary in that range imposes major roster-building restrictions and generates massive tax penalties, and those restrictions and penalties only increase the longer a club stays above the aprons. That's fine for teams with realistic championship aspirations, but the Celtics can't honestly put themselves in that group until Tatum is back to 100%.
The Celtics' Offseason Plan
Getting under the second apron won't be easy for the Celtics. If we assume they retain their nine players on fully guaranteed contracts, plus Neemias Queta and Jordan Walsh (who have partial guarantees), then fill out their standard roster using their No. 28 and No. 32 picks, plus one minimum-salary veteran, they'd be at about $231.9MM for 14 players. The second apron projects to come in at around $207.8MM.
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Denver Nuggets
A lot has gone wrong for the Nuggets over the past 12 months.
Less than three weeks after Denver gave up three second-round picks to move up six spots in the 2024 draft to nab DaRon Holmes at No. 22, the rookie forward sustained a season-ending Achilles tear during his Summer League debut.
The Nuggets' only other trade during the 2024 offseason saw them give up three second-round picks to get Reggie Jackson's contract off their books. With that newly opened salary slot, they used their taxpayer mid-level exception to sign Dario Saric, who ultimately logged just 210 total minutes across 16 outings, failing to emerge as the sort of reliable frontcourt reserve the front office envisioned.
Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, a key part of the roster that won a title in 2023, walked in free agency and Denver, already operating in tax-apron territory, wasn't in position to acquire a veteran replacement for him.
The relationship between head coach Michael Malone and general manager Calvin Booth became so strained that the Nuggets decided to fire both of them with less than a week left in the 2024/25 regular season.
Somehow, despite those personnel missteps, the unlucky breaks, and the organizational turmoil, Denver earned a guaranteed playoff spot in a competitive Western Conference, won a hard-fought first-round series against a talented Clippers team, then took the eventual conference champion Thunder to a Game 7 in round two before bowing out of the postseason.
It's a testament to the talent at the top of the Nuggets' roster that, in spite all that went wrong, Denver was just a Game 7 victory away from making the NBA's final four and potentially carving out a path to another title. That top-end talent starts with Nikola Jokic, who has been named the NBA's Most Valuable Player in three of the past five seasons and had a strong case for the award in the two years he didn't win it.
As long as the Nuggets have a healthy, prime Jokic on their roster and surround him with enough complementary talent, they're capable of contending for a championship. In Jamal Murray and Aaron Gordon, the club has two clear pieces of that puzzle, and Christian Braun made a strong case with his breakout 2024/25 season that he should be considered a part of Denver's core, too.
The question for the Nuggets is whether they'll be able to get enough out of the rest of their roster to supplement those impact players in the starting five. Having lost important depth pieces like Caldwell-Pope, Bruce Brown, and Jeff Green during the previous two summers, the new-look front office will have to figure out a way to use the club's limited assets to replenish that depth and get the roster back to a championship-caliber level.
The Nuggets' Offseason Plan
While I assume Denver views Jokic, Murray, Gordon, and Braun as core players going forward, I'm not sure the same can be said for Michael Porter Jr., who has been the subject of trade rumors for the last year or two and struggled mightily in the postseason as he attempted to play through a shoulder injury.
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Cleveland Cavaliers
There was widespread skepticism during the 2024 offseason about the Cavaliers' decision to continue moving forward with their four-player core of Donovan Mitchell, Darius Garland, Jarrett Allen, and Evan Mobley after the team struggled to get past the upstart Magic in round one of the playoffs and then was defeated soundly in round two by the eventual champion Celtics.
Garland was coming off an injury-plagued down year, while Allen had been unable to suit up for the Cavs' final eight playoff games due to a rib issue. There was a sense among many league observers that Cleveland would be better off trading one or both players to better balance the roster, given the overlap in skill sets between Garland and Mitchell in the backcourt and Allen and Mobley up front.
But president of basketball operations Koby Altman and his front office decided to double down on the quartet, signing three of them to new contract extensions in 2024 (the fourth, Garland, was already on a long-term deal). Rather than shaking up the roster, the Cavs made their most significant offseason move on the sidelines, where new head coach Kenny Atkinson replaced J.B. Bickerstaff.
The Cavs responded by making Altman look like a genius from day one of the 2024/25 season. They raced out to a 15-0 start and was 56-10 in mid-March before stumbling a little in the season's final weeks, going 8-8 down the stretch. Atkinson's impact was immediately evident, as a Cleveland team that ranked 16th in offensive rating (114.7) in 2023/24 put up the league's No. 1 mark (121.0) in '24/25 without sacrificing anything on defense. The club finished eighth in defensive rating, with Mobley earning Defensive Player of the Year honors.
Although the Cavs essentially didn't make any veteran roster additions ahead of the 2024/25 season, Ty Jerome returned from a season-ending ankle injury and made a greater impact than the team could've hoped for, averaging a career-high 12.5 points per game on .516/.439/.872 shooting and finishing the season as a Sixth Man of the Year finalist. Outside of Jerome and trade-deadline acquisition De'Andre Hunter though, this was essentially the same group that had won 48 games a year earlier.
Atkinson was named Coach of the Year for turning the Cavs into a 64-win team, and after demolishing the Heat in the most one-sided playoff series in NBA history, they appeared poised for a deep postseason run. Instead, they once again fell to the eventual Eastern champs in round two -- this time around, it was the Pacers who eliminated them in five games.
Cleveland was banged up in the second round, with Garland, Mobley, and Hunter each missing at least one game while Mitchell battled calf and ankle problems. But it would be hard to say definitively that they would've beaten the Pacers with better health luck. And even if they believe that to be true, the Cavs will face some difficult roster decisions in the near future, with their team salary poised to soar past the second tax apron in 2025/26.
Since the NBA's current Collective Bargaining Agreement went into effect, teams have exhibited a reluctance to operate above the second apron for more than a year or two at a time, having been willing to surpass that threshold only if they feel that they're capable of contending for a title.
The Cavs' 64 regular season wins suggest they're legitimate contenders, but their inability to get past the second round of the playoffs casts doubt on that belief. With massive tax penalties and major roster restrictions looming, the front office will have to think long and hard about whether it makes sense to run it back once more with the current group or whether it's time to entertain more significant roster changes.
The Cavaliers' Offseason Plan
Mitchell, who finished fifth in MVP voting this past season, and Mobley, a first-time Defensive Player of the Year in his age-23 season, are clearly the long-term cornerstones the Cavaliers plan to build around. They won't be available via trade this offseason. But the same can't be said about Garland and Allen. A May report indicated that the Cavs appear more open than in the past to listening to inquiries for those two other members of their "core four."
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Houston Rockets
After getting back to .500 (41-41) in 2023/24 for the first time in four years following a full-scale rebuild, the Rockets were expected to take another step forward in '24/25. After all, six of their top eight players in minutes per game in '23/24 were still on rookie scale contracts, so it seemed safe to assume those players hadn't yet reached their respective ceilings.
Still, there were relatively modest expectations for just how big a step forward Houston would be capable of taking after a pretty quiet offseason that involved no real roster additions besides No. 3 overall pick Reed Sheppard. Oddsmakers set their over/under at 43.5 wins, and when we asked our readers last September to make their predictions, a slight majority took the "under" on that figure.
Given that context, it's hard to call the Rockets '24/25 season anything but a huge success for the franchise. Houston won 52 games, its highest single-season total since the James Harden years, and held the No. 2 seed in a competitive Western Conference for much of the season, including from March 19 onward.
Fourth-year big man Alperen Sengun followed up his breakout '23/24 campaign by earning his first All-Star nod, while second-year wing Amen Thompson displayed star potential as a two-way player, boosting his scoring total to 14.1 points per game on 55.7% shooting and emerging as one of the NBA's best defensive players -- he claimed a spot on the All-NBA first team and finished fifth in Defensive Player of the Year voting, receiving nine first-place votes.
Notably, the Rockets managed to make a significant move up the standings without major breakout seasons from any of their other young players besides Thompson. Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr., and Tari Eason all had good years, but their numbers were in the neighborhood of ones they'd posted in previous seasons. Meanwhile, Cam Whitmore's role was inconsistent and Sheppard had a hard time getting off the bench and cracking Houston's crowded rotation.
In other words, there's reason to believe that all of those players have room to continue improving, especially since they're are still so young -- Eason, who turned 24 last month, is the oldest of the bunch. And if some of them still have another level to reach, it stands to reason that the same is true of the Rockets as a whole.
As we enter the 2025 offseason, the big question in Houston is just how much confidence the front office has in the ability of those young players to take the next steps necessary to turn the team into a legitimate contender. Because, despite their second-place finish in the West, the Rockets weren't a legitimate contender in 2024/25 -- they had trouble generating half-court offense in the postseason and were eliminated by the seventh-seeded Warriors in round one.
The Rockets repeatedly insisted ahead of the 2025 trade deadline that they no interest in breaking up their young core to add win-now help. Will that stance change now that general manager Rafael Stone and his group have had another year - and a seven-game playoff series - to assess this roster? If so, what sort of player will they be targeting on the trade market and which young players and/or draft picks would they be willing to give up to get that player?
The Rockets' Offseason Plan
The two superstars most frequently cited as potential trade candidates this summer are Giannis Antetokounmpo and Kevin Durant. The Rockets have been linked to both players. However, Antetokounmpo has yet to actually request a trade and the Bucks aren't planning to exploring dealing him unless that happens. The Durant sweepstakes, on the other hand, appear to be heating up, with Houston among the teams engaged in discussions with the Suns.
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Milwaukee Bucks
After winning their first championship in 50 years in 2021, the Bucks had a strong showing in the 2022 playoffs, but their attempt at a title defense was foiled in the second round against Boston. Khris Middleton was sidelined for that entire series due to an injury, which turned out to be a harbinger of the team's postseason health issues to come.
Milwaukee went 58-24 and claimed the top seed in the Eastern Conference ahead of the 2023 playoffs. In the team's first-round matchup with No. 8 Miami, superstar forward Giannis Antetokounmpo sustained a back injury early in Game 1, causing him miss the rest of that contest as well as the following two games. Antetokounmpo returned for Games 4 and 5, but he looked uncomfortable and was clearly not fully healthy. The Bucks were eliminated in five games, while the Heat made a surprising run to the NBA Finals.
To that point, Milwaukee’s front office had largely stuck with the same core roster and coaching staff that won the title two years prior. But the disappointing early exit, which saw the Bucks blow multiple leads late in games, led to major changes in the 2023 offseason, including firing head coach Mike Budenholzer and trading away their starting backcourt (Jrue Holiday, Grayson Allen) and multiple draft assets to acquire Damian Lillard, Portland's all-time leading scorer.
Lillard's first season in Milwaukee was rocky, both in terms of his individual performance and the goings-on of the team. The Bucks fired their new coach -- Adrian Griffin -- despite a 30-13 start, then went 2-1 under interim coach Joe Prunty, but only had a 17-19 record with Doc Rivers -- Griffin's replacement -- at the helm.
Entering the 2024 playoffs, the Bucks had homecourt advantage in their first-round series vs. Indiana, but Antetokounmpo didn't play at all due to a calf injury, and Lillard missed a couple games as well due to a sore Achilles. They wound up being eliminated in six games by the upstart Pacers.
Milwaukee got off to a rough start in '24/25, going 2-8 in its first 10 games. But the Bucks steadied the ship to an extent over the course of the season, and finished with a nearly identical record as the season prior (48-34 vs. 49-33), setting up a first-round rematch with Indiana.
Unfortunately, Lillard was diagnosed with a blood clot in his right calf in late March. He made a very quick recovery, suiting up for Games 2 and 3 and playing surprisingly extended minutes considering the lengthy layoff. He didn't look anything close to his usual self though, and disaster struck in Game 4, when the seven-time All-NBA guard suffered a torn left Achilles tendon.
Despite a stellar showing from Antetokounmpo, the Bucks were eliminated in the first round for the third straight time, this time in five games.
Lillard is on a maximum-salary contract which is projected to pay him about $54.1MM in '25/26, with a $59.5MM player option for '26/27. He turns 35 years old next month and will likely miss all of next season.
The severity of Lillard's injury and Milwaukee's third consecutive first-round exit have led to rampant speculation about Antetokounmpo's future. While there has been no indication to this point that he'll end up requesting a trade, it also can't be ruled out in the coming months.
The Bucks' Offseason Plan
The Bucks are in a difficult bind this offseason. They have one of the greatest players in NBA history in the middle of his prime, a franchise icon who has finished no worse than fourth in MVP voting in each of the past seven seasons and doesn't turn 31 until December. Even without Lillard, Milwaukee should still be a playoff team in '25/26 as long as Antetokounmpo is healthy.
2025 NBA Offseason Preview: Detroit Pistons
The 2023/24 Pistons were one of the worst teams in NBA history. Detroit lost 28 games in a row in the first half and got off to a 4-39 start en route to a 14-68 overall record, which was the worst single-season mark in the franchise's 76-year existence.
The Pistons hadn't won more than 23 games in any of the four years prior to '23/24, but that 14-win showing in a season when they were supposed to take a step forward was an embarrassing low point that prompted an offseason overhaul during the summer of 2024.
Trajan Langdon replaced Troy Weaver as the head of basketball operations, while J.B. Bickerstaff took over as head coach just one year after Monty Williams received a six-year contract worth a reported $78.5MM. The Pistons' roster underwent some significant changes too, with Tobias Harris and Malik Beasley signing as free agents and Tim Hardaway Jr. acquired in a trade with Dallas, adding some veteran floor spacers to a team headlined by former No. 1 overall pick Cade Cunningham.
It would be difficult to pinpoint which of those specific changes made the biggest difference in Detroit, given that they all worked out pretty much exactly as the club had hoped. Bickerstaff established a hard-nosed, defensive-minded culture, turning a roster that ranked 25th in defensive rating in 2023/24 into a top-10 unit in '24/25. He finished second in Coach of the Year voting.
The veteran acquisitions, led by Sixth Man of the Year runner-up Beasley, also helped turn things around for a Pistons team that had ranked 29th in the NBA in three-pointers made and 26th in three-point percentage in '23/24. Detroit still wasn't exactly raining down three-pointers like the Celtics, but the club improved its rankings in those categories to 20th and 17th, respectively.
Most importantly, with more space to operate on offense, Cunningham enjoyed a breakout year, establishing new career highs in points (26.1) and assists (9.1) per game, as well as field goal percentage (46.9%) and three-point percentage (35.6%). He earned his first All-Star nod, was named to the All-NBA third team, and was a finalist for Most Improved Player.
The Pistons' year-over-year improvement - from 14 wins to 44 - represented the sixth-biggest turnaround in NBA history and finally gave fans in Detroit a reason for optimism going forward. Even though they were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, the two postseason wins the Pistons picked up against the Knicks were the most they'd gotten in a season since 2008, when they went to the Eastern Conference Finals.
This version of the Pistons is likely still a little ways off from another conference finals appearance, but it's extremely encouraging that the organization seems to have the right leaders - Langdon and Bickerstaff - in place and that a protracted rebuild is finally beginning to bear fruit. With several promising young contributors still on the rise and plenty of cap flexibility going forward, Detroit is well positioned to continue clawing its way up the Eastern Conference standings in the coming years.
The Pistons' Offseason Plan
Cunningham's breakout season represents a double-edged sword for the Pistons. As thrilled as they must have been to see the former top pick become one of the league's best guards at age 23, his spot on the All-NBA third team increased the value of his maximum-salary rookie scale extension by a projected $45MM. It will now start at 30% of the 2025/26 cap instead of 25%, adding nearly $8MM in extra salary to the team's cap for next season.