NBA regular seasons rarely have an overarching lesson, but the 2024-25 season has had a pretty clear one: winning doesn’t guarantee anything.
Taylor Jenkins coached the Memphis Grizzlies to a 56-26 record in 2021-22, tied for the franchise’s best regular season record, and followed it up with another 50-win season the following year. While guiding the Grizzlies back into playoff contention this season, Jenkins set the franchise mark for most career wins by a head coach. On March 28, Memphis fired Jenkins.
Michael Malone not only brought the Denver Nuggets to the promised land, their first NBA Finals appearance, in 2023, but his Nuggets dominated the Miami Heat to bring the Mile High City its first title. On Tuesday, less than 24 months after the championship win, Denver fired both Malone and general manager Calvin Booth.
Luka Doncic re-established himself as one of the NBA’s best offensive players and a clutch performer in last season’s playoffs, sparking a surprise run to the NBA Finals for the Dallas Mavericks and inspiring the imaginations of Mavericks fans hungry for the franchise’s second title. A 25-year-old wunderkind with five consecutive All-NBA first team selections to his name, Doncic looked to build on his breakthrough in the Western Conference bracket. During the first weekend of February, the Mavericks traded Doncic and two other players to the Lakers for a package that included Anthony Davis and a mix of draft picks and role players.
Setting franchise records, leading the next generation of NBA superstars, winning the NBA title. Three legitimate playoff contending franchises in the Western Conference decided these impressive accomplishments did not inoculate its respective leader from job termination. In the case of the Grizzlies and Nuggets, the head coach firings came in the immediate lead-up to the NBA playoffs, with both teams in strong position for playoff berths at the time of the dismissals. And in all three cases, the higher-ups making these decisions conveyed a genuine belief that parting ways would make their franchise better equipped to win in the future. “Shock” is the obvious descriptor for this unusually eventful NBA regular season — one that rivals most NBA free agency periods in terms of stunning headlines — but the reason for the shock is because teams professing a desire to win the biggest games dismissed franchise cornerstones who are proven winners.
Let’s start with the Doncic trade. Last night, Doncic returned to Dallas in a revenge match and poured on 45 points in a Lakers victory. Even without a Doncic vs. Dallas matchup, the trade is still reverberating around the league and confounding those in NBA circles.
Essentially, the Mavericks were reticent to extend the now-26-year-old Doncic due to his perceived lack of effort, poor conditioning and deficient defense, overlooking the fact that Doncic had led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals just months earlier and looked primed to do so again, multiple times, over the course of the next decade. Dallas didn’t appear to research Doncic’s value sufficiently, either, settling for a trade with the Lakers that gave Dallas an accomplished big man who is past his prime and a clear downgrade in the long term, Anthony Davis. AD fits Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison’s vision of a terrific Mavericks player with his defensive prowess, playoff experience and effort, but Doncic is the top commodity an NBA roster can boast — a young, top-five NBA player with further room for growth and evolution.
The Doncic trade has been legitimately devastating to the Mavericks’ fan base, and the immediate returns favor the Lakers: Dallas holds a losing 38-42 record and the 10th spot in the 15-team Western Conference, while the Lakers’ duo of Doncic and LeBron James has Los Angeles in third place in the Western Conference and positioned as the top challenger to the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Few headlines in NBA history have been as unexpected or seismic as Doncic’s exile from Dallas, but the late-season dismissals of Jenkins and Malone still registered as stunners in the post-Doncic trade NBA landscape. Dismissing accomplished and respected head coaches who will almost certainly be back at the helm of NBA teams next year is one thing, but shaking up the coaching staffs of two teams that are almost certainly headed for the playoffs — mere weeks before the playoffs start — does not seem like a recipe for immediate success in the slightest. Memphis’ slide in the weeks after the All-Star break and Denver’s four-game losing streak factored into the decisions, but across the tenures of Jenkins and Malone, both coaches have demonstrated an aptitude for righting the ship and shaping playoff-ready contenders. Now, the Nuggets and Grizzlies are fifth and seventh in the Western Conference, respectively, and barreling toward a talented playoff field with interim coaches and star-studded but demoralized lineups.
These three moves make little sense, just based on the winning track records of Doncic, Jenkins and Malone. Stars are traded every season and head coaching changes are a constant of the offseason, but all three of these examples are extreme and even more bewildering in their timing and rationale. Behind the obvious question “why?” is a deeper question — what caused these three winning teams to act so quickly and intently to get rid of proven assets? Why not just ride out the rest of the playoffs and let cooler heads prevail in the offseason?
The true impetus for these three decisions is a reflection of the current state of the NBA — dysfunction is feared more than winning, even at the highest level, is treasured.
Harrison sent Doncic out of Dallas without notice because he did not see the ascendant guard as a culture fit. Jenkins’ dismissal came shortly after a tussle between Desmond Bane and Santi Aldama broke out on the Grizzlies’ bench, reportedly over Aldama’s insufficient hustle and defense. The tension between Malone and Calvin Booth’s front office divided the Nuggets’ franchise, and the disintegration of Denver’s joyful approach and team unity during the losing streak stunned the Nuggets’ owners.
Ironically, the Mavericks, Grizzlies and Nuggets started their 2024-25 seasons with enough talent and playoff experience to harbor real NBA Finals aspirations. And if anyone could lead these squads out of the Western Conference bracket, the marquee names that put those franchises in position to contend in 2024-25 sure seem like important pieces to that mission. But the combination of the fear of not realizing potential and the fear of having a toxic locker room environment caused these franchises’ decision-makers to buck the norm and rational thought and act with extreme decisiveness and urgency, at the expense of important stability.
Jenkins and Malone will surely land on their feet in other NBA cities, and Doncic has already made the Mavericks look foolish in his half-season with the Lakers. They’ve won in their past stops, and each individual commands the confidence and respect of the rest of the NBA, so I don’t feel too aggrieved by decisions that could ultimately land them in healthier situations. NBA owners have the authority to act how they see fit to build a championship team, and the trajectories of the Mavericks, Grizzlies and Nuggets offered no guarantees for a title.
But in pinpointing the deciding factors why these inexplicable moves saw the light of day, the optics of disharmony and toxic culture should not be overlooked. Contrast that with Erik Spoelstra, the head coach of the 36-44 Miami Heat. Spoelstra’s Heat are right on the brink of making the play-in and have worse records than each of the aforementioned Western Conference teams, but Spoelstra has survived roster restructures, mediocre seasons and superstar dramas (including in this season) due in large part to his success in establishing and maintaining Heat Culture, no matter who is in the starting lineup. Decision-makers in Dallas, Memphis and Denver saw glimpses of dysfunction and regression, and that threat outweighed the skills and successes of their respective franchise cornerstones.
For a league that prides itself on its off-court product, the NBA’s behind-the-scenes news items have defined the 2024-25 season so far. Don’t expect that trend to stop for the playoffs and upcoming seasons, either. The effects of these three moves will play a key role in deciding this year’s Western Conference playoffs, and the moves themselves set an intriguing precedent for seasons to come.
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