For the seventh consecutive NBA season, a new champion is set to be crowned, with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, New York Knicks, and Indiana Pacers remaining as the final four teams in the 2025 playoffs. Four rising young guards are on the verge of claiming their first championship. Each has a chance to emerge as the next superstar — an unlikely face of the league that few were willing to bet on just a year or two ago.
As Lou Williams puts it, this is a perfect snapshot of the modern-day NBA: a league where any star can rise from obscurity and lead a team on an improbable postseason run, regardless of what the outside world believes.
Take the Thunder, for example. Despite securing the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference standings for the second consecutive season, doubts loomed over their ability to handle playoff pressure due to their youth. Yet, they calmly dispatched the Memphis Grizzlies in the opening round and then battled through a grueling series to eliminate the Denver Nuggets. And now in the WCFs, this team isn’t showing any signs of slowing down; instead, they only look more confident.
Then there’s the T-Wolves, a team few backed to even get past the first round, especially when they were against Luka Doncic and Lebron James’ Los Angeles Lakers. But just when everyone was excited to write them off, Julius Randle and Anthony Edwards combined to average over 49 points per night to close out the series in five games. Against the shorthanded Golden State Warriors, the lethal Timberwolves’ duo averaged 51.4 points combined to once again close out the series in five.
In the East, the Pacers displayed remarkable grit as well. Not only did they eliminate the Milwaukee Bucks for the second consecutive year, but they also capitalized on the Cleveland Cavaliers’ injury woes to eliminate them in five games. Likewise, the Knicks silenced critics at every turn. Not only were they expected to fall under the pressure of facing the gritty Detroit Pistons team, but they also went ahead to register two 20-point comeback wins against the defending champions, the Boston Celtics, to never allow them to have a say in this series.
For the three-time 6MOTY, all of this illustrates the evolving landscape of the NBA, where no star can rest easy assuming they’ll make a deep playoff run, and hungry, motivated young players are constantly chasing greatness and legacy.
Whether it is Jalen Brunson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, or Tyrese Haliburton, each of these rising guards has faced questions about their leadership, their consistency, and whether their regular-season brilliance would translate to postseason success. But each has responded by stepping up under pressure, refusing to be intimidated by veteran-laden, star-studded rosters. Instead, they have turned criticism into motivation and pressure into performance, embodying the spirit of today’s NBA.
