A Changing of the Guard: These Playoffs Are the NBA’s Passing of the Torch

When the Denver Nuggets were eliminated in Game 7 against the Oklahoma City Thunder, it marked the unofficial changing of the guard in the NBA.

The Boston Celtics lost Jayson Tatum for the season — and all of next season — paving the way for the New York Knicks to make the Eastern Conference finals. The Indiana Pacers got hot at the right time again, easily discarding Giannis Antetokounmpo’s Milwaukee Bucks and the Cleveland Cavaliers in five games apiece.

The Minnesota Timberwolves took care of business against LeBron James and Stephen Curry on their path to the Western Conference finals.

Heading into the 2025 NBA playoffs, it certainly felt like the “face of the league” label was up for grabs. Now, one of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Brunson, Anthony Edwards or Tyrese Haliburton will have a genuine crack at winning their first NBA title.

It felt like the stars were aligned for the Lakers to make the NBA Finals. The Luka Dončić trade came out of nowhere in the 11th hour of the season, but it allowed Los Angeles to pair two top-five players in the league on the same roster. It did not work.

Similarly, the Golden State Warriors sacrificed their future to try to continue winning meaningful basketball games in the Curry era when they added Jimmy Butler to the mix from the Miami Heat. Also did not work.

The overachieving regular-season heroes like the Cleveland Cavaliers, Houston Rockets and Detroit Pistons also proved to be regular-season merchants — simply not talented enough to advance in highly competitive seven-game series.

But this is healthy for the league. At some point soon, LeBron isn’t going to be playing anymore. Curry likely isn’t too far behind him. We’ve seen what has happened to Kevin Durant’s superteam attempts in recent years.

The NBA will soon be faced with the same problem it had when Michael Jordan was officially done. It needs a new face of the league. It needs a new Kobe Bryant, Vince Carter, Allen Iverson and Shaquille O’Neal.

Surely, we can already forecast some of those stars in the making. An NBA championship in the back pocket of Gilgeous-Alexander, Brunson, Edwards or Haliburton would certainly help their case to take the torch when James, Curry and Durant are all gone.

Even further down the line, you could see realistic paths for unicorn players like Victor Wembanyama and Defensive Player of the Year Evan Mobley to dominate this league.

While these NBA playoffs have had their fair share of blowouts, there’s a changing of the guard happening right before our eyes. It’s a young man’s league. These four remaining teams prove it.