The Basketball Feelings Feeling of the Year, 2025

The annual year-in-review of the moments, people and memories that stood out to BASKETBALL FEELINGS friends and contributors.

Louisa Thomas, Author, Writer, The New Yorker

Everything I say about an N.B.A. player is said with a silent caveat: when healthy. As long as no one steps on his foot in the paint and causes his knee to buckle. As long as the constant demands of cutting don’t cost him his calves. As long as he gets enough rest to recover from the bludgeoning of setting screens. Every sentence has a hope and prayer as its subtext: please.

Of course I’ve always known no N.B.A. player is ever fully healthy, once the season is underway. Everyone knows that. There are the injury reports, and then there is the reality: everyone is hurting in some way. Dealing with pain is often described as part of the game, sometimes spun into something sort of positive. Adversity. Character-building. Weakness leaving the body. Or, with less bullshit, four to six weeks. Two months. A season. Just a gap.

Then came this year, the year I learned more than I ever wanted to know about deep vein thrombosis. The year that Game 7 of the N.B.A. Finals was effectively over even before I could get my toddler down to bed, because Tyrese Haliburton went down with a catastrophic leg injury. The year that the words A.C.L. and Achilles seemed to matter as much as the names of any star players. My hope has been replaced with a kind of sadness and foreboding. The caveats aren’t silent anymore.

Josh Gondelman, Comedian, Writer, That’s Marvelous!

Emily Dickinson wrote that hope is the thing with feathers. But I’ve been seeing a lot of dead birds lately, so I don’t know what to do about that. It’s fragile, hope, hollow-boned. It lacks the forceful illogic that turns prayer into faith. There’s always next year is hope. This will be our year is faith. Faith is Knicks fans on a three game winning streak declaring Jalen Bruson the MVP while they’re ranked second in the East (never mind the West). Hope is what Pacers fans had when Tyrese Haliburton’s shot against the aforementioned Knicks bounced impossibly high (Bodega Boys sound cue) straight up in the air before slipping through the net and sending those same New Yorkers straight to hell. Every NBA season contains glimmers of hope to grasp at and watch burn brighter or burn out, but 2025 felt especially rife with big swings, lucky bounces, and bad breaks.

Pacers fans felt that hope again when Haliburton improbably started Game 7 of the Finals, and saw it dim bit by bit after he left the game. That feeling is back now as a bittersweet aftertaste of the Finals run, as those same fans cross their fingers that if their squad is just bad enough, they’ll wind up better off in the long run. Hope is a lottery ticket or a ping pong ball sometimes. Several other teams share this dream. Unlike the Powerball, the top pick in the Draft can’t be split five ways. Some hopes will soar, others will be dashed. The things with feathers can meet many different fates.

Last season, the Thunder rode the line of faith and hope when they put their fate in the literal hands of Lu Dort and Alex Caruso, trusting their on-again-off-again jump shots as well as their pestilent, panopticon defensive prowess. Three weeks ago, hope felt like the best chance anyone had of dethroning the champs. But everyone who hoped Wemby would be healthy enough to play on Christmas got their wish as the Spurs wrangled a third straight victory away from Shai’s fleet of Terminators. Now, half a dozen teams think they have a chance to dethrone the Thunder as champs, and half a dozen more hope they do too.

As much as the season is defined by exploits and accomplishments, it’s the hopes that add excitement to an eighty-two game season. Once he opening tipoff happens, all any team can do is play their hardest and hope their best is good enough. It’s hope that makes the games worth playing.

Here are a few of the year’s most compelling sub-hopes from my amateur vantage point: Cleveland is running it back with the same core and hoping things will be different this time, but they might have forgotten to specify different-better and not different-worse. Boston (but NOT Joe Mazzulla) may have flipped from hoping that their team would lose enough games to let Jayson Tatum rest, to hoping that he’s up for a near-miraculous return to the court this year and then maybe they’ll hope for more. The Lakers (like me) have been left to hope that someone with a forty-one year old body still has more to offer. The people of Milwaukee hope that Giannis’s wandering eye will settle for longer than it takes him to release a free throw from his finger tips. In Miami they’re hoping for the opposite, to catch a fleeing star. Once again, hopes are working at cross purposes. I’m not sure New Orleans knows what to hope for at this point. Wishing on a star for a healthy Zion is like imagining world peace when you blow out your birthday candles.

Not all hope is benevolent though. Steve Ballmer is hoping that somewhere there’s some shred of evidence that Kawhi Leonard has ever in his life planted a tree. Adam Silver hopes he never has to hear the names Chauncey Billups or Terry Rozier III ever again (Blazers fans I’ve talked to feel the same about Billups, more or less.) Nico Harrison hoped a change would do the Mavs good, but the fans lost hope entirely, and even the ultimate world historic didn’t-call-glass bank shot of landing Cooper Flagg through staggering incompetence couldn’t save his job. The bird bones of his hope broke against a pane of glass that was visible to everyone but him.

I could do without more tragic injuries of course, but I watch the games for surprising thrills, the moments of triumph over adversity. And sometimes, though I don’t LOVE this about myself, moments of adversity over triumph. It’s possible that all the chaotic swings borne from hope are through for a while. Maybe the rest of this season will play out to its statistical average, with each contest little more than the sum of its expected box score. It could all be chalk from here on out, progression towards the mean. Nothing ventured, nothing gained (or lost).

I sure hope not.

Dr. Courtney M. Cox, Author, Professor

For me, 2025 felt like an extended season of betrayal — from institutions, in basketball, and even within myself.

The political regime change here in the States began the continual chaos rippling across the country and impacting millions of folks on the daily. The very departments and offices that were supposed to uphold democracy (even their version of it) constantly fail us both domestically and abroad. Even in sport, I could not find solace.

In February, I found myself in Los Angeles for a friend’s birthday, and as I waited for a drink, I glanced at a TV tuned to ESPN with breaking news of an ever-evolving trade that would send Luka Doncic to LA. I scrambled to find my phone and search for any explanation that could help me understand how my hometown team could trade away my Slovenian son. Tucked away from the DJ, the dance floor — I scrolled with disgust as I read the emerging details. Fellow partygoers and LA locals passed by, barely fazed by the news — “Oh yeah, I just saw we got Luka.” In the hours that followed, I heard various iterations of this from barely interested locals. Acquiring my favorite player was merely a status symbol, a flex at most. A push notification for them felt like an earth-shattering revelation for me as I processed the news. The lackadaisical Lakers fans amplified the anger I felt, but I could only think about our front office, those in positions of power that seemingly wield the world to their will, uninterested in how we might feel, whether we’re a player or fan.

And then my own body betrayed me, it seems. A routine move, playing tennis at a local park, one I had perhaps executed dozens of times that day, resulted in a terrifying pop that sent me to the ground. I clutched my knee to my chest, knowing what this often means for the elite athletes on the field or court I’ve seen in this position. The MRI confirmed my worst fears — a torn ACL and both meniscuses in my right knee. For the past four months, I’ve worn a long brace, a visible symbol of this bodily betrayal that seems to attract a certain kinship from those who have experienced this before; their encouragement and suggestions have formed a strange but welcoming fraternity as I move into the next phase of recovery following surgery.

Seeing Luka in a Lakers jersey felt difficult enough, but in listening to the growing narrative around LeBron after his 40th birthday during broadcasts, I realize how much is made of the aging athlete’s body. Other sports brought this front and center for me as well, whether in the discourses surrounding Venus Williams in tennis or Lewis Hamilton in Formula 1. It’s funny how many forget the legacy even before you leave the game.

What betrayal unsettles is important — it requires us to sit with the impermanence of it all. For me this year, it’s perhaps mostly about Luka and ligaments, but also reminds me that what can often feel immutable can transform with time, that change can and will come.

Dr. Jessica Luther, Author, Podcaster, Burn It All Down

The University of Texas women’s basketball team hosted and beat LSU in February. The game was a defensive slog (the final score was 65-58, both teams shot 33.3% from the floor). The game was sold out for months and at the point I bought my tickets on resale, I was questioning whether I actually liked this boom in women’s sports if it meant I had to pay 1000% more to attend games these days. As UT struggled to find its offense and LSU went on a run in the third that put them up by 12, it was hard to see how the Longhorns could win it. But then they did. They outscored the Tigers 21-9 in the fourth quarter, every basket feeling like sweet relief.

I was lucky that day to spend much of the fourth quarter sitting nearly courtside, behind UT’s basket. I was there because I was finishing up a dissertation about the UT women’s basketball team in the 1970s and, before the LSU game, legendary Texas coach Jody Conradt hosted her annual alumni reunion. I initially went thinking I’d talk to some of the women I was unable to get a hold of while conducting interviews for my dissertation. The reunion, though, felt like a sacred space where these women could gather to celebrate themselves, each other, and the program they’d built, nurtured, and grew. I knew enough from my interviews of players from the 1970s that they rarely had times like that; often even their families didn’t seem to understand the significance of their participation on the team. In the end, I did get some of their contact information, but I didn’t want to interrupt their reminiscing. I was thrilled to be there at the reunion when the four Black women who played on the team in the 1970s — Retha Swindell, Renee Rochester, Evwella Munn, and Hattie Browning — were together for the first time in a long time, and joyously took a photo together. I was so into the moment, I didn’t snap a picture of it myself. Their reunion lives solely in my memory.

The basketball alums sat behind UT’s basket and I joined them towards the end of the fourth quarter. I knew they’d be walking onto the court after the game and I wanted to experience their interactions with the current players. That meant I got to watch as UT pulled away, finally, from LSU, sitting behind Evwella Munn and Hattie Browning, who were best friends in the 1970s and remain very close now. I heard Munn’s frustrated words to Browning when UT would mess up, but I also saw them both rise to their feet cheering as the game wound down.

I finished my dissertation this year after 6+ years of working on it (it was probably more than that but I refuse to actually count). It was a slog over the last year to get all the words on the page. I had many times when I did not think I was going to do it. But then, somehow, I did. Talk about sweet relief. That I got to spend even a few hours this same year with some of the women I wrote about and to watch them watch their team put it together in the end... well, I feel like I owe basketball many thanks in this otherwise difficult year.

Rob Mahoney, Writer, Podcaster, The Ringer

It’s awfully nice when everything in a basketball game slots neatly into place. Roles that fit just so. Tendencies that track with history. An internal logic guiding — and in real time, explaining — everything a team is about. There’s a comfort in knowing that sometimes, things really do work as they should.

But there’s wonder in accepting that, often, they don’t. The best part of trying to make sense of the NBA is being at a total loss. There are forces at work that are simply beyond us. The most unforgettable moments on a basketball court demand that we reckon with them — and the most unforgettable teams manage to do that over and over. This is the gift of the 2025 Pacers, a team of destiny, a team that even now defies explanation. Who cares that they didn’t win the title? They won games they shouldn’t have. They hit game-winners that held in the air for days. They were so damn good that, for two straight months, they lived in a perpetual state of can you believe this shit?

They brought people together, because wonder loves company. It loves looking around the room, or the press row, or the sports bar in disbelief. It loves shaking heads and thrown-up hands. It was such a joy to be baffled together by the Pacers, a team that wasn’t just greater than the sum of its parts but one that broke the underlying calculus. I could sit here and tell you that Indiana made its run because of the playmaking momentum of Tyrese Haliburton or the team’s airtight lineup balance — but I would be lying.

There were too many miracles. Too many comebacks. There is no way to tell the story of the Pacers without accepting, on-face, that there’s a little woo-woo guiding every bounce of the ball. Some teams are just more in tune with it than others, and aren’t we all the luckier for it?

Pasha Malla, Author, Professor

Discovery isn’t invention: before the intrepid whites arrived, every nation they invaded did, in fact, already exist. All discovery is just finding your way to things that have always been there. I didn’t discover the wacky movies of Quentin Dupieux in 2025; I just started watching them. In 2025 I also finally started listening to Alice Coltrane, paying attention to the WNBA (with real commitment), eating Cara Cara oranges (with real commitment), shooting skyhooks in shitty pickup games (with mixed results), and — at the risk of sucking up to the boss — reading Katie’s writing.

So while the awesomeness of that list won’t be hot news to anyone, to me it all seemed like floating, untethered pieces of the world falling neatly into place. The where-have-you-been-all-my life-feeling these kinds of “discoveries” evoke can border on resentment, as if some higher power has been denying you essential components of whoever you’re trying to be. That is, if you’re still as suspectable as a teenager to having the stuff you’re into not just inform but define who you are. I’m not sure if that’s bad or good. I guess it’s cool to be open to new things, but my uncle turned 100 this year and, despite basically looping unwaveringly through a Groundhog Day routine for the past three decades, he seems to be doing great.

There’s this throwaway line toward the end of a goofy, seemingly improvised Swirlies’ song about getting high on the Greyhound bus: “I think I’ve finally started to really like myself.” And then the singer (Damon?) cracks up. It used to make me laugh too. It’s a hilarious thing to say out loud. But maybe what I found funny was the apparent impossibility of ever actually feeling that way. Anyway, that song came on the other day and it hit different. “I think I’ve finally started to really like myself.” It suggests that you have everything you need, and all the various bits of yourself have settled where they should. Wouldn’t that be a nice way to be, someday?

Go Tempo.

Madeline Hill, Writer, Impersonal Foul, Host, The Sports Gossip Show

The multiple gambling scandals. The Luke trade heard round the world. The will-he, won’t-he rumors about LeBron retiring. While these storylines may have driven the most clicks this year, they didn’t stick with me the way Timothée Chalamet’s courtside presence during the Knicks’ playoff run did.

As a Sports Gossip Expert, his presence really had everything that makes a good off-the-court story.

His charisma as Knicks superfan no. 2 (Behind Spike Lee, of course) comes from his commitment to his team. Yes, that photo of Chalamet posing with Landry Fields and Andy Rautins at Grand Central Station as a teen comes to mind, but the consistency with which his presence was felt at random regular-season games all the way through the playoffs is impressive.

He! Is! Dedicated!

It also doesn’t hurt that Chalamet is dating Kylie Jenner. That alone wouldn’t necessarily be that interesting from a basketball perspective (other Kardashian-Jenners have dated NBA players before), but when you remember that Jenner’s former BFF (now BFF again) is engaged to Knicks star Karl Anthony-Towns, things get interesting for me.

Finally — and arguably most importantly — Chalamet knows how to meet the moment.

Every game he attended during that playoff run, he wore a new iconic Knicks-themed custom fit, often Chrome Hearts. Occasionally, he wore a piece by his friend and streetwear designer, Doni Nahmias, which was often styled by Taylor McNeill.

Chalamet knows how to capitalize on being both a genuine Knicks superfan and one of the most famous people in the world, which is rare to see these days from celebrities sitting courtside. What makes this off-the-court story so compelling is the fact that, at his core, Chalamet just really loves basketball and his New York Knicks.

And he knows how to play into a moment!

You can see him doing it now with the PR campaign for Oscar frontrunner, Marty Supreme (yes, he gave one of those jackets to KAT). He knows what it means to dream big and think outside the box. It’s rare that we get the subject of an off-the-court story to meet the moment, but when we do, boy, is it satisfying to watch.

Candace Pedraza, Journalist, WNBA.com, FanSided

I’m sitting here staring at my notifications ablaze because Shams Charania just reported that the Milwaukee Bucks and Giannis Antetokounmpo are exploring… things.

Antentokounmpo, who went from the huge question mark of a draft pick back in 2013 to the superstar darling of Wisconsin sports in present day, has seen a championship window with the Bucks promptly open and shut since the teams’ championship back in 2021. Milwaukee refuses to surround him with the talent that would make sense as a complement to him, and he refuses to ask out publicly over it, which leaves them in this strange purgatory that reeks of a pending disloyalty, one way or the other.

And then, there’s the Chris Paul of it all in the same news cycle. Paul being unceremoniously “sent home” like a 40 year old kid is yet another piece to the dysfunctional puzzle that has become the Los Angeles Clippers’ ownership and coaching staff is the perfect example of why players shouldn’t, actually, be the one in the partnership to remain unwaveringly loyal. You can’t even retire with your first-ever team in peace anymore!

I realize the situation in Milwaukee is far different than your average bear, or average Maverick, I guess. The Bucks organization has believed in and adored Antetokounmpo’s contributions to the teams’ success over the last decade, winning a championship and an NBA Cup with him over that time. But still, there’s the air of disappointment surrounding a team rostering a talent like his that only has one championship to show for it.

Honestly, my first thought after seeing that Charania news alert regarding Antetokounmpo was, “What does loyalty even mean in sports when you have greedy owners who are ready to dispose of you at the drop of a hat?”

After Luka Doncic was shipped off in the cover of night to Los Angeles, and Natasha Cloud was kicked out of Phoenix’s high-tech training facility to land at a local YMCA somewhere in Connecticut with the Sun, can you blame someone like Antetokounmpo for wanting so much more for himself when his team seems incapable of doing so for him?

Nothing’s a guarantee in professional sports, and that was evident this year. Loyalty has to be a word we, simply, stop using to justify letting teams take advantage of a player’s trust and goodwill. It’s a very gross means of controlling these athletes despite them having the protection of player’s unions. The cards, 9 times out of 10, are in the hands of ownership. It’s unfair to expect players to offer a one-way loyal street when that’s the furthest from a sure-thing given by executives.

If you want to be relocated, and have the talent and resume to demand such a relocation, then by all means: demand it. Loyalty is becoming extremely played out as a term used to guilt trip stars like Antentokounmpo, or Doncic, or even Paul, into accepting less for the promise of more. And then, more never comes.

Maya Goldberg-Safir, Writer, Rough Notes

Teresa Weatherspoon, I learned this year, was not a super star in college. She got so much better while overseas, where no one (from the U.S. at least) could watch her.

When she came back for the start of the WNBA in 1997, she burst open.

She slapped the floor and howled into Madison Square Garden and was, immediately, the heart and soul of the New York Liberty. It was no different than how she’d grown to play in Italy: years of competing in hazy, smoke-filled arenas without cameras or American media. It was as if she’d been preparing in darkness, making a kind of unseen magic, finally delivered with spectacular result.

Except for the purposes of my life in 2025, this metaphor would work much better if Spoon had signed with the ABL instead. You know, the league that launched despite knowing somewhere in the gut it was fated to fold. When the ABL did just that, in the final days of December 1998, heartbreak bloomed.

Losing a love is like losing a home that you’ve managed, impossibly, to return to. I always wonder what Teresa Weatherspoon would tell me to do about it.