NBA’s season-defining names: Why Wemby, Embiid, Redick make the list

The NBA preseason is in full swing and the league’s opening night doubleheader tips off in less than two weeks. So which players, coaches, owners and execs will define the next eight months of basketball?

The Boston Celtics captured the 2024 NBA title, but how will the franchise’s ownership situation impact its pursuit of back-to-back banners? What will the season look like for former MVP Joel Embiid, who, after missing more than half the Philadelphia 76ers’ games in 2023-24, is back for another championship run with a reloaded roster built around him? What’s next in the superstar trajectory of San Antonio Spurs phenom Victor Wembanyama after capturing Rookie of the Year?

Let’s break down the 10 people who will play major roles in the season, including two GMs of contenders facing a crossroads, a former player and TV analyst-turned rookie coach and superstars who will decide the 2025 trade deadline, draft and free agency seasons.

Joel Embiid, 76ers center

There is no player in the league with more riding on this season.

Embiid, by his own admission, has accomplished just about every individual goal. He’s made five All-NBA teams. He claimed his long-coveted Most Valuable Player award in 2023. Before his knee injury last season, he was on pace to join Wilt Chamberlain as the only players in NBA history to record more points than minutes played.

But Embiid’s résumé lacks the kind of playoff success that separates the great — and even all-time greats — from legends.

“You play the game to be the best, and to be the best you have to have something to show for it,” Embiid told ESPN in December. “You have to have a bunch of championships and a bunch of individual awards. My goal is to be the best.”

That’s why Embiid has come into this season talking about focusing on one thing: making it through the season healthy, and giving himself a chance to finally capture the postseason success he and Philadelphia have been chasing. That’s why he’s dropped 25 to 30 pounds already, and says he wants to lose more.

An up-and-down stint with Team USA saw Embiid deliver one of the signature moments of his career in the fourth quarter against Serbia, when he repeatedly attacked Nikola Jokic in the paint to power a Team USA comeback in the Olympic semifinals. It was the sort of moment Embiid has typically been on the other side of in the NBA — most notably in Game 7 of the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinals, when Kawhi Leonard’s series-winning shot bounced around the rim before finally dropping.

Now, with key offseason addition Paul George, breakthrough young guard Tyrese Maxey, a deep supporting cast and assets to acquire more help during the season, this is Embiid and the 76ers’ best chance to finally make a Finals run.

Karl-Anthony Towns, Knicks center

A year ago, Damian Lillard arrived in Milwaukee on the eve of training camp, and Jrue Holiday landed in Boston. Each was seen as the missing piece to a championship formula. The Bucks flamed out in the first round with Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo injured; the Celtics, thanks in large part to Holiday, went on to win the title.

Last month, Towns was acquired by the New York Knicks on the eve of training camp with the goal of ending a half-century long championship drought. How will things play out; like Lillard’s Bucks, Holiday’s Celtics or something in between?

New York went from being flush with trade assets when its season ended in May to making a pair of massive deals this offseason, acquiring Mikal Bridges from the Brooklyn Nets in June before bringing in Towns, who grew up an hour from Madison Square Garden in New Jersey, to anchor the starting five.

The Knicks quintet — Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, OG Anunoby, Bridges and Towns — have a credible argument to be the NBA’s best. But New York also comes into the season with little depth behind Sixth Man of the Year candidate Miles McBride and significant injury questions for Anunoby and Towns, both of whom have regularly missed time in recent years.

Minnesota acquired Rudy Gobert to make up for Towns’ defensive deficiencies at center. Now, New York is going to need him to not just play there, but play well, as it goes up against the likes of Embiid and Kristaps Porzingis while trying to advance to the Finals for the first time since 1999.

Victor Wembanyama, Spurs center

There are few players in NBA history quite like the 7-foot-4 Wembanyama, who became just the seventh unanimous Rookie of the Year before helping his native France win silver at the Paris Olympics.

All of that has only cemented Wembanyama as the most likely successor to LeBron James and Stephen Curry as the face of the NBA — a title he is openly pursuing.

This season, San Antonio is in a fascinating position. The best long-term path for the franchise is to land another high pick in the 2025 draft to create a star partnership in San Antonio. But it’s not clear Wembanyama, alongside future Hall of Famer Chris Paul this season, is capable of allowing the Spurs to be bad enough to get into that area of the draft in a year with so many bottom-level teams eying the top half of the lottery.

Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic won Rookie of the Year, and went on to make first team All-NBA every year since. Could Wembanyama do the same this year? Will he share the court with James and Curry at the All-Star Game in San Francisco? Wembanyama will be one of the league’s driving forces; how soon that transformation occurs will be a major storyline to watch.

JJ Redick, Lakers coach

There isn’t a higher pressure job in the NBA than head coach of LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers. Darvin Ham made the 2022 conference finals in his first season and was fired a year later. Frank Vogel guided the Lakers to the 2020 NBA title, only to be fired two years later.

This is the pressure cooker that Redick — having never coached at the professional or college level in any capacity — walks into this year with the Lakers, a team bringing back virtually the same roster that suffered a five-game loss to the Nuggets in the first round of the 2024 playoffs.

The expectation is Redick can coax more out of this group than Ham could a year ago. But that team had 147 combined games played from LeBron James and Anthony Davis — their most together since becoming teammates in the summer of 2019.

Redick is also coaching James in his age-40 season while the NBA’s all-time leading scorer makes more history by playing alongside his son, Bronny. And all of it will be coming with an extra bright spotlight, given Redick’s past as both a 15-year NBA veteran and his more recent stint in the media, including calling the NBA Finals last June.

Cooper Flagg, Duke freshman forward

The 2025 NBA draft class is full of star prospects: French point guard Nolan Traore; Baylor forward V.J. Edgecombe, who impressed with The Bahamas this summer in international play; and guards Ace Bailey and Dylan Harper at Rutgers, who have turned the central New Jersey school into an epicenter of college basketball.

Each prospect could have arguably been the top pick in June’s draft. But, as of now, all of them are lagging behind Duke forward Cooper Flagg, the face of what is expected to be a crowded race to the bottom across the NBA this season.

And with ESPN’s Jonathan Givony calling this class the deepest of any during the 20 years he’s covered the draft, it’s no surprise that at least seven teams — the Brooklyn Nets, Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls, Detroit Pistons, Washington Wizards and Portland Trail Blazers — are expected to jockey for lottery positioning, with other teams likely to join the fray due to injuries and unexpected slides down the standings.

The 17-year-old Flagg, who this summer starred in a scrimmage against Team USA and will all but certainly make his NBA debut before turning 19, will be a name every basketball fan should monitor all season.

Charles Barkley, TNT analyst

For more than a generation, Barkley and “Inside The NBA” have been a staple of the league’s soundtrack. That run could end after this season.

While litigation between the NBA and Warner Bros. Discovery — the parent company of Turner Sports, one of the league’s two long-time broadcast partners alongside Disney — is ongoing, signs point to 2024-25 being the final season of the decades-long television partnership. Amazon and NBCUniversal are set to join Disney in the new deal that begins next fall.

As a result, much of this season will be about the future of Barkley, Ernie Johnson, Kenny Smith, Shaquille O’Neal and the rest of TNT’s flagship studio show. Barkley’s own future will be a topic of much discussion, as over the past few months he went from announcing he would retire after the season, to revealing he had talked to other networks to committing to the future with Turner Sports regardless of what happens with their NBA broadcast rights.

Wyc Grousbeck, Celtics governor

For a generation, Grousbeck has been the steward of the Boston Celtics franchise, with him serving as the team’s governor since 2002. But in the wake of winning the franchise’s 18th championship to surpass the Los Angeles Lakers for the most titles in NBA history in June, the family stunned the league by putting their controlling stake up for sale days later.

Boston is barreling toward a massive tax bill. The Celtics are on pace to become the first team in NBA history with a $500 million roster

Then there’s the matter of league expansion. With the new collective bargaining agreement and television deals complete, the league’s focus will shift to the possibility of expanding by one (or more likely two) teams in the years to come.

Factoring into the league’s calculus is the windfall of profits that will come to the league’s 30 current owners in the form of the expansion fees paid to join the league. League sources who are following this process closely have pointed to the Celtics sale process — and its eventual price tag — as a key indicator of how large those fees could get, and how soon the expansion process in the NBA could get underway.

Ja Morant, Grizzlies guard

Two years ago, Morant and the Grizzlies were seemingly poised to take over the NBA. They had a young, rising team, led by one of the league’s brightest and most exciting stars in Morant, and the future looked great — to the point where he told ESPN’s Malika Andrews “I’m fine in the West.”

Then came a pair of gun incidents involving Morant, a first-round loss to the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2023 playoffs and injuries to Morant, Desmond Bane and other rotation players last year that led to a 27-55 record and lost 2023-24.

Morant is back, healthy and speaking a different tune, saying last week of the Grizzlies that, “We all feel like we ain’t done s— yet.” And while that isn’t exactly true — Memphis won at least 51 games in 2021-22 and 2022-23 — this team remains waiting for its breakthrough.

But after drafting 7-foot-4 center Zach Edey ninth overall, with the expectation that he’ll fit right into the starting lineup, Memphis comes into this season with Morant, Bane and 2023 Defensive Player of the Year Jaren Jackson Jr. on the court once again. As a result, the Grizzlies believe they can return to the West’s upper echelon.

Calvin Booth, Nuggets GM

In 2023, the Nuggets won their first NBA title in Booth’s first season as general manager. But over the next 18 months, the franchise saw the departures of several prominent veterans in free agency — Jeff Green and Bruce Brown in 2023 and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope this past offseason — as Denver has cut costs and leaned into a youth movement around high-priced stars Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Aaron Gordon.

Now, Denver will be hoping that 23-year-old Christian Braun can replace Caldwell-Pope as the starting shooting guard, and 22-year-old guard Julian Strawther and 22-year-old forward Peyton Watson, among others, will be relied upon as key reserves.

In what became a much-discussed interview with The Ringer prior to last season, Booth declared, “I just want dudes that we try to develop, and it’s sustainable. If it costs us the chance to win a championship this year, so be it. It’s worth the investment. It’s more about winning three out of six, three out of seven, four out of eight than it is about trying to go back-to-back.”

His tone was slightly different at media day last month: “In a best-case scenario, I think Nikola has a prime 10-year contention window,” Booth said. “I think we’re about halfway through it. So, we probably have about five more similar shots and all the shots count. We hit one of them, that’s great. The earlier we hit it, the more we can have conversations about other things, but it’s going to be incredibly hard to win another one.”

Jokic is already an all-time great player. But the story of his career, and how many titles he winds up winning, very well may come down to Booth’s bet on this long-term youth movement. That’s enough to get Booth a spot on this list.

Mike Dunleavy, Warriors GM

After Golden State, at different points earlier this year, briefly pursued LeBron James, Paul George and Lauri Markkanen — and wound up with none of them — Warriors general manager Mike Dunleavy perfectly summed up the challenge of trying to maximize Curry’s final NBA years.

“We have a lot of dialogue about it,” Dunleavy said at his media day news conference last month. “We unequivocally are trying to maximize his greatness, Draymond’s greatness and all the resources that we have.

“Those conversations are really positive, productive. They know the drill. We’ll keep pursuing that. But as I said before, there’s a level of discipline that you have to have … there’s no point in going all in to be slightly above average.”

Dunleavy, like Booth, has an all-time great player on his roster. But unlike the 29-year-old Jokic in Denver, Curry and Draymond Green are well into the twilight of their Hall of Fame careers.

Golden State’s talent base has arguably improved even after losing Klay Thompson to the Dallas Mavericks in the offseason, due to the additions of veterans Buddy Hield, Kyle Anderson and De’Anthony Melton. But it’s hard to envision the Warriors being a true contender as currently constructed.