NBA approaching all-time levels of ugly after blowout-filled Friday
Five different games were decided by more than 30 points.
In theory, a professional sports league is an enterprise that allows the average person to watch some of the world’s best athletes play a competitive game. The modern NBA has made it easy to forget that. Perhaps time will be kinder to the league’s 2025-26 season than we’re about to be, but Friday might have been the clearest possible window into just how miserable professional basketball has become with the playoffs just a couple weeks away.
In one day, we saw: Nine games played with scoring margins of 21, 12, 40, 34, 32, 34, 32, 11 and 4 points, working out to an average margin of 24. 4 points. The game that prevented a double-digit sweep: a clash between the 25-52 New Orleans Pelicans and 20-57 Sacramento Kings .
Los Angeles Lakers star Luka Dončić getting ruled out for the remainder of the regular season, which will make him ineligible for All-NBA honors unless he can successfully use the birth of his daughter as an extenuating circumstance . Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo insisting to reporters he is healthy, after his team tried to quietly shut him down for the season. Does that sound like stuff that happens in a league where the incentives are in alignment?
Even the bright spot of the day, Cooper Flagg’s 50-point game , came with a tinge of wrongness considering he got there because an ejected coach’s replacement put him back in a decided game and let it rip. As the regular season comes to a close, the NBA conversation has been dominated by breathtaking levels of tanking and the league’s “better in theory than in practice” eligibility rules for end-of-season awards. We already know Dončić, Cade Cunningham, Anthony Edwards, LeBron James and several more won’t be making the All-NBA teams, with Nikola Jokić and Victor Wembanyama a sprained finger from joining them.