5 NBA Duos That Won't Be Together For The 2024-25 Season

Sometimes, an NBA team will take a big swing and try to pair up stars in hopes their talent will win out in the end only to find out chemistry and compatibility and personality all matter. There are plenty of NBA duos who have come together recently and worked out like the Kings bringing in Domantas Sabonis to play with De’Aaron Fox or the Thunder drafting Chet Holmgren to play with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

But there are absolutely NBA duos that stink.

Here are 5 NBA duos that won’t be together for the 2024-25 season:

1. Trae Young and Dejounte Murray

Heading into the 2022-23 NBA season, the Atlanta Hawks traded Danilo Galinari and 3 first-round picks to the San Antonio Spurs for Dejounte Murray. The Hawks are 67-73 since making this deal and it’s time for the Hawks to look around and realize trading Luka Doncic for Trae Young was one of the worst moves in NBA history.

Kevin Huerter, John Collins and Dejounte Murray have all failed to succeed alongside Trae Young. I understand this team went to an Eastern Conference Finals but they beat an Elfrid Payton-led Knicks team and a Ben Simmons Sixers team where Ben was having a historically atrocious postseason.

If I were running the Hawks, Trae Young would’ve been off the team yesterday but if the Atlanta front office wants to continue coddling Trae and pretending as if everyone else is at fault but him then Dejounte Murray cannot be a Hawk anymore.

I’m not sure what the perfect team is to play with Trae but I don’t believe Trae is even good enough to demand a team to be formed to his exact specifications. Send him to Los Angeles to take the D’Angelo Russell role. He would be a great third option.

2. Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram

The Pelicans have won 9 of their last 13 games and that’s primarily due to the offense being run through Zion who looks svelte and healthy. I love this team and I wish they had a guy like Mike Conley running the show instead of CJ McCollum but I can see a world where New Orleans gets bounced in the first round or slips on a banana peel in the play-in tournament and fingers being pointed.

This is Brandon Ingram’s 5th year in New Orleans. He’s made the playoffs once. He was great in the postseason but it becomes increasingly more difficult to keep rolling out the same team year after year when there aren’t any improved ending results. The Kings, Thunder, Timberwolves and the Mavericks all look like they’re on the way up while the Pelicans, who should be right there with the rest of those teams but they’re just not.

And if New Orleans wants to keep pace with these teams, they might have to take a big swing which means trading away Zion or Ingram and either starting from scratch or getting just new faces in town.

3. DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine

This is the most obvious on the list but I’m excited to no longer jump back and forth on the shift key typing the names DeMar DeRozan and Zach LaVine back-to-back because their families wanted to be cute.

I was shocked by how much I liked watching this team play when DeRozan arrived in 2021. I could’ve sworn these two would’ve clashed on the court but DeMar shuffled to the power forward while Alex Caruso and Lonzo Ball handled all the dirty work and plugged up all the holes in Zach LaVine’s game.

But when Lonzo Ball’s knees burst into flames, the whole house of cards crumbled and this team was exposed. Zach LaVine clearly has a personal beef with the Bulls front office but they gave him a massive contract he does not deserve so he should be bringing Jerry Reinsdorf his coffee every morning but instead, he’s electing to get season-ending surgery to avoid being moved at the trade deadline to a team he doesn’t want to play on while simultaneously BEING ON A TEAM HE DOESN’T WANT TO PLAY ON.

I would’ve loved if the DeRozan was moved at the deadline to a team like Philly (before Embiid did his best Lonzo Ball impression) but yea, it’s a wrap for the LaVine/DeRozan Bulls. They will join the historic ranks of random Bulls teams alongside the 2016-17 Rajon Rondo/Dwyane Wade/Jimmy Butler squad that was one Rondo thumb injury from a legendary year.

4. Steph Curry and Klay Thompson

This is the worst year of Klay Thompson’s career as he’s recently been moved to the bench and is contributing absolutely nothing to the Warriors. Golden State is sitting at the 10th seed right now so they’ll have to win two games just to get the 8th seed and face either the Timberwolves, Thunder, Nuggets or Clippers where they will be sent home as soon as possible because Klay is no longer a consistently great NBA player.

Klay Thompson is in the final year of his contract. Mike Dunleavy is the GM over there now. Bob Myers and all that loyalty is long gone. I cannot fathom the Warriors rushing to sign Klay to the multiyear deal he definitely wants.

We’ll always have that 70-point game where he only dribbled 12 times.

5. Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard

We all know this shit is over, right? Giannis won his ring in 2021 and that’s super cute or whatever but this entire Milwaukee Bucks run died when they traded for the 33-year-old recently divorced rapper who desperately wanted to do god knows what in Miami and then fired their rookie coach to replace him with the one coach who guarantees your team will lose a playoff series in the most embarrassing way possible before he blames the players and goes on vacation without a care in the world.

Brook Lopez, Khris Middleton, Patrick Beverley, Jae Crowder, Bobby Portis, these are older players who are not nearly as good as they were when they won the title in 2021 and have no real future next season. The Bucks are putting all of their eggs into the depressed Dame and indifferent Doc baskets while Giannis does his best to prove how much of a ‘bag’ he has instead of doing whatever it takes to just win a game.

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