Every NBA season produces winners and losers, but every time, some losses stick out. In 2025, several franchises, players, and coaches fell short, regressing despite aggressive spending, headline-grabbing moves, or huge opportunities to change course. Take a look back at some of the most disappointing teams, trades, stars, and coaches from 2025.

Teams That Let Fans Down

Sacramento Kings

This year was supposed to be a huge bounce-back for the Sacramento Kings. However, the team ended up firing head coach Mike Brown right before 2025 started after a 13-18 start to the season, causing a chain reaction of crazy proportions.

Eager to build upon their successful 2022-23 playoffs, the team, which had already added DeMar DeRozan in the 2024 offseason, swung big at the trade deadline.

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The Kings ended up trading franchise cornerstone De’Aaron Fox for Zach LaVine, with Fox growing disillusioned with the team after Brown’s firing, reportedly telling the Kings that he didn’t wish to play for yet another head coach. They later acquired Jonas Valanciunas for a few second-rounders at the trade deadline.

Sacramento finished the 2024-25 season 40-42, missing the playoffs. In the offseason, the team added Dennis Schroder and Russell Westbrook in the search for a stable backcourt, yet, after all of these moves, this season has been a disaster.

The Kings are currently 7-23, the #15 seed in the West, and reports suggest that they’re on the hunt for a franchise point guard. The irony isn’t lost on anyone. Just a few years ago, the team had both Fox and Tyrese Haliburton, a pair of dynamic guards, who both found success away from the organization.

Los Angeles Clippers

The Los Angeles Clippers were one of the biggest surprises of the 2024-25 season. After losing Paul George in the offseason, the team managed to keep being successful, reaching the #5 seed, and despite a hard-fought seven-game series loss against the Denver Nuggets in round one, things looked hopeful for 2025-26. However, everything soon fell apart.

In the offseason, the Clippers signed big names and veterans in the form of Bradley Beal, Brook Lopez, and even Chris Paul, who announced before the season that this would be his final year. The moves were praised as adding experience and basketball IQ – buzzwords that contenders love to sell in October, because, by December, things looked bleak.

LA is currently 9-21, the #13 seed, buried beneath younger and more cohesive teams. Beal has suffered a season-ending hip injury after a slow start to the season, Lopez has been removed from the rotation, and Chris Paul, after a horrible start to the season, has been sent home as the team prepares to move on.

What makes things worse is who they let go. Norman Powell, traded to the Miami Heat in the offseason in a three-team deal for John Collins, has been thriving, having a career year with the Heat. He’s provided the exact type of reliable offensive output and energy this roster now lacks.

Milwaukee Bucks

Just a few years ago, the Milwaukee Bucks were the NBA’s model franchise. They won a title in 2021 with homegrown talent, a generational superstar, and looked prime to continue. However, in the four years since, that confidence has largely disappeared.

The Bucks entered 2025 as the #5 seed, hoping to make a playoff run with Damian Lillard and Giannis Antetokounmpo. However, the team lost in five games to the eventual Eastern Conference champion Indiana Pacers. In the offseason, they stretched and waived Lillard’s contract after he went down with an Achilles injury, replacing him with Myles Turner in the offseason.

Unfortunately, Milwaukee has significantly regressed this year. Even though Ryan Rollins has had a breakout season, the Bucks are 12-19, the #11th seed in a weak East. To make things worse, Antetokounmpo has been sidelined with a calf strain, and the team’s hopes of making the playoffs are quickly slipping. Since 2022, Milwaukee has lost in the first round every single year, and this season seems like yet another step down.

To cap it off, the unsuccessful campaign has resulted in Antetokounmpo and his management reopening trade talks with the Bucks front office. Now, his future is uncertain, and the Bucks seem to be searching for answers they once had.

Stars Who Didn’t Deliver

LaMelo Ball

LaMelo Ball has had a difficult 2025. Recurring ankle issues and a wrist procedure cut his 2024-25 season short after 47 games, while he was averaging career-high 25.2 points, 7.4 assists, and 4.9 rebounds. Coming into 2025-26, hopes were that he could carry the Charlotte Hornets into a playoff push, but reality has been disappointing.

Ball suffered a right ankle sprain, limiting him to 21 games so far, and when on court, his efficiency has dipped heavily. He’s averaging a career-low 40% from the field and along with 34.2% from three.

This has even resulted in trade speculation, which Ball has publicly refuted, but this doesn’t change the fact that the Hornets remain in the same position they were when he was drafted. The team has failed to make the playoffs every year with him at the helm, despite adding complementary pieces and trying to build around Ball. It’s an unfortunate development for a player whose career has been defined by unfulfilled potential.

Ja Morant

Once seen as the league’s most dynamic and athletic young star, Ja Morant has struggled to deliver constantly in 2025. Things started last season, when he played just 50 games and reportedly caused head coach Taylor Jenkins to be fired for not integrating him into the team’s offense. After this, the Grizzlies were swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round.

After coming back from an offseason left ankle sprain, as well as a grade 1 calf strain, Morant has looked horrible, experiencing career-lows in points, all while shooting 36.6% from the field and 19.4% from three. His turnovers have crept up, and he has struggled to lead the team to wins, currently sitting at the #9th spot with a 15-16 record.

To make things worse, he was even suspended by the franchise earlier this year for “conduct detrimental to the team” after making multiple inflammatory comments about the coaching staff and looking checked out during their games. No one knows what’s next for the young point guard.

Zion Williamson

Entering 2025, the Pelicans had wished their star forward could finally stay healthy and elevate their team into contention. Williamson had a strong statistical 2024-25 campaign, where he averaged 24.6 points and 5.9 rebounds. He had a offseason filled with hope, after dropping his weight and reportedly improving his conditioning. However, things haven’t gone well.

Williamson quickly dealt with a hamstring strain followed by a grade 2 hip adductor injury in quick succession, forcing him to be relegated to just 16 games. Even after he came back from the injury, he has been relegated to the bench, averaging a career-low in points, and efficiency, and the Pelicans have struggled throughout.

New Orleans currently sits at 8-24, the 14th seed, and started the season off extremely poorly. While Zion’s talent is undeniable, 2025 highlights a frustrating reality: with how frequently he misses games, the Pelicans are often led to compensate for themselves, and even his limited presence hasn’t been enough to alter the team’s fortunes.

Trade Flops

Honestly, there’s only one trade that could’ve been the disappointment of the year. Nothing else even comes close to the blockbuster 2025 midseason Anthony Davis-Luka Doncic trade, especially from the Mavericks side.

Dallas was supposed to get a proven superstar capable of anchoring their frontcourt and pushing them into championship contention. What they got instead was unfulfilled promises. Davis was injured with a left adductor strain in his team debut, playing just nine games in his first Mavericks year, losing in the play-in tournament.

This season, he has dealt with intermittent groin issues, missing 14 games at once, and has played roughly half of the team’s games so far. When healthy, he has produced fine numbers, but with Doncic leading the league in scoring while averaging a near-triple-double, it’s clear that the Mavs lost the trade spectacularly.

Coaching Misfires

Willie Green

Former New Orleans Pelicans head coach Willie Green’s 2025 was one of the most abrupt coaching downfalls in recent memory.

The end of the 2024-25 season offered an early warning. The Pelicans limped into the offseason without momentum, failing to make the postseason, and while injuries to Williamson, Dejounte Murray, and others were significant, there was a growing sentiment that Green never unlocked the consistency or identity to unlock the Williamson-Brandon Ingram duo or to help push the Pelicans into the playoffs. Ingram was traded midseason to the Toronto Raptors, where he has now found success.

The next season turned this into a collapse. New Orleans dropped their first six games, and by mid-November, sat at 2-10. The front office took action, firing Green and replacing him with associate head coach James Borrego, with ownership citing the need for a cultural reset.

Doc Rivers

Doc Rivers’ tenure with the Milwaukee Bucks has been a struggle. Despite inheriting a roster with two superstars in Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard in 2023-24, he has failed to instill cohesion on offense or defense during his tenure on the team. The Bucks lost in five games to the Indiana Pacers last year, and things haven’t improved much.

Under Rivers, the team has continued to get worse each subsequent year. In Rivers’ first year, when he took over midseason, Milwaukee won 49 games. The next year, they dropped to 48 wins, and now, the Bucks sit at a horrendous 12-19 record, and even with Antetokounmpo on the roster, it doesn’t look like they’re going to make the playoffs.

Steve Kerr

Steve Kerr’s 2025 has felt like the slow unraveling of something once automatic. The Golden State Warriors have opened this season searching for answers, lacking rotations, identity, and urgency. For a coach who once prided himself on some of the most lethal rotations in the NBA, Golden State has looked like a shell of their last season selves, hovering around .500 and still running ineffective small-ball lineups.

Kerr has circled through an unusually high number of starting lineups, with combinations rarely sticking long enough to build rhythm. Jonathan Kuminga has been a recurring storyline in the team’s rotation, and it’s indicative of a larger problem. The veterans carry heavy loads, the young players remain unsure of their leash, and there’s no clear bridge between the eras.

Earlier this season, Kerr even publicly admitted he wasn’t doing his job well, an unusually blunt assessment from a championship level coach.

Together, all the incidents painted a clear picture: talent and promise alone isn’t enough, urgency can backfire, and reputation doesn’t guarantee results. The pressure isn’t just to bounce back, but to prove that 2025 was an anomaly.