moranelkarifnews : Top 10 NBA moments of 2024

From the Paris Olympics to the Celtics raising banner No. 18, 2024 was filled with unforgettable NBA moments.

Looking back, 2024 in the NBA struck a near-perfect balance for fans. The year was one part celebration of a generation of players who have lifted the league up and carried it for the past 15 years — and can still be golden. It was also a year in which we got a vision of the direction the sport is going in the next decade, both on and off the court.

Let’s look back at the 10 biggest NBA moments of 2024 — two of them tied to Paris.

1) LeBron, Curry, Durant win gold in Paris

The NBA’s biggest moment didn’t happen on an NBA court; rather, it was on an Olympic one — but it doesn’t happen without the NBA’s biggest names: LeBron James, Stephen Curry, and Kevin Durant.

The most iconic basketball moment of 2024 happened at the Paris Olympics when the best players of an NBA generation — three of the top 15 players of all time — teamed up like the “Avengers” they called themselves to win gold. This was more than simple nostalgia for basketball fans around the globe, Paris became an opportunity to savor watching this trio play at the highest level of the sport one more time, and working together in a way we had not seen before.

The three of them painted their legacies in gold in the Paris Olympics.

Curry scored 60 points and hit 17 3-pointers across the final two games for Team USA, and when gold was on the line he took over like only Curry can.

LeBron already had gold on his GOAT-level resume, yet at age 39 he was the tone-setter and MVP of Team USA throughout the Paris Olympics. LeBron finished the Games leading the USA with 14.2 points, 8.5 assists and 6.5 rebounds a game — he was the Olympics MVP.

Durant — who should be remembered as the greatest USA FIBA player ever — wrote his name atop the record books in Paris, passing Lisa Leslie to become the all-time leading scorer in USA Basketball Olympic history. With the one he collected in Paris, Durant now has four gold medals — the most of any men’s Olympic basketball player ever.

2) Victor Wembanyama announces himself, scores 50

The other takeaway from the Paris Olympics is that Victor Wembanyama is the future of the sport, which is good news for France and San Antonio Spurs fans.

Wembanyama announced his presence as an NBA force in 2024. He comfortably won Rookie of the Year last season, led France to the silver medal in the Paris Olympics, and then returned to the NBA this season even better, including dropping his first 50-point game.

It’s Wembanyama’s world, and we’re all just living in it.

3) NBA inks new, record television deals

All the pearl-clutching over the NBA’s television ratings this season largely misses the point — the NBA product was valuable enough to earn it a new 11-year, $77 billion domestic television broadcast deal.

That contract will reshape the NBA in the next decade in two critical ways. First, it’s a massive boost in revenue that will spike NBA salaries — all that television revenue is split 50/50 between the owners and players. Next summer, the Dallas Mavericks will offer Luka Doncic a five-year max extension worth an estimated $346 million, where he would make $78 million in the final season of that deal. The summer after that, another player’s max extension will shatter that number. The average NBA salary is just above $12 million a season right now, by the end of the decade that could be around $20 million.

The other way this television deal changes the league is it moves it more into the streaming realm: The new agreement includes we at NBC coming in and showing games every week exclusively on Peacock, while Amazon also has a package of games — including the NBA Cup — that will only be on its Prime streaming service. The NBA is moving to meet its fans where they are, and that increasingly is on social media and streaming services, not traditional cable television.

4) Boston Celtics win 18th NBA title

The Boston Celtics steamrolled the league in the 2023-24 season and hoisted championship banner No. 18 because of it. They won 64 regular season games — 14 more than the Knicks, who were second in the East — and had a net rating of +11.6, four points per 100 better than anyone else in the league. Come the playoffs, the Celtics lost just three games on the way to Adam Silver handing them some hardware.

Jayson Tatum was the MVP candidate for this team, but in the final rounds of the playoffs, Jaylen Brown — who would be the best player on more than half of the league’s teams — stepped up and was voted Finals MVP.

Boston launched 3-pointers at a historic rate and played lock-down defense — they were dominant and deserved the title. And they brought their core back for another run at a ring in 2025.

5) Luka Doncic scores 73

Luka Doncic has been a top-five player in the league for long enough that we forget he’s just 25 years old. Last season may have been his best season when he led the league in points scored, with 73 of those coming in a game against the Atlanta Hawks in January. Those 73 are the fourth-most ever by a player in a single game in NBA history.

6) Stephen Curry/Sabrina Ionescu All-Star 3-point contest

The NBA All-Star Game itself has become hard to watch, but there is still great stuff during All-Star weekend.

The highlight of the 2024 All-Star weekend in Indianapolis? The Stephen Curry vs. Sabrina Ionescu All-Star 3-point shootout. It was dramatic, and it brought the rising popularity of the WNBA into the building for some needed energy.

Expect to see an expanded version of this — likely with Caitlin Clark and Klay Thompson — in San Francisco at this year’s All-Star Game.

7) Anthony Edwards has breakout year

Look into a crystal ball about what players will dominate the NBA for the next decade and Anthony Edwards will be front and center.

Edwards had a breakout 2024 where he averaged 25.9 points, 5.4 rebounds and 5.1 assists a game during the 2023024 season — becoming an All-Star and All-NBA player — while leading the Minnesota Timberwolves to the Western Conference Finals.

Then Edwards went to Paris and led Team USA in scoring through the first few games, starting to assert himself at the highest levels. Edwards is the kind of big, brash personality fans love — and he has plenty of game to back that up.

Speaking of Edwards and the Timberwolves…

8) Timberwolves historic Game 7 second-half comeback against Nuggets

Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves showed their arrival at the top of the West was for real when they came from 15 down at the half to pull off the biggest Game 7 comeback in NBA history — and doing it against the reigning champion Denver Nuggets with Nikola Jokic. Edwards was key to that comeback with a strong second half (after scoring just four points in the first half) and Karl-Anthony Towns put the finishing touches on the win with this putback dunk.

9) Donte DiVincenzo lights up Garden in playoffs

2024 saw playoff basketball return to Madison Square Garden — we needed that energy. The NBA is just better when the Knicks are in the postseason.

Maybe the best series in the 2024 playoffs was New York and Philadelphia in the first round. After the Knicks took Game 1, the 76ers came out with urgency and led Game 2 by five points with less than 30 seconds to go, but a Jalen Brunson 3-pointer followed by one from Donte DiVincenzo lifted the roof off the Garden.

10) LeBron, Bronny James first father/son duo in NBA history

This was an incredible moment.

Forget all the noise about Bronny James’ place in the NBA, seeing a father and son on an NBA court together was a special moment.

When we look back at LeBron’s iconic career, that he played long enough to share the court with his son will be one of the great descriptors of his longevity.