About two months ago, we examined the possible effects the 2025 NBA Playoffs would have on certain legacies. We looked at nine players and a coach, and how a potential title or deep playoff runs might affect how they’re viewed both in the short and long term.

With the Thunder securing the franchise’s first championship in OKC, star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander arrived on the NBA Finals stage, but two months ago, we wondered whether he could lead such a young team to the championship.

This Thunder team is the second-youngest squad to win the NBA title. Only the 1977 Portland Trail Blazers, led by Bill Walton, had a younger average age (24.9) than this Thunder team (25.6). And OKC’s 26-year-old star compiled a dominant season that also saw him net his first MVP award.

He tallied more than 3,000 points this season (regular season and playoffs), and his scoring has been transcendent to the point that fans of opposing teams are finding complaints about how the dominance happens. They’ve wished they could take their ball and go home or turn off the video game console. But Gilgeous-Alexander doesn’t allow opponents to do that.

Now, SGA is where Giannis Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokić and Jayson Tatum found themselves in recent years. The first title is under his belt, so what comes next? The NBA has been desperate for parity in this era, but this Thunder team, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, seems set up to buck the trend of a different champion every year. That second title has escaped Giannis and Jokić so far, and Tatum will have a long journey ahead as he recovers from his Achilles injury.

Gilgeous-Alexander is at the top of the mountain and has one of the most dominant teams in NBA history. His legacy is truly just beginning, but the NBA is set up to jump-start someone else’s legacy next year. We’ll see if SGA and the Thunder can block that.

Let’s check in on the rest of the legacies we examined in late April and see how things changed over the past two months.

Received a boostTyrese Haliburton, Pacers

Haliburton wasn’t featured in our original story in April, but he arguably was the story of the postseason. He had one of the most clutch playoff runs you’ll ever see. He’s made journalists rip up their plans in the blink of an eye. He and his teammates made you feel like you couldn’t flip the channel or fire up a new series on a streaming platform just because it’s a 10-point game with 90 seconds left.

Haliburton, whose playoff run came to an end with an unfortunate Achillies injury early in Game 7 of the finals, thrust himself into the superstar conversation after putting himself really on the map during the NBA Cup last season and making a whole meal out of being voted the league’s most overrated player in The Athletic’s Anonymous NBA Player Poll this year. Regardless, Haliburton has seen the absolute biggest boost to his legacy over the last two months and nearly led his team to a title out of nowhere.

Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets

I’m not sure Big Honey’s legacy needed a boost, but he got a little nudge of positivity by taking the champion Thunder to seven games in the second round. This Nuggets team was not great this season and fired coach Michael Malone with three games left in the regular season. They didn’t even know if they would avoid the Play-In Tournament at that point.

The Nuggets couldn’t play defense, had injuries and had no bench. The supporting cast was unreliable, and Denver had an interim coach with only assistant experience facing the most dominant team in the NBA in the playoffs. Denver had no business pushing OKC to seven games. But Jokić is that good.

Kawhi Leonard, Clippers

I know the Clippers were eliminated in seven games, but Leonard at least reminded everybody of how good he is. And he did it by playing in every game in the first round. He’s been the poster child for “load management” because most talking heads spouting off about the subject are too lazy to recognize that he’s legitimately injured. Leonard has been dragging his knee around for years and still looks dominant when he can play. I think the Clippers should just start up his season on Jan. 1 to try to time his health correctly to have him right for the start of the playoffs.

That almost happened this season; they just ran into Jokić. Leonard was awesome in that series, and it’s a good reminder of how incredible the two-time NBA Finals MVP still can be.

Tom Thibodeau, New York Knicks

The Thibodeau one is odd. When the Knicks made it to the conference finals, there was a referendum on his style of coaching. We saw a lot of, “I was told Thibs’ style of playing his guys too many minutes couldn’t be successful in the postseason” type of rhetoric to throw in the face of people who doubted his coaching and the Knicks in general. It was a celebration of Thibodeau, the lifer coach dedicated to grinding out everything.

Then the Pacers made that ridiculous comeback in Game 1, and you saw many people calling for him to be fired. Three days after the Knicks lost that series, he was fired, and public perception seemed to shift back to defending Thibs against James Dolan and the Knicks front office. Ultimately, I believe his legacy received a boost, but it was a roller coaster to get there.

Neutral impact

Jayson Tatum, Boston Celtics

The question coming into the playoffs was whether Tatum and his Celtics could end this recent trend of a new champion every single year. Not only did we get a seventh different champion in seven years, but also the Celtics were knocked out in the second round. To add injury to elimination, Tatum ruptured his Achilles tendon against the Knicks and will likely miss all of next season based on the typical timeline of these recoveries. He’s still only 27, so it shouldn’t derail his career. And these recoveries are far more reliable than they were even a decade ago.

The Celtics were struggling against the Knicks before the injury, so maybe his legacy was headed toward taking a hit regardless, but you never know how these series can turn. We’ll see how the Celtics reshape the roster monetarily, as any legacy-boosting for Tatum is on pause.

Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler and the Warriors beat the Rockets in seven games but fell against Minnesota. (Troy Taormina / Imagn Images)Stephen Curry, Golden State Warriors

It looked like Curry was going to get a chance to at least make things interesting in the second round against Minnesota before he strained his hamstring. Golden State won Game 1, but Curry missed the rest of the series, and the Warriors limped out of the postseason. Before that, Curry had a dramatic first-round affair against the Houston Rockets, which the Warriors pulled out in seven games after going up 3-1 in the series. As with Tatum, a second-round injury (far less severe, though) prevented any kind of fun drama from unfolding.

Jimmy Butler, Golden State Warriors

I struggled a bit with whether or not this one should be in the category below. Playoff Jimmy has been a thing, and people either love to embrace that persona or love to hate it. Playoff Jimmy, or just Butler in general, is very polarizing. Once Curry went down in the second round, that Warriors team didn’t have nearly enough offense to solve Minnesota. Maybe Butler should be expected to lead them to a greater fight, but he was also banged up in the Rockets series. I think we should give a pass for injuries to the players.

Took a hitDonovan Mitchell, Cleveland Cavaliers

I’ve never been one for the “Playoff Donovan” stuff because I think he’s been living off the 2020 NBA Bubble performance for quite some time. However, I don’t know if this playoff ouster was really on him.

Some people want to offer the excuse that the Cavs’ failure was due to injuries to Darius Garland (and also Evan Mobley and De’Andre Hunter, who missed Game 2 against Indiana). I’m not here for that. This Cavs team was simply not ready to step up and do what it needed to do, and it’s been a consistent problem for Cleveland, in one form or another, for the last three years.

This time around, I felt Mitchell was doing the right stuff and then would look around at his teammates not seemingly being ready for the moment and deciding someone had to do what was necessary to win. So he’d try to take over, and it didn’t work. Ultimately, he takes the hit because it wasn’t good enough, and he did make mistakes. But I think this failure is different from the previous times.

Luka Dončić, Los Angeles Lakers

The Luka thing is a little weird. For the most part, he was good against the Wolves, but questions about his conditioning and defense did come up. When Minnesota took out the Lakers in five games, there was even some chatter about how Mavs GM Nico Harrison may not have been completely off-base for shockingly trading Dončić this season. Granted, that chatter could have just been because the people saying it wanted to zig for attention when everybody else was zagging.

The conditioning stuff is always going to be there with Dončić when his team is eliminated early, and he does have a bigger spotlight on him by being in a Lakers uniform. His legacy didn’t take a big hit, but it’s enough of a needling to see how he responds.

Tanking (sort of…)

This was brought up to me by my friend Shaker Samman, and I had to steal it, run with it and give him a little bit of credit for it at the same time.

The idea of tanking did take a bit of a hit in these playoffs. You can start with the shenanigans of the NBA Draft Lottery, when the Washington Wizards, Utah Jazz and Charlotte Hornets all landed outside of the top three after so blatantly putting a horrendous product on the floor all season long. The hope for months was that Cooper Flagg would save them. Now one of them will end up with Kon Knueppel. That’s not exactly why you put unwatchable basketball in front of your fans for full price and try to tell them it will be worth it for months.

The real shot against tanking, though, is the Pacers and their success. They haven’t had a top-five pick since Rik Smits in 1988. They’ve acquired their lineup through cunning drafting and trades. They’ve trusted their coach to form a system around a style of play they feel fits their best player, and then built out from there. Imagine! A vision! A plan! What a revolutionary concept.

(Top photo of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Tyrese Haliburton: Matthew Stockman / Getty Images)