When the 2024/25 season began, the Mavericks were coming off a 50-win year and an appearance in the NBA Finals. The Kings were coming off a 46-win campaign and had added DeMar DeRozan in free agency. Dallas had championship aspirations, while Sacramento felt good about its chances of making it back to the playoffs after being eliminated in the play-in tournament last spring.
But neither team’s season played out as hoped. The Mavericks’ shocking decision to trade Luka Doncic caused a fan revolt, but it was really the team’s health issues that sunk its hopes of contending for a title. Big men Dereck Lively, Daniel Gafford, and newly acquired Anthony Davis all missed significant time in the second half of the season due to injuries, while a torn ACL ended Kyrie Irving‘s season in early March.
Even without Doncic, a fully healthy version of this Mavericks team could’ve been a force to be reckoned with in the postseason. But losing Irving cost Dallas its top ball-handler and play-maker, forcing the team to lean heavily on guards like Spencer Dinwiddie and Brandon Williams and significantly lowering its ceiling.
While the Irving-less Mavs are unlikely to win a title this year, that doesn’t mean they can’t win a play-in game. They’ll visit Sacramento on Wednesday as the No. 10 seed in the West and will face a No. 9 Kings team whose season didn’t go much better than Dallas’ did.
Acclimating DeRozan didn’t go as smoothly as hoped and the Kings fell well below .500 two months into the season, leading to the ouster of head coach Mike Brown. Interim head coach Doug Christie helped turn things around in the short term, but just a few weeks later, word broke that the team was looking to trade De’Aaron Fox — he was ultimately sent to San Antonio.
While the Kings’ trade of its star point guard wasn’t nearly as controversial as the Mavericks’, it didn’t exactly kick-start a memorable second half. Zach LaVine, the centerpiece of Sacramento’s return in that three-team blockbuster, wasn’t an ideal fit — the team had a -3.8 net rating during his 1,170 minutes on the court, and his 119.9 defensive rating was easily the worst mark among the team’s rotation players.
Given the way the seasons have played out in Dallas and Sacramento, both teams have the profile of a one-and-done play-in team, but someone has to win on Wednesday and earn the right to face Memphis on Friday for the No. 8 seed in the West. For what it’s worth, oddsmakers favor the home team — the Kings are 4.5-point favorites, per BetOnline.ag.
Over in the East, a familiar matchup is on tap for Wednesday evening. If there’s such a thing as a play-in rivalry, Bulls vs. Heat qualifies. Miami defeated Chicago in the win-or-go-home play-in game for the No. 8 seed in 2023 and again in 2024. The two teams will square off in a single-elimination matchup for a third straight year, though this time it’s just for the right to stay alive and face Atlanta for the No. 8 seed on Friday.
Like Dallas and Sacramento, both the Bulls and Heat traded away star players this season, though those situations played out in very different ways.
LaVine, who had been on the trade block for multiple seasons, was a model citizen in Chicago and was enjoying a nice individual bounce-back season, though it wasn’t translating to team success — at the time he was dealt to Sacramento, the Bulls were just 21-29. And in the immediate wake of the trade, things didn’t improve — Chicago lost six of its next seven games to fall to 22-35 and appeared ticketed for the lottery.
Unexpectedly, though, the team suddenly began showing signs of life, led by breakout star Coby White and buoyed by trade-deadline additions like Tre Jones, Kevin Huerter, and Zach Collins. From March 6 onward, the Bulls improbably won 15 of their last 20 games and ranked in the top 10 in the NBA in both offense and defense.
The Heat’s season followed almost the opposite trajectory. Their star, Jimmy Butler, was disruptive and did all he could to publicize the fact that he had no interest in continuing his career in Miami, earning multiple team-imposed suspensions leading up to the trade deadline. But the team held its own amid the drama and was actually above .500 (25-24) on the day Butler was sent to Golden State.
Even though Butler hadn’t actually been playing much for the Heat for weeks, his departure kicked off an ugly downturn for the club, which wrapped up its season by going just 12-21 after the trade deadline. That stretch was salvaged to some extent by a six-game winning streak in late March and early April, but was otherwise pretty brutal — no playoff or play-in team had a worst post-deadline record than Miami, and a handful of lottery teams (Phoenix, Portland, and Toronto) were better.
Despite those late-season results, the Bulls are favored by just one point over Miami on Wednesday, according to BetOnline, with oddsmakers perhaps respecting the Heat’s wins over Chicago in each of the past two play-in tournaments.
We want to know what you think. Are you taking the favorites and picking the Kings and Bulls on Wednesday, or do you expect to see at least one upset in the No. 9 vs. 10 games? Which teams will keep their seasons alive and which ones are headed home?
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