Russell-Wilt. Magic-Bird. Jordan-Isiah. Rivalries have been the NBA's lifeblood since the league's early days. There isn't nearly as much bad blood between this generation of stars as there was in the '80s and '90s, though.
Sure, LeBron James and Stephen Curry faced off in four straight NBA Finals from 2015-2018, with Curry and the Golden State Warriors getting the best of James and the Cavaliers in three of those. While those showdowns were heated at the time, it's clear that LeBron and Steph have nothing but respect for one another now. (Winning a gold medal together in the 2024 Olympics couldn't have hurt.)
While we might not have the same iconic player-vs.-player beefs that past generations of NBA fans enjoyed, there are still plenty of rivalries to embrace in today's league. And with the WNBA's Rivals Week beginning on Aug. 9, we're using this as an opportunity to pay homage to the best rivalries in the NBA as well.
6. Celtics-Lakers
This is the most iconic rivalry in the NBA, bar none. The two teams have met 12 times in the NBA Finals, which is by far a league record. The Celtics clearly hold the overall edge (9-3), although the Lakers have won three of their past four meetings in the Finals.
How is this not the No. 1 rivalry on this list, you might wonder? Well, unless you're living in the 1960s, 1980s or late 2000s, Celtics-Lakers hasn't had anything beyond regular-season implications for 15 years now. The last time the two teams clashed in the Finals was 2010, which the Lakers won after an absolute rock fight of a Game 7.
Although the Celtics and Lakers haven't faced off in the playoffs in the past 15 years, they have spent that time jostling with one another on the NBA's overall championship leaderboard. The Lakers drew even with the Celtics at 17 titles apiece after winning their Mickey Mouse ring in 2020, but the Celtics took back the lead with their 2024 championship (which was also a low-key Mickey Mouse ring).
While Celtics fans and Lakers fans are mortal enemies, fans of the other 28 teams do not care whatsoever about the number of championships each team won when the NBA was mostly filled with milkmen and paperboys. There are far greater rivalries to celebrate these days.
5. The Indiana Pacers and the luxury tax
Over the past 21 years, the Indiana Pacers have made four appearances in the Eastern Conference Finals, and they were one game away this year from winning their first championship in franchise history. Had Tyrese Haliburton not torn his Achilles tendon in the first quarter of Game 7 of the NBA Finals, they very well might have won it all.
They've accomplished all of that despite having not paid a single dollar of luxury tax since the 2005-06 season.
That was seemingly set to change this offseason… right up until the Milwaukee Bucks signed starting center Myles Turner to a four-year, $107 million contract in free agency. The Pacers' depth chart at center is now loaded with luminaries such as James Wiseman, Tony Bradley and Jay Huff.
Team president Kevin Pritchard tried to do damage control by telling reporters that the Pacers were "fully prepared" to go into the tax to re-sign Turner and were "surprised" that the Bucks created enough cap space to sign him by waive-and-stretching Damian Lillard. And in the Pacers' defense, Haliburton's Achilles injury genuinely might have impacted how much they were willing to pay Turner.
Had Haliburton not gotten hurt, the Pacers might have been more inclined to pony up and run back the same group that came within one game of winning a title this year. Now that he figures to miss the entire 2025-26 season, they might not have seen the point in going over the tax line—and moving one year closer to the repeater tax—if they're potentially facing an uphill battle just to make the play-in tournament. Granted, that hardly excuses their frugality over the past 20 years.
The good news for the Pacers is that they aren't the cheapest team in the NBA. That (dis)honor belongs to the Charlotte Hornets and New Orleans Pelicans, neither of whom have ever paid the luxury tax, according to Mark Deeks of Forbes Sports.
4. The Sixers and the Eastern Conference Semifinals
Since the Philadelphia 76ers embarked upon the "Process" at the beginning of the 2013-14 season, they've made it to the Eastern Conference Semifinals five times. They have yet to advance past that round of the playoffs, though.
In fact, they've found increasingly creative ways to implode each time.
In 2018-19, Kawhi Leonard defied the laws of gravity and physics with his iconic Game 7 series-clinching shot. Three years later, Ben Simmons defied the laws of gravity and physics by refusing to attempt a wide-open dunk, which wound up being the beginning of the end of his time in Philadelphia.
In 2021-22, as the Sixers were closing out the Raptors in a blowout Game 6 victory during the opening round of the playoffs, Pascal Siakam left Joel Embiid a parting gift by decking him with an errant elbow. That resulted in an orbital fracture and a concussion that caused Embiid to miss the first two games of the Eastern Conference Semifinals against the Miami Heat, both of which the Sixers wound up losing.
In 2022-23, the Sixers had their best chance yet of finally advancing to the Eastern Conference Finals. A dominant Game 5 showing on the road against the hated Celtics put the Sixers up 3-2 with a chance to close out the series at home in Game 6. Although Jayson Tatum couldn't buy a basket to save his life for most of the game, the Sixers' offense sputtered and left the door cracked just wide enough for the Celtics to save their season. They immediately proceeded to embarrass the Sixers in Game 7.
With both Embiid and Paul George both on the mend yet again from knee surgeries, a return to the Eastern Conference Semifinals might be the Sixers' realistic best-case scenario this season. Luckily, we all know exactly how it's likely to end if they do make it back there.
3. The Chicago Bulls and ambition
In today's day and age, where oligarchs and tech barons are trying to strip everything to the studs to maximize efficiency and milk every dollar of profit they can, it's honestly refreshing to see complacency every once in a while. Maybe we don't always need to optimize every single aspect of our lives?
That appears to be the Chicago Bulls' organizational ethos in recent years.
Most of the NBA's newer owners come from the venture capitalist/private equity mold. They're often quick to make changes—perhaps too quick at times—if their teams fall short of expectations. (See: Suns, Phoenix.) Meanwhile, the Bulls have embraced mediocrity and aren't letting go.
Over the past decade, the Bulls have the sixth-worst win percentage in the NBA. Despite that, they've had only three head coaches (Fred Hoiberg, Jim Boylen and Billy Donovan) and two front office regimes (Gar Forman and John Paxton, aka "GarPax," and Artūras Karnišovas and Marc Eversley, aka "AKME") during that span.
Lest you thought that winning only one playoff game over the past five seasons combined would inspire them to take a more aggressive approach, fear not. The Bulls instead recently signed all three of Karnišovas, Eversley and Donovan to extensions, according to Joe Cowley of the and ESPN's Shams Charania.
After all, who needs to compete for championships when you can instead chase 45 wins and the allure of the gate revenue from a play-in game?
2. Luka Dončić and Nico Harrison
By all accounts, Luka Dončić intended to spend his entire NBA career with the Dallas Mavericks. General manager Nico Harrison had other plans.
With no warning whatsoever, Harrison swung the biggest blockbuster trade in years by sending Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for a package headlined by Anthony Davis. To help justify the seemingly unjustifiable decision, Harrison began to allude to the behind-the-scenes reasons why the Mavericks moved on from their once-in-a-generation superstar.
"I believe that defense wins championships," Harrison told ESPN's Tim MacMahon. "I believe that getting an All-Defensive center and an All-NBA player with a defensive mindset gives us a better chance. We're built to win now and in the future." (That was an especially wild thing to say after trading a 25-year-old who just guided them to the NBA Finals the year prior for an oft-injured 31-year-old.)
Dončić perhaps could have eventually forgiven Harrison and the Mavericks for trading him if their obsession with defense was their primary motivation to move him. However, they also kicked him on the way out the door by leaking concerns about his conditioning and "lack of discipline recording his diet," as MacMahon reported.
The Mavericks' fat-shaming appears to have hit home, as Skinny Luka made his debut in a recent Men's Health feature (along with his fabled 42-inch vertical). If that was the kick in the pants that Dončić needed to get serious about his conditioning, the Mavericks could regret that trade for the next decade, even if they managed to stumble their way ass-backwards into Cooper Flagg as a result of it.
If nothing else, Dončić will likely take great pleasure out of slicing and dicing the Mavericks every time he plays them with Harrison still at the helm.
1. The Sacramento Kings and stability
Two years ago, the Sacramento Kings snapped their 16-year playoff drought. For a brief, fleeting moment, it seemed as though they were ready to turn the page on the KANGZ era of rampant dysfunction and establish some semblance of organizational stability.
Then they went full KANGZ again.
According to Sam Amick of The Athletic, the Kings were reluctant to sign head coach Mike Brown to a contract extension last offseason in part because of Anjali Ranadivé," the 32-year-old daughter of team governor Vivek Ranadivé, "whose increased presence and perceived influence has been a major talking point in Kings circle for quite some time." Amick added that Ranadivé has often "sought counsel beyond his own front office when it came to significant team decisions."
"While this sort of approach isn’t inherently problematic, Ranadivé’s version of it has often inspired confusion internally about the power dynamics and, more specifically, questions about whether the front office was truly being trusted to run the team," Amick wrote.
The Kings' midseason decision to fire Brown was the beginning of the end of star point guard DeAaron Fox's tenure in Sacramento. They wound up shipping him to the San Antonio Spurs ahead of the trade deadline, as he "feared the prospect of wasting his best years on a team that was mired in mediocrity," according to Amick.
Ranadivé became the majority governor of the Kings in May 2013. Since that time, the Kings have cycled through eight head coaches (including two interim ones) and four front office regimes. Fox was reportedly frustrated by the Kings' lack of stability, and that's showing no signs of abating, as they switched their head coach and general manager within the past year.
As long as Ranadivé is running the show, there may be no greater rivalry in the NBA between the Kings and being a well-run organization.