Fact or Fiction: The NBA doesn’t have a future face of the league

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Each week during the 2024-25 NBA season, we will take a deeper dive into some of the league’s biggest storylines in an attempt to determine whether trends are based more in fact or fiction moving forward.

[Last time: Is Nikola Jokić enjoying the greatest statistical season ever?]

Fact or Fiction: The NBA is without a future face

Friday’s matchup between the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers will not only feature the Eastern Conference’s two best teams but also Jayson Tatum and Donovan Mitchell, the most recent members of a club that includes only 55 players in the NBA’s history — six-time All-Star selections by the age of 28.

This comes at the same time as another, broader conversation in the weeks following the All-Star break, when each of the league’s best players was asked: Who will become the next face of the NBA?

“It’s something that we as players normally kind of don’t really have full control over,” said Oklahoma City Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, as if anyone is supposed to answer that question better. “That’s literally for the world to decide, and whoever the world gravitates to is going to become it naturally.”

Asked a similar question, if he considers himself a top candidate to become the NBA’s face, Minnesota Timberwolves guard Anthony Edwards said, “No, not really,” joking, “That’s what they got Wemby for.”

(Joseph Raines/Yahoo Sports Illustration)

That conversation, the one being had most prominently on ESPN and TNT and FS1 and former players’ podcasts and the media ecosystem that feeds off of them, distracts us from what is happening before our eyes: Tatum and Mitchell are all-time greats in their primes, and, as contributors to the most talent-rich collection of superstars in the game’s history, they are carrying the mantle for the league right now.

Tatum and Mitchell are not accepted as serious MVP candidates, even as one captains a title defense and the other steers his team on a 68-win pace. Gilgeous-Alexander, Nikola Jokić, Giannis Antetokounmpo and Luka Dončić are more commonly considered in conversations about the game’s best active player, though Tatum has an argument to…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/fact-or-fiction-the-nba-doesnt-have-a-future-face-of-the-league-145240895.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-02-28 14:52:00

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