The 5 Weirdest NBA Rosters Ahead of the 2024-25 Season

Some NBA rosters are loaded from top to bottom.

Some are just weird.

Maybe the players don't fit with one another, or they reside on different timelines.

Perhaps the roster is stuck in limbo as the front office overseeing it hasn't fully committed to an obviously (to everyone else, at least) inevitable rebuild.

For reasons we'll detail as we go along, here are the strangest squads heading into the 2024-25 season.

While the Hawks feel perpetually stuck in the middle, things feel extra claustrophobic around Atlanta.

They aren't just trapped in the Eastern Conference's midsection like always ( though that may well be where they finish ), they are stuck between two wholly unexciting eras.

They haven't finished tearing down the team built around Trae Young, due in large part to the fact that he, De'Andre Hunter and Clint Capela all seemingly suffer from a lack of trade value.

There's also the unfortunate reality that bottoming out wouldn't help this bunch, since Atlanta won't control its own first-round pick until 2028 thanks to the ill-fated trade for Dejounte Murray in 2022.

They have at least started to assemble some young talent, but they haven't found much in the way of blue-chippers.

Bouncy swingman Jalen Johnson has promise, but this year's top pick, Zaccharie Risacher, led a draft most notable for lacking high-end talent.

Last year's first-round pick, Kobe Bufkin, hardly hit the NBA hardwood (196 minutes over 17 games).

Dyson Daniels is a dynamic defender, but he'll squeeze the offensive spacing until he proves himself as a viable perimeter shooter.

And at what point do we start worrying about how Onyeka Okongwu, the No.

6 pick in 2020, still hasn't secured a starting gig? The Hawks have been play-in tournament participants each of the past three seasons.

They might be headed there again.

Before, though, at least there was some emotion attached.

They were trying to win, they just hadn't found the right puzzle pieces to do it.

Now, they're kind of aimlessly wandering the hoops landscape until someone takes Young (and, fingers crossed , Hunter and Capela, too) off their hands and gives their roster an actual focus.

Just leave it to the Bulls to usher in a rebuilding project everyone's been waiting to see and still find a way to let us all down.

Chicago is more future-focused than it has been, but it isn't blank-slate rebuilding.

Maybe it'd be closer to that if there was any trade interest in Zach LaVine or Nikola Vucevic there isn't but even then, it's not like the Bulls handled their roster like an everything-must-go liquidation.

Sure, they parted with Alex Caruso this offseason, but despite trading with the pick-rich Oklahoma City Thunder, all they got back was Josh Giddey, whose offensive limitations torpedoed his utility in the playoffs.

And, yeah, they let DeMar DeRozan leave in free agency, but they delayed his exit by so long that the best asset moved in the three-team sign-and-trade that landed him in Sacramento (the Kings' 2031 unprotected first-round pick swap) went to San Antonio instead of Chicago.

Veterans Jevon Carter and Torrey Craig remain on the roster.

Lonzo Ball, who last suited up in Jan.

2022 and has, as he put it , "pretty much a brand-new knee," remains in the team's plans .

Patrick Williams remains as polarizing (or simply frustrating) as ever, only he's a lot richer .

Coby White feels as close to a building block as the Bulls have, but that's assuming last season's breakout is not only sustainable, but also just the beginning of his ascension.

Chicago may have found a draft steal getting 19-year-old swingman (and Windy City native) Matas Buzelis with this year's No.

11 pick, but he essentially is the youth movement of a franchise that hasn't been in championship contention for a decade.

Due to countless battles with the injury bug, the Clippers' whole never approached the sum of its parts during the five seasons Paul George suited up alongside Kawhi Leonard.

Still, at least the fanbase could daydream about what might happen if that tandem ever stayed healthy when it really mattered.

The front office, though, seemingly tired of having its hopes dashed year after yearand spending a mountain of money to watch it happen.

So, the decision-makers reached something of a breaking point this summer and never gave George what he was looking for in free agency.

The organization released a statement before he'd even officially left, noting that "the gap was significant" in negotiations.

Yet, for a win-right-now teamwhich the Clippers must think they are with what they're paying Leonard and James HardenGeorge's subtraction will make it a lot harder (if not impossible) to win anything of note.

So, what is this roster supposed to do, then? "People are counting us out or people don't think we're going to be good," coach Ty Lue told ESPN's Ohm Youngmisuk .

"...

I can't wait to prove everybody wrong." What if everybody is right, though? Leonard, who last topped 70 games in 2016-17, and Harden, who just averaged his third-fewest points on his third-worst field-goal percentage, feels about as rickety of a two-player foundation as you'll find among the league's playoff-hopefuls.

The supporting cast is fairly deep, but what is there to support? Where is a Leonard-and-Harden-led team supposed to travel in 2024? Where are the untapped-potential players who can overachieve? Who's pumping in points when Leonard inevitably misses time, and who's creating shots when Harden has to sit? Clippers fans might long for the days when the only question about this club was whether it could ever stay healthy.

The Pelicans seemingly entered the offseason with two objectives: unloading Brandon Ingram and upgrading at center over Jonas Valanciunas.

Neither was completed.

Now, they did get some stuff done this summer.

They brokered a blockbuster trade for Dejounte Murray.

They plucked two players out of the draft (No.

21 pick, Yves Missi, and No.

47 pick, Antonio Reeves).

They signed backup point guard Jose Alvarado to a bargain-priced two-year, $9 million extension.

They put together an intriguing roster, but it's still a pretty baffling bunch.

Murray is two years removed from serving as a primary playmaker.

At least one of CJ McCollum (who makes $33.3 million ) and Trey Murphy III (who has sky-high potential) will likely be squeezed out of the starting group.

Or both could be in jeopardy if New Orleans isn't comfortable starting Zion Williamson at the 5.

Is there enough shooting for this to work? Or how about shot-blocking or playmaking? Can Williamson and Ingram coexist in a way that brings out each other's best? Just exactly how many minutes will New Orleans hand over to Missi and Daniel Theis in order to fill the center spot? Where does Jordan Hawkins, a lottery pick last year, fit into all of this? This roster is fascinating, but it's way too early to tell if that's a good thing.

A little more than a year has passed since the Trail Blazers traded away longtime centerpiece Damian Lillard.

So, it maybe isn't super surprising that Portland hasn't fully rid its roster of veteran talent.

Jerami Grant, Lillard's one-time sidekick, is still around.

So, too, are big men Deandre Ayton, Robert Williams III and Duop Reath, none of whom is under the age of 26 and all of whom loom as potential obstacles in the path of No.

7 pick, Donovan Clingan.

The Blazers are younger in the backcourt, though there's even some confusion with that group as it's hard to envision all three of Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe and Anfernee Simons residing in the Pacific Northwest for the long haul.

Again, the Blazers are still in the experimental phase of their post-Lillard rebuild, so this isn't alarming at a macro-level.

It is, however, a sign of how little Portland has figured out regarding its path ahead.

"One thing we're really hoping to find this year, throughout this season, and definitely by the end of it, is more clarity," general manager Joe Cronin said, per Aaron Fentress of The Oregonian .

"...

We need to have a better feel and understanding of what we are, what moves we need to make, what additions we need to have, what's going really well.

We just need more focus on what our long-term outlook is going to look like." The center group is overcrowded, the backcourt has too much overlap and the wing spots largely underwhelm in between.

( Grant is solid, but he is overpaid and totally out of place on a team playing for the future .) This reads like a roster sponsored by the "Keep Portland Weird" folks..

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