Was the Price Right? NBA Trade Edition
Sticker shock is real, but fans usually overstate the cost
Following the Orlando Magic’s blockbuster acquisition of Desmond Bane for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Cole Anthony, four unprotected first-round picks, and a pick swap from the Memphis Grizzlies, a common sentiment has been, “That’s a lot.” The same chorus backed the Knicks’ trade for Mikal Bridges, the Timberwolves' acquisition of Rudy Gobert, with the list going all the way back to the first barter transaction in Mesopotamia. Whenever a bushel of draft capital is sent out for a non-tier-one-superstar, fans are apprehensive of the price, but should they be?
Four unprotected first-round picks sound like a lot, and it is, but is it actually all that valuable? Let’s start with the first first-round pick, the 16th pick in the 2025 NBA draft. Between the 1980 and 2020 drafts, the 16th pick has averaged 6.05 career VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), with three players eclipsing 25 career VORP (approximately Glen Rice’s career), one surpassing 50, and 28 ending up with less than two career VORP out of 41 drafts. While there are still active 16th overall picks who will raise these figures slightly, that’s true for every pick, and for reference, Kevon Looney has already produced 6.2 career VORP.
It bears mentioning that even in a season where Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, and Jalen Suggs combined to play 141 out of a possible 246 games, the Magic went 41-41. With the age profile of the Magic’s core, in all likelihood, the most valuable pick the Magic will send the Grizzlies is that 16th pick, and that’s incredibly important. Between 1980 and 2020, players selected between picks 20 and 30 have produced an average career VORP of 3.36. The truth is, first-round picks outside of the top ten are highly unlikely to be anything more than a fungible role player, and players selected in the 20s are usually borderline NBA players. The sheer number of first-round picks is far less relevant than where they project to land.
Another factor in Bane’s “steep” pricetag is his contract. Bane just finished the first year of a five-year, $197.2 million contract, with the Magic taking on the final four years and $163.2 million remaining on his deal. Those sound like big numbers, but the salary cap is projected to eclipse $200 million by 2028-29, so even though Bane’s salary rises each season, the percentage of the salary cap he takes up declines.
*Figures via Spotrac
Bane, as of right now, will be the 44th highest paid player in 2025-26, and that ranking will only fall as players sign new deals and extensions. He might not have been the most famous player on the Grizzlies, but over the past four seasons, he has averaged 20.2 points and 4.3 assists per game on 40.7% 3-point shooting while playing solid defense. His 3.0 BPM and 9.9 VORP over that span easily has him as a top-50 player and puts him in range of the top-30. Anyway you slice it, Bane is on an incredibly team-friendly contract that covers all of his prime, none of his decline, and will only look better with each passing season. Just look at his contract compared to Jaylen Brown’s.
*Figures via Spotrac
The final bit of the equation centers on who the Magic sent to the Grizzlies. Cole Anthony is a solid backup point guard with one year left on his deal before a $13.1 million team option for 2026-27, and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope has one year left before a $21.6 million player option for his age-33 season. Pope was an excellent cog in the Nuggets' machine, but he experienced a massive offensive dropoff in Orlando, and it’d be safe to say his contract is viewed as a negative asset at this point.
A better way to look at the trade is like this: The Magic turned four unprotected first-round picks that are unlikely to produce anything more than role players, a bad contract, and a backup point guard on a neutral contract into a top-30 player on an excellent contract who fits perfectly into their roster. From a value standpoint, I find it hard to believe that the Magic overpaid, and I would probably argue they underpaid.
The one area where the Magic will feel some pain is that they’ve diminished their roster maneuverability. However, they still have Anthony Black, Tristan Da Silva, Jett Howard, and Caleb Houston on rookie deals. Jonathan Isaac, Goga Bitadze, and Wendell Carter Jr are all on desirable contracts and productive frontcourt players. And they have the 25th pick in this upcoming draft via Denver, plus a host of extra second-round picks. If the Magic need to make moves, they still have valuable players, contracts, and sweeteners to facilitate deals. The cupboard might be out of crackers, but it’s far from dry.
As the Phoenix Suns, Brooklyn Nets, and Milwaukee Bucks have shown, draft-pick-heavy trades can go awry, but the Magic aren’t in that precarious situation. Franz Wagner is starting his rookie scale extension this season, Paolo Banchero will begin his in 2026-27, and Bane is locked in until 2028-29. When they finish the 2029-30 season and send Memphis their final draft pick to satisfy the trade, Wagner will be 28, Banchero 27, and Bane would be 31 if they chose to extend him. The Magic have locked into a young core with a half-decade-plus runway as a playoff team, and could conceivably morph into a true title contender. Unlike the aforementioned cautionary tales, the Magic aren’t staring down the aging curve barrel while they still owe draft picks.
To sum it all up, the visceral reactions to trades involving tremendous amounts of draft capital are usually overblown. The primary reason for this is draft picks outside of the lottery are not all that valuable, and even picks in the late lottery are decidedly meh– to use a technical term. Sometimes those picks do, in fact, turn into stars, but more often than not, they end up being marginal players who fill out a bench. Not all first-round picks are created equal.
The second component is that fans have a hard time contextualizing the value of player contracts. Take the Mikal Bridges trade as an example. The Knicks sent the Nets five first-round picks, Shake Milton, Bojan Bogdanovic, Mamadi Diakite, one second-round pick, and a pick-swap. That’s a lot, but Bridges only made $23.3 million this past season and will make $24.9 million in 2025-26. His contract allowed the Knicks to re-sign OG Anunoby, extend Jalen Brunson, and trade for Karl-Anthony Towns. Was all of that worth five first-round picks? Considering they made the Eastern Conference Finals for the first time this century, I’d say yes.
The final part is that in most of these huge draft pick hauls, the outgoing players are either on bad deals or marginal players in their own right. Simply put, the Nets and Grizzlies didn’t value Cole Anthony, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Shake Milton, and Bojan Bogdanovic. Their inclusion was purely financial, and it’s why so many low-value first-round picks had to be sent out.
NBA teams do overpay in trades, but generally speaking, the overpay is not in the value of the picks; it’s in the loss of flexibility. Draft picks act as currency or placeholders for value, and there is a finite supply. The value of a pick usually isn’t in the player it will provide, but in the avenues it opens. The question isn’t if four first-round picks are too much for Desmond Bane, it’s if Desmond Bane is worth the opportunity cost of limiting future moves. I say, “Yes,” but you’re free to say, “That’s a lot.”
For any inquiries about work, discussion, and the like, you can email me at nevin.l.brown@gmail.com.