Winners and Losers of NBA Trade Season
For as great as NBA basketball is, NBA transactions are just as entertaining, and this trade deadline was a bumper crop. We saw countless All-Stars moved, All-NBA stalwarts swapped and picks moving fast and furiously. Now, with the NBA trade deadline over, all of us armchair executives are brimming with opinions. These are my winners and losers of the 2024-25 trade season.
Winners
Lakers Lu-ka Land
This is the most obvious win in the history of sports. The Lakers turned Anthony Davis and one 2029 first-round pick into Luka Doncic. Simply, 25-year-old MVP-caliber players are never available, and if they were, they’d go for more than one player and a single pick. Davis is awesome. He’s a top-15 player in the NBA, but the difference between a top-15 guy and a top-four guy is massive. I’d rather have one Luka Doncic than Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving. The Lakers looked like they were heading into the muddled middle with LeBron’s eventual retirement and Davis’ continual trudge into his mid-30s, now they have another generational superstar to lead their franchise for the next decade. It seems impossible, but the Lakers have basically had a top-75 player on their roster for the franchise’s entire existence.
Owners’ Pocketbook
My favorite part of the NBA trade deadline is the mad scramble teams make to duck below the luxury tax. To be clear, I absolutely hate that teams do it, but it is funny nonetheless. However, the one silver lining to it is that the teams getting out of the tax or lowering their tax bill are also shrinking the total tax payouts to the even stingier teams. In that sense, maybe it is good that the Lakers shaved $10 million off their luxury tax payments when the Pelicans and Pacers would rather die than venture into the tax.
Trader Danny
The Jazz didn’t make any major moves, but that doesn’t mean trader Danny wasn’t all over the deadline. Starting with their January 21st trade with the Suns, the Jazz were part of five deals that netted them one first-round pick for the cost of three low-value firsts, and four second-round picks. They acquired guys just to move them like a dropship outlet. Did they move or land anyone of note? Who knows, who cares, they’re just happy to be a part of the action. The NBA trade deadline wouldn’t work without people like Trader Danny. He’s the lubricant in the trade machine. It may seem greasy and unnecessary, but everything would come to a grinding halt without it.
Spurs & Kings
The Spurs and the Kings engaged in a fun little three-team trade. The Kings sent De’Aaron Fox to San Antonio, the Chicago Bulls, the aforementioned third team, sent Zach LaVine to Sacramento, and picks went to the Kings and Bulls. There were other players involved, but that was mostly for salary-dumping purposes. The cost to acquire Fox wasn’t exorbitant; they kept the best of their picks and young players, and he should fit well next to Victor Wembanyama. Bully for the Spurs! The Kings get Zach LaVine, who should help them maintain their status as a lower-tier playoff team in the West, and they get some assets to play with should they want to go for it or rebuild.
Hornets
The Hornets were busy bees at the deadline. They turned Nick Richards, Cody Martin, Mark Williams, Vasilije Micic, and a 2026 second-round pick into three second-round picks, a 2026 first-rounder, an unprotected 2031 first-round pick, a 2030 pick swap, Dalton Knecht, Cam Reddish, and Jusuf Nurkic. I know alchemists never figured out how to turn iron into gold, but this is damn close. Nick Richards is a backup center, and Mark Williams is a fine offensive big who has some of the most horrifying rim protection numbers for a seven-footer with a 7’7 wingspan you’ll ever see. Yeah, they flipped those guys into a net of two second-rounders, an unprotected first, and a lottery pick from the 2024 draft. The Hornets’ new regime has done an excellent job acquiring assets and correctly valuing their own players. They might not be good next season, but they’re on the right track.
Losers
Bulls
Honestly, I don’t know what to say. The Bulls gave up Zach LaVine to get their own pick back. While that sounds like a great idea, the pick is top-ten protected and then top-eight protected for the next two seasons. As a team that should be tanking, getting a pick back that you can and should be able to keep is not a huge value add. But the real problem is what they didn’t do. Nikola Vucevic is still on the roster, and instead of trading Lonzo Ball, they extended him (on a contract I like). The Bulls should be scraping everything for value like a dying business purchased by a private equity firm. Instead, they turned Zach LaVine into two bad contracts in Zach Collins and Kevin Huerter and a first they could have had back if they wanted and nothing else. Chicago deserves better.
Bucks
The Bucks turned Khris Middleton into Kyle Kuzma in one of my least favorite moves of the deadline. Kuzma is younger, cheaper, and more available than Middleton, but he’s also worse at basketball. The Bucks saved a ton of money with the move and got more flexibility to make other moves, but they could have done that without turning their third-best player into their fifth-best player. Middleton’s injury issues and future salary were huge concerns, but Kuzma is the least serious player ever. He’s in love with himself on and off the court, and I don’t know how easily he’ll go back to being a role player after spending three-and-half seasons cos-playing Paul Pierce in 2004. The Bucks lowered their ceiling to raise their availability floor.
Nico Harrison
Nico Harrison traded Luka Doncic in the dead of night for the worst return in NBA history, admitted he only negotiated with one team, and then gave a press conference where he basically said, “YOLO, LOL, yeah, I might get fired, and who cares if I do? I might be dead.” Harrison admitted that every person he broached the trade with initially thought he was joking. He also said he didn’t consult Jason Kidd but assured everyone he knows what types of players Kidd likes. This man is on the clock. As a matter of fact, he climbed up Big Ben, yelled, “I’m on the fucking clock,” and then proceeded to urinate on stunned passersby. He did all of this because he’s convinced that 25-year-old Luka Doncic, who has made five consecutive All-NBA first teams, is the man holding the Mavericks back and not the one man dragging them to relevancy. I literally cannot wait for him to be fired, and I shan’t be waiting long.
Rob Pelinka’s Encore
Man, Rob Pelinka was on a heater. He straight-up pwned Nico Harrison in negotiations for Luka Doncic. It has been reported he was able to talk him down from including a second first-round pick and additional players. That is a Yoda-level Jedi mind trick. That is David Copperfield levels of illusion. That is what Danny Ocean wishes he was. And to top it all off, he wore the most unnecessarily expensive leather jacket at Doncic’s introductory press conference. Rob was feeling himself, and he deserved to. Unfortunately, caught up in the ecstasy of pulling off the greatest trade ever, he turned around and fired the rest of the Lakers’ assets into the sun for Mark Williams. Williams has played 84 games over two-and-half seasons primarily due to back and foot injuries. He has graded out as a poor defender every season. But he will be a nice lob-finishing big for Luka. Here’s the thing: it’s not hard to find a tall pogo-stick of a man to catch lobs from Luka. And it’s certainly not worth an unprotected 2031 pick, a 2030 pick swap, and a guy you just selected in the lottery. As of now, the Lakers cannot trade any first-round picks and have no young players of value. Is Mark Williams worth that? Absolutely not. Luka might make that irrelevant, but this was an unforced error.
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