The Winners And Losers Of A Wild 2025 NBA Trade Deadline

The 2025 NBA trade deadline has come and gone in one of the most impactful week’s of trade activity the league has ever seen. Every star that requested a trade got dealt (which doesn’t always happen), most of the league got involved in at least one trade, and the week began with the most shocking deal in league history.

As 3:00 p.m. ET arrived and everyone around the league was done making trades, we could finally take a breath and start to settle out who had the best and worst weeks at the end of the NBA’s transactional period. In this space, we’ll look at the winners and losers of the deadline, where I do try to take into account the goals of each team when determining whether they were successful. Some teams have a long-term vision while others are looking to win right now, but there are a few teams that I just can’t quite figure out what they’re actually doing (and I’m not sure they do either). There are others that were active but fall somewhere in the middle for me (hi, Kings and Bulls) because I get what they did but I don’t think they changed their place in NBA purgatory.

Without further ado, let’s start with the winners.

WINNERS

Los Angeles Lakers

If you get Luka Doncic without having to give up everything, you’re a winner — and we’ve explored that trade in length here. The Lakers made the most stunning player acquisition in arguably franchise and league history (which is a high bar for the Lakers) and now have their post-LeBron era all figured out suddenly. Then, on Wednesday night, they made a bold move for Mark Williams, trading the rest of their movable assets for the Hornets big man they hope can be their version of Dereck Lively II, who Doncic adored in Dallas. Losing AD is a very significant loss and I’m not sold the Lakers became a legit contender in the West this season. That said, I don’t think they were going to be one with Davis, even if they made a different move to build around James and AD, and they now have a long-term plan in place that didn’t exist a week ago.

I do see the vision for what this team can be with Doncic and Williams, but they are investing heavily in Williams who has played just 84 games in 2.5 seasons and has been spotty, at best, defensively despite some considerable tools. If he’s healthy and the defense was simply a product of struggling to focus on a terrible Hornets team (with other bad defenders), this team could certainly make the playoffs in the West and then anything goes when you have Luka and LeBron in a playoff series. That’s not a small if, but after years of Lakers fans wondering when Rob Pelinka would go for it, he did just that.

San Antonio Spurs

The Spurs managed to land their point guard of the future in De’Aaron Fox without having to part with any of their best young players or assets. They sent three firsts out in the deal, but only two of them are real firsts (the 2025 Hornets pick is lotto-protected and then becomes two seconds, and as discussed above, the Hornets are dreadful this year) and they held on to not only Devin Vassell and Stephon Castle, but also kept Keldon Johnson, Chris Paul, and Harrison Barnes. They should be able to at least be a Play-In team in the West now and will be a threat to make it to the playoffs from there. Beyond that, they have a ton of picks still at their disposal and can use the second half of this season to evaluate exactly what they need to add between Wembanyama and Fox and how the rest of their supporting cast fits into that vision. It was an aggressive move, but also one that wasn’t forced, which is exactly how this team needs to operate right now.

Jimmy Butler (and to a slightly lesser degree the Golden State Warriors)

Jimmy Butler didn’t get to Phoenix like he wanted, but the Warriors are a nice consolation prize and he got the max extension (albeit for just two years) that he was hoping for. Butler is going to make $60.5 million annually over the next two seasons, which is an outrageous amount of money and he gets to play with Stephen Curry, which just generally seems to be a joy. For those reasons, Jimmy is a winner here.

I’m still not entirely sold on this fixing the Warriors problems entirely (and I’m just generally skeptical Jimmy can stay healthy at this point of his career), but I will give Golden State credit for executing on a vision finally and without giving up all of their assets to do it. If they had gone into the deadline with the very public determination to get a star and come away with just Nikola Vucevic, it would’ve been fairly embarrassing. They didn’t get Durant (who didn’t want to come back), but they do land Butler and I can certainly see how this could work well. There is a scenario where Jimmy and Draymond Green clash and everything goes terribly wrong, but the Warriors weren’t going anywhere soon by staying the course so I call this a mild win for the Warriors.

Bradley Beal

Bradley Beal likes living in Phoenix and will continue to do that. The most powerful man in the NBA stood firm with his no-trade clause and now gets to keep getting paid a lot of money to be in a place he likes. Good for you, Bradley.

Cleveland Cavaliers

The only team in the top-3 of the standings in either conference to actually buy at the deadline were the Cavs, and I think their move to bring in De’Andre Hunter was shrewd and well thought out. This is a team that has been doomed in playoffs past by believing too much in their depth and they went out and made a consolidation trade on the wing for a presumptive upgrade. I don’t think this is a deal that makes them stone-cold favorites, but I do think Hunter is better for what they need than having both Caris LeVert and Georges Niang. They have some lineup versatility with Hunter and Max Strus and he can play some small-ball four when needed. Hunter’s having a career-year and if he can continue that in Cleveland, they’ll be even stronger in the playoffs for it.

Charlotte Hornets

Of all the potential sellers out there, the Hornets were the ones that got the job done. They wanted to acquire picks and went out there and got some good assets by trading away players on a team going nowhere right now. Taking on Jusuf Nurkic’s deal to get a first (that has some wild swap rights and protections before it gets to them, but should be like, mid-20s in 2026) for Cody Martin and Vasilije Micic was solid, and while I like Mark Williams, if you can get Dalton Knecht and an unprotected first for a guy with a worrisome injury history, you almost have to do it — the pick swap is so unlikely to convey I’m not even really counting that as an asset. They know they’re building for the future, got some assets in, didn’t part with any cornerstone guys (aside from, possibly, Williams), and they get to see if Knecht has some juice. I don’t fully see how you build a team around LaMelo Ball-Brandon Miller-Dalton Knecht, but, those are three fun players and I will enjoy listening to Eric Collins get very excited when they do stuff.

Oklahoma City Thunder

They didn’t make any real moves, just more Sam Presti draft pick hoarding, but none of the best teams in the West got better (Memphis, Houston, Denver) and they got Chet Holmgren back in the lineup. That’s a pretty good week, even if there was chaos everywhere else in the West.

Dennis Schroder’s SkyMiles Account

Schroder got traded from Brooklyn to Golden State early in the year. Then got dealt to Miami in the Jimmy Butler trade but rerouted to Utah but then rerouted again to Detroit where, I think, he is going to actually end up. I know he didn’t actually fly to all of those places, but the man is really racking up the destinations this year.

LOSERS

Dallas Mavericks, but mostly Nico Harrison

It’s been five days and I still cannot get over the Mavs trading away Doncic. I wrote in length about how I hated the process of this deal and how it completely ignores (and actively spits in the face of) why Mavs fans loved the organization. I don’t even think folks like Shaq are necessarily wrong that the Mavs will be better the next two years than the Lakers, I just don’t think Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis, and this roster are going to win a title. That has to happen for this not to be a disaster, and as many Mavs fans have pointed out, even with a title, they will still be mad about this.

Nico Harrison has gone from mostly anonymous to to the dictionary definition of “bad GM” in the eyes of the average NBA fan over the last week, which is a wild turn. He didn’t help himself with his explanation of the deal and the more details that emerge about the negotiations, the more he comes off looking terrible for not getting more for a generational star that is 25 years old. Beyond the Doncic deal, the Mavs also traded Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin which I grade out as a net neutral for Dallas. I just don’t know how this all works and have a very hard time seeing this being anything other than a miss, with the potential for it to be an all-time organizational misstep.

Phoenix Suns

The Suns should send Nico Harrison a gift basket because if it weren’t for Dallas, everyone would be talking about what a catastrophe the Phoenix organization is right now. Not only did they spend months trying to pressure Bradley Beal into waiving his no-trade clause, they very publicly listened to offers on Kevin Durant and then failed to find a trade for him. In the end, they had to attach a pick to Jusuf Nurkic to dump his salary and now have the most wretched on-court vibes in all of the NBA (including Dallas!). This summer, a Durant trade request feels like a near certainty and it’s hard to imagine they recoup close to what they gave up to get him a few years ago.

Memphis Grizzlies

The Grizzlies were apparently in on Butler and Durant talks, but neither veteran star had any interest in playing with Memphis despite them being a top-3 team in the West. In the end, all the Grizzlies could do was salary dump Marcus Smart and Jake LaRavia. Having to attach a first rounder to Smart when they gave up two firsts to get him less than two years ago is absolutely brutal, and it’s a borderline miracle the Grizzlies are still in as good a place as they are as an organization. This team is still good, but they had designs on cementing their place as a contender at the deadline and instead could only pull off some financial savings.

Toronto Raptors

I’ll be honest I don’t see the vision of pairing Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram. I don’t think what the Raptors gave up for Ingram was crazy in a vacuum. I think Ingram, at this point, is probably a little underrated because of last year’s playoff series with OKC and then his injury this year. However, I just do not see how you build a really good team around Barnes and Ingram together occupying a lot of the same space. It feels a lot like the problems Toronto had previously with Barnes, Pascal Siakam, and OG Anunoby, and they’re just doing it again with a different flair.

Philadelphia 76ers

The Sixers did a bunch of salary dumping at the deadline, which is not where they expected to be before the season. I will say, the Caleb Martin for Quentin Grimes trade has some upside, which I don’t hate for them. Trading Reggie Jackson and a first to Washington for Jared Butler and four seconds is a trade I don’t even know how to judge from a value standpoint, but whatever, it’s fine. The one that was really rough was having to attach picks to KJ Martin to salary dump him to Detroit after signing him to an inflated deal before the season with the direct purpose of being able to trade him at the deadline. They did that, I guess, but they weren’t expecting it to be a salary dump with picks attached. A brutal season continued this week for the Sixers.

Brooklyn Nets

The Nets were supposed to be sellers at the deadline, but after trading Dennis Schroder and Dorian Finney-Smith earlier in the year, they didn’t make a single deadline move. It’s not a disaster, as they clearly didn’t get the kind of offers they wanted for the likes of Nic Claxton or Cam Johnson, but after spending a lot of effort and draft capital to get their own picks back from Houston to tank, they now still have a fairly competitive team. It’ll be interesting to see who gets shut down (and how soon) by Brooklyn, but there’s a very real chance they don’t have the coveted top-4 lottery odds this year.

Milwaukee Bucks

I do get it. Khris Middleton is old and not on the court a ton and…I get it. However, boy, it feels rough to trade him for Kyle Kuzma in the midst of his worst season as a pro. Perhaps Kuz will come to life in Milwaukee. It wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen someone just completely lose focus and motivation playing on the league’s worst team and then find the spark once on a contender. That said, I hate seeing Middleton go out like this in Milwaukee given how much he meant to that organization and their title run, but the game is the game. I’m just not sold this makes the Bucks a much better threat in the East.