Ernie, Charles, Kenny and Shaq weigh in on the flurry of league-altering moves made by the Lakers, including the addition of Luka Dončić.
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And on the sixth day, they rested.
Not because general managers and their front offices wanted to, but because the NBA’s trade deadline imposed a hard cutoff Thursday afternoon, forcing an end to what was arguably the league’s craziest week ever.
The 3 p.m. ET deadline was a moment in time, but this 2025 version qualified as a “trade week” at least, almost as a “trade season” if we look back to Dec. 15 when Thomas Bryant moved from Miami to Indiana and Dennis Schröder went from Brooklyn to Golden State.
As it turned out, that was just GMs clearing their throats. When time ran out Thursday, nine past or present All-Stars had been sent packing, with enough talent, Draft picks and cash moved around the board to fill one or two offseasons.
Twenty-six of the 30 teams did something by the deadline, with only Orlando, Denver, Portland and Minnesota (not for lack of trying) standing pat. Some moves were tiny, others loom as significant. A couple were poignant. A few were surprising. One was breathtaking.
Here are eight takeaways now that the smoke has cleared:
Oklahoma City, Cleveland and Boston defined the top tier of championship contenders when all these maneuvers began, and nothing appears to have altered that. The blockbuster turning Luka Dončić into a Laker and sending Anthony Davis to the Mavericks came from deep within the Western Conference, their new teams sitting in fifth and eighth place.
What has changed for so many, however, is the energy heading into the final 40% of the schedule. For some, this week will prove to be the popping of a Red Bull, a peak-and-crash of adrenaline. Others will don lab coats and tackle new chemistry formulas. Reality both intentional (Utah, Toronto) and grim (Phoenix, Chicago) already is setting in for a few.
The winner, at least short-term, still is TBD from a group betting that its brass ring this week will turn into a diamond-encrusted, paperweight-sized title trophy come June.
Whatever the opposite of tweaking is, that’s how the week began. The overnight shocker last weekend, exchanging cornerstone All-NBA stars, was a nosebleed-level transaction. It will play out over years, fully evaluated by counting championships and NBA Finals trips in a decade or so.
Dallas can make the argument that this serves them soonest, fitting Davis easily into the power forward spot. He should be a swell pick-and-roll partner for Kyrie Irving, and he’s a Kia Defensive Player of the Year candidate replacing Dončić’s minimal ministrations at that end.
The long game, though, should favor L.A. Dončić is a Top 5 player now and, not yet 26 (six years younger than Davis), figures to be so for a while. Beyond all the “face of the franchise” benefits he’ll bring, the Slovenian superstar can help the Lakers on the court now and carry them later. He makes teammates better and richer, and he is a perfect choice to ease LeBron James into a more distributive, pre-retirement role.
Dallas can’t “win” this trade unless Dončić’s fitness and health blow up when the deal itself — and this partnership with the body-as-temple James — gives him every motivation to get in his best shape ever.
Trading Khris Middleton, Giannis Antetokounmpo’s running mate for a dozen seasons, had to be a soul-shaking move for the Bucks. Kyle Kuzma is in his prime, finally in a Goldilocks setup after experiencing the highs (young guy on the 2020 “bubble” champs) and lows (bystander to Washington’s rebuild).
But Milwaukee GM Jon Horst has been shuffling his deck a lot over the past 20 months. Firing coach Mike Budenholzer. Acquiring Damian Lillard, while cutting loose Jrue Holiday. Firing Adrian Griffin. Hiring Doc Rivers. Scouring for help (Taurean Prince, Gary Trent Jr., Delon Wright). Trading two of his past three first-round draft picks (A.J. Johnson, Marjon Beauchamp) this week. And Middleton, too, all in a frantic attempt to prop open his team’s 2021 championship window and properly serve Antetokounmpo’s legacy.
Losing Holiday might have sealed that, though, for Antetokounmpo and Milwaukee.
Milwaukee addressed some scoring needs by trading for Kyle Kuzma, but other questions loom for the Bucks.
The highlights of the trade deadline, it says here, include:
• De’Aaron Fox to San Antonio. Fox and Victor Wembanyama have the potential to be a supercharged, supersized tandem running the league for a decade.
• Mark Williams to the Lakers. The 7-footer can be a dirty-work guy who fits this team perfectly (if he can stay on the floor). Williams, though 23, has battled injuries that have waylaid him for 127 of 212 games so far in his career. He needs to sign up for whatever Pilates, underwater treadmill and hyperbaric training regimen through which James puts Dončić.
• De’Andre Hunter to Cleveland. The Cavaliers won their corner of the trade market by demonstrating guts, eager to improve what wasn’t broken when they shipped valued role players Caris LeVert and Georges Niang to Atlanta. Hunter has been a Kia Sixth Man candidate and true pro in coming off the bench as part of the Hawks’ development of No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher. The rangy wing has had a scoring leap per 36 minutes (23.8 points) mostly by upping his 3-point game.
• Boston adds Torrey Craig. A below-the-radar move, Craig was waived by Chicago but sports a solid resume for pesky, physical defense for the defending champions.
There were lowlights from Thursday and the days leading up to the deadline, both active and passive:
• Dennis Schröder living out of a suitcase. The veteran guard was among the first shots fired with his move from the Nets to the Warriors. But he got shuttled to Utah Wednesday, then moved to Detroit Thursday. That makes 10 franchises in his 12 NBA seasons, nine in the past seven years.
• Timberwolves came up empty on Durant. Kevin Durant ultimately wasn’t interested in another new ZIP code, which scuttled Minnesota’s 11th-hour hope of teaming their young star Anthony Edwards with his Team USA pal. Good thing coach Chris Finch has been plumbing lately the talents of kids Rob Dillingham, Jaylen Clark and Terrence Shannon Jr. because the Wolves’ roster is pretty much as-is heading toward the postseason.
• Phoenix is nowhere. Looks like some of the harshest reminders that “super teams” have fallen out of fashion are coming for the Suns off the floor. ESPN had a report that labeled Phoenix’s locker room “toxic” with the failed assemblage of Durant, Devin Booker and Bradley Beal. The team offloaded unhappy center Jusuf Nurkić to Charlotte, which saves money and delivers young talent. But that’s deck chairs on the Titanic until the .500 Suns get traction in the standings.
• The Marcus Smart era ends in Memphis. The former Kia Defensive Player of the Year saw action in only 39 games with Memphis over two seasons and now heads to the Wizards. Memphis traded away Tyus Jones and the pick that became Bub Carrington (while Boston walked off with Kristaps Porzingis in the three-team deal).
• Poor Jaden Springer. That’s “poor” as in “unfortunate,” because Springer does have a $4 million salary. But the fourth-year guard could have cost Boston $16 million in tax-repeater penalties. So barely a week after he gave the Celtics helpful minutes in beating Houston and Chicago, he got sent to the Rockets (who then promptly waived him).
Jimmy Butler perhaps laid out a blueprint for others to follow now, finding his way out of South Florida for the fourth sour ending out of four career stops (Chicago, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Miami).
It was bad enough that Butler shirked obligations and seemed to lie — it wasn’t “joy,” it was always money — while under contract for $100 million this year and next. It got worse when Golden State rewarded his antics with the trade and a $112 million extension through 2026-27.
Question: If Dallas blinked at being on the hook to Dončić in a super-max contract averaging $69 million over five years, how can Warriors fans feel good about their team committing nearly $60 million to Butler in his age-37 season?
As Jimmy Butler is welcomed to the Warriors, will his presence allow them to rise in the West?
The term “sense of urgency” got tossed out so frequently in questions and answers in the Bulls’ post-trade deadline news conference that many thought a blizzard was raging from Waukegan down to Calumet City. But no, it was a term badly misused in referencing Chicago’s stuck-in-the-Play-In inertia.
The Bulls have had one winning season in the past five seasons, one playoff series and one playoff win. Leadership over that span has come from executive vice president Artūras Karnišovas and GM Marc Eversley, known colloquially as AKME, and about as effective as Wile E. Coyote’s gadgetry.
Trading Zach LaVine to Sacramento didn’t reap what matters most for a team in the Bulls’ predicament — a first-round pick (other than a return of their own previously traded one) — any more than Karnišovas’ shedding of DeMar DeRozan or Alex Caruso. Draft work has been spotty with forward Patrick Williams serving as a testament to that with so much good money thrown after bad. And then there’s center Nikola Vučević still stuck there, a 34-year-old with near All-Star skills wasted on this unambitious team.
Look, there’s a reason the house-makeover TV shows permit the homeowners to participate in the demolition work but leave the remodeling to the experts. AKME seems better at the former than the latter.
There are bargains to be had, needs to be addressed, tweaks to be made and additional relocations to report. Beginning right now.
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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on X.
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