Nine players who have appeared in the NBA All-Star Game were traded between opening night and Thursday’s trade deadline, and we’re not just talking about one-time flukes here. Luka Doncic, Anthony Davis, De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine, Khris Middleton, Brandon Ingram, Jimmy Butler, Andrew Wiggins and D’Angelo Russell have all moved in the past month or so. Common sense would dictate that the league would want to take a breather after the most active deadline in its history.
But come on, this is the NBA we’re talking about here. Player movement leads to more player movement. Chaos invites chaos. The ripple effects of the 2025 deadline will be felt for years to come and should lead to a similarly explosive offseason once the dust settles on the upcoming playoffs.
Inevitably, more stars will be moved. Who’s coming next? Here are the five next All-Stars who could pop up on the trade block.
The first real rumblings of a Kevin Durant trade came early in the 2024 offseason. At the time, I wrote that Phoenix’s championship odds had already dropped so low that a trade was worthwhile. The Suns shut the door quickly. Team owner Mat Ishbia said publicly in June, and then again in November, that Phoenix planned to keep Durant and try to make a go of it with a slightly tweaked version of the roster that got swept out of the first round a year ago.
Well, how’d that turn out? The Suns are 25-25. They spent the past two months trying and failing to trade Bradley Beal. While we’ll never know for sure, it certainly seems as though they would have traded Durant ahead of this deadline if he had been comfortable rejoining the Golden State Warriors. For now, the Suns plan to take the rest of the season to evaluate what they have. They’ve added Nick Richards, Cody Martin and Vasilije Micic. In the unlikely event that they turn things around, perhaps this era is salvageable.
If the Suns go into the offseason with another playoff disappointment and a 37-year-old Durant on an expiring contract, the charade officially ends. They cannot justify keeping Durant at that point because they’d simply lack the means to put a winner around him before he begins to decline. That is especially true given the expensive extension he is eligible to receive. At that point, they’d need to pivot in one of two directions: either a re-tool in which Durant is sent out for depth, defense and youth, or a full-on rebuild in which a Durant trade is followed by a Devin Booker blockbuster.
Warriors had Kevin Durant trade lined up in deal that would’ve sent Jimmy Butler to Suns, per report
Jasmyn Wimbish
Either path leads to a Durant trade, and the market widens when the offseason comes. The Houston Rockets, who notably control multiple future Suns first-round picks, will have seen their young roster in the playoffs by then. They’ll have a better idea of what they are and are not willing to trade. Matching salary gets a bit easier for the Dallas Mavericks, who will be able to aggregate Max Christie and Caleb Martin by then and will also have access to their own 2032 first-round pick as a bargaining chip. That pick has a chance to be quite valuable if Dallas is indeed as fixated on winning right now as they seem to be. Memphis reportedly tried to get Durant ahead of this deadline. The Grizzlies could easily try again next summer.
Even at his age, Durant’s skill set is so unique that he will be extremely coveted as a trade candidate. He is one of the greatest scorers of all-time, but no plays need to be run for him. He does not monopolize offenses as most high-usage scorers do. He doesn’t hurt you on defense either, and is still a fairly good secondary rim protector.
Anybody could use Kevin Durant. Except, apparently, the Suns.
Despite his poor shooting, this had been a pretty solid season out of Trae Young up until a few weeks ago. He’s still leading the NBA in assists, and while he remains a defensive liability, the Hawks were slowly figuring out how to work around that by surrounding him with wings. The early-season Hawks were generally competitive and even made a run to the In-Season Tournament semifinals in Las Vegas.
But things have gone south for Atlanta since Jalen Johnson was ruled out for the year due to injury. The Hawks are 1-9 in their last 10 games, and the frustration is simmering. Young can become a free agent as soon as 2026, and on deadline day, Chris Haynes went on NBATV and called Young “a fierce competitor” and reiterated that he “wants to win.” When an insider drops a report like that about a player nearing the end of his contract, it’s generally code for “the player wants the team to make meaningful steps to improve or he wants to wind up on another team.”
The Hawks took a step in the other direction on Thursday. They traded De’Andre Hunter and Bogdan Bogdanovic in a series of moves that seem to have been largely based in a desire to cut costs. They are currently below the salary cap for next season, but they aren’t slated to have significant room, and even if they did, it’s not an especially strong free agent class. Atlanta has a first-round pick from the Lakers this June, but doesn’t control its own pick again until 2028. Their paths toward improvement are pretty limited.
All of this suggests that, barring something unforeseen, Young’s time in Atlanta may be coming to an end. Obviously, this creates serious questions in Atlanta, but the idea that the Hawks might trade Young should absolutely terrify the rest of the league for one key reason: those picks they owe to the Spurs. If Atlanta makes a Young trade that pushes them in more of a rebuilding direction, which probably makes more sense for them in a vacuum, that could end with the Hawks sending two high lottery picks to Victor Wembanyama’s team in 2026 and 2027. The last thing anyone wants is to make San Antonio better moving forward, so this is a situation to watch not just for the Hawks, but for everyone.
Be honest, if someone told you two weeks ago that a superstar was going to be traded on the basis of their conditioning ahead of this deadline, you probably would have picked Williamson, right? Well, just because Doncic went first doesn’t mean Williamson is explicitly safe.
The Pelicans made their big move at the deadline by sending Brandon Ingram to Toronto. That deal actually did answer a few questions for New Orleans. Long-term starting slots are now available to Trey Murphy and Herb Jones without Ingram getting in the way. The Pelicans have found a gem of a young center in Yves Missi this season, and two-way steal Brandon Boston Jr. figures to be a long-term piece as well. Right now, the Pelicans are fairly well-positioned in terms of young talent and assets, and moving Ingram should help them duck the luxury tax next season, which ownership has treated as a necessity in that market. If the Pelicans want to reboot this thing around Williamson, they have the tools to do so.
The question here is whether or not they should. In truth, the single most valuable asset they control right now is probably the 14% chance they have to draft Cooper Flagg this June via their surprisingly high first-round pick. New Orleans didn’t expect to be one of the NBA’s worst teams this season, but it is. And with Dejounte Murray sidelined with a torn Achilles, next season isn’t looking so hot either. That’s before factoring in Williamson’s extensive injury history. If he misses much time next season, what’s going to protect the Pelicans from another disaster like this one has been? That pick, along with the other young players in place, gives the Pelicans an escape hatch. It’s a real opportunity for them to kick off the next era of Pelicans basketball without having to start from scratch.
Brandon Ingram trade grades: Raptors get ‘B-‘ for adding All-Star as Pels bail on pairing with Zion Williamson
Sam Quinn
Williamson’s presence puts general manager David Griffin in a difficult position. The Pelicans haven’t won a playoff series on Griffin’s watch. If he keeps Williamson and the pattern of injuries and conditioning issues persists, he gets fired. But if he trades Williamson and he suddenly turns into the superstar the world expected him to be? That could also easily get him fired. There’s no right answer here, but Griffin has pulled just about every other lever. Nothing has worked. At a certain point, the Pelicans can’t keep betting seasons on an outcome they’ve never seen.
Someone will make a substantial offer for Williamson. He’s genuinely that gifted. Only one team gets to hoist the trophy every year, and doing so requires risks. The reward is a proven talent that most of the league almost never has access to. How many chances do teams like the Hornets or Pacers or Kings ever get to acquire a player like Williamson? One of them is going to take the bait and try to revitalize his career if the Pelicans give them the chance. After yet another disappointing season, now seems like it might finally be the moment in which they do so.
Is Randle still a star? His stock has certainly tumbled over the last year and change. An injury ended last season for him before the playoffs. The Knicks didn’t give him a contract extension when he was eligible, and then they traded him to Minnesota, where he has struggled to fit in. Today, few would categorize him as an All-Star… except he’s made three All-Star teams and two All-NBA teams this decade. He’s only 30. His New York peak might be behind him, but he’s still a fairly big-name player.
The trouble here is that he also has a big salary. If Randle was still playing like an All-Star, Minnesota would be fine with him picking up his $30 million player option. He isn’t, and that raises serious concerns with key reserves Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Naz Reid slated to reach unrestricted free agency this offseason. Unless Minnesota is comfortable with another year paying a monster tax bill, they’re going to have to find some way to get off of Randle’s money.
Maybe they’ll do so in a productive way. Chris Haynes reported Thursday that Minnesota made a last ditch effort to try to land Kevin Durant at the deadline. It came up short, and it would have been almost impossible logistically as both the Timberwolves and Suns are second-apron teams. But it shows how creative general manager Tim Connelly is when it comes to big trades. He’s not going to just look to dump Randle. He’s going to explore every possible avenue toward squeezing value out of a player that doesn’t make sense on his team.
That’s going to create opportunities for someone, perhaps a team with slightly lower ambitions than Minnesota. Randle’s limitations as a shooter and a defender likely preclude him from ever being a core part of a championship team, but he can certainly still help someone win 40-45 games as he did for the Knicks on multiple occasions. If you’re just looking to stay afloat and sell some tickets, Randle is the star for you.
Bucks fans roll their eyes every time we do this. Antetokounmpo has been making these lists for half a decade now. In fairness, he drives a lot of the drama himself. Every time he’s nearing free agency or antsy about Milwaukee’s future, he puts public pressure on the team to find a way to improve before he starts looking elsewhere. To their credit, the Bucks always oblige. They got him Jrue Holiday in 2020 and they won a championship. They got him Damian Lillard three years later.
The results haven’t been quite as strong yet, but there’s still time for them to change that. Maybe they go on a deep playoff run this spring and Antetokounmpo feels content with this roster. Maybe they don’t, but somehow manage to pull another rabbit out of their hat this summer with a third major move. They do still have their 2031 first-round pick at their disposal as well as swap rights in 2032 once offseason arrives.
But man, the deck is stacked against the Bucks long-term right now. The reviews on the Kyle Kuzma-for-Khris Middleton swap have been tepid. Middleton may no longer have been reliably healthy, but he and Antetokounmpo are close, and at his peak, he was far better than Kuzma’s ever been. That deal got the Bucks below the second apron, which opened the door to salary aggregation trades. They didn’t make one when more improvements to this roster are probably needed. Couldn’t they, for example, have offered to step in on the Marcus Smart salary dump Memphis made and tried to take a chance on him using the salaries of Bobby Portis and Pat Connaughton?
As it stands right now, the Bucks just don’t have enough versatility and defense on the wing, and with Antetokounmpo playing some backup center, Portis seems like a luxury they can no longer afford.
Khris Middleton trade grades: Bucks get ‘C-‘ for moving franchise mainstay to Wizards for Kyle Kuzma
Jack Maloney
Brook Lopez is a 36-year-old impending free agent. Milwaukee has no long-term replacement for him at center unless Antetokounmpo ever moves to that position full-time. Lillard is having an All-Star season. He’s also 34 and on a very expensive contract that limits Milwaukee’s flexibility. Whether you believe the Bucks are true contenders or not, this season is probably their best shot in the near-term just considering the state of the rest of the roster. They’d need to knock this offseason out of the park to change that. They’ve done it before.
But if Antetokounmpo wants to seriously compete for championships again in his prime, he kind of has to start thinking about where he’ll do that now. He’s 30. He plays a physically demanding style that is based on his elite athleticism. And the budding superpowers of the next era, the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder, are still in their infancy. Your best chance at beating Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Victor Wembanyama is probably going to come sooner rather than later.
If the Bucks are knocked out of the playoffs early on, or if their offseason fails to yield significant improvement, the pressure is going to turn up again. Whether it’s this summer or next, it seems as though Antetokounmpo’s future, whether it’s in Milwaukee or elsewhere, is going to get settled in the somewhat near future.
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