Ranking the 5 Most Impactful NBA Trades of the Last 5 Seasons
With the 2025 NBA trade deadline only a few weeks away, it's a good time to emphasize just how much of the league's landscape is determined by blockbuster deals.
We'll do that by looking back at the most impactful trades of the last five seasons.
The trades we'll feature skew toward those that affected championship races, built or demolished contenders and otherwise made sizable ripples across the league. And while we've seen plenty of smaller transactions make differences for title winners and conference finalists, we will be biased toward bigger names.
Everyone agrees P.J. Washington helped the Dallas Mavericks reach the 2024 Finals when he came over from the Charlotte Hornets last year, for example, but we're not going to feature that deal over one that involves a Hall of Famer and a half-dozen first-round picks.
Teams are gearing up for transaction season in 2025. Here's a look at the five most significant trades of the last five years.
5. February 2023: Brooklyn Trades KD to Phoenix
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The Trade
Brooklyn Nets Receive: Mikal Bridges, Jae Crowder, Cameron Johnson, 2023 first-round pick (Noah Clowney), 2025 first-round pick, 2027 first-round pick, 2028 first-round swap, 2029 first-round pick
Phoenix Suns Receive: Kevin Durant, T.J. Warren
James Harden had been traded several months prior, and the Nets' latest attempt at a superteam was coming apart. Durant's stated preference to play for the Suns complicated matters, but Brooklyn still managed to acquire quite a haul with limited leverage. This wouldn't be the last time Phoenix outbid nonexistent competition for a star.
Brooklyn managed to turn Bridges into five more first-rounders in a 2024 offseason deal with the New York Knicks, later using Phoenix's 2027 and 2029 firsts to reacquire its own 2025 and 2026 first-rounders.
From a position of limited strength, Brooklyn used the KD trade to set itself up for clean books, tanking and a clear runway to success through the draft and free agency—an incredible achievement given where it was toward the end of the KD-Harden-Kyrie era.
The Suns have struggled to keep their core healthy and are among the league's most inflexible outfits because of trades exactly like the one that netted KD, who's been stellar when on the floor.
The KD trade was the short-sighted move that precipitated several others. If the Suns don't mortgage their future to get Durant, do they go all-in on Bradley Beal, who's now coming off the bench, and generally treat their draft assets like they self-destruct if not traded?
Phoenix won 50 games in 2023-24, but it didn't profile as a true contender then and doesn't now. The Suns would be better off today if they still had all their picks intact and a core of Devin Booker, Mikal Bridges and Cameron Johnson.
Impact: This move kick-started another Nets rebuild and put the Suns on a path to fully mortgaging their future in pursuit of instant gratification.
4. August 2021: Lakers Acquire Russell Westbrook
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The Trade
Los Angeles Lakers Receive: Russell Westbrook, 2024 second-round pick, 2028 second-round pick
Washington Wizards Receive: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Montrezl Harrell, Kyle Kuzma and No. 22 pick (Isaiah Jackson)
We'll focus mainly on deals that built contenders, but this one ripped the Lakers from the ranks of the league's top teams. Yes, L.A. made the Western Conference Finals in 2023, but that achievement came in spite of the Russ acquisition. Not because of it.
In sending out KCP and Kuzma, the Lakers pivoted away from exactly the kind of athletic, two-way role players that had produced a 2020 championship run (and always fit best around LeBron James). Westbrook, though diminished from his MVP peak, was still a stat-stuffing, ball-dominant alpha. He averaged 22.2 points, 11.7 assists and 11.5 rebounds with the Wizards in 2020-21 but never made sense next to James and Anthony Davis on a team that lacked quality support pieces.
KCP would go on to start for the title-winning Nuggets after escaping Washington via trade, and the Lakers finished 33-49 during Russ' first season.
To unload Westbrook the following year, the Lakers had to give the Jazz a 2027 first-round pick. The principal asset coming back to L.A. in that exchange was D'Angelo Russell, whose defensive ineptitude was one of several factors that shortened the Lakers' 2023 and 2024 postseason runs. The Lakers just recently sent D-Lo and three second-rounders to the Nets for Dorian Finney-Smith.
Impact: The Lakers set two years of James' late prime on fire, burning flexibility and real chances to contend in exchange for a player who cost them more assets to jettison and never projected as a good fit in the first place.
3. July 2022: Utah Sends Rudy Gobert to Minnesota
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The Trade
Minnesota Timberwolves Receive: Rudy Gobert
Utah Jazz Receive: Malik Beasley, Patrick Beverley, Jarred Vanderbilt, Leandro Bolmaro, draft rights to Walker Kessler, 2023 first-round pick, 2025 first-round pick, 2027 first-round pick, 2029 first-round pick (top-five-protected), swap rights on 2026 first-round pick
Rudy Gobert cost half a decade's worth of first-round picks to acquire, but he addressed the Wolves' most glaring weaknesses at the time: defensive rebounding and defense at the rim.
Already a three-time DPOY when Minnesota acquired him, Gobert struggled to fit in during his first season with the team. In 2023-24, he found his footing and led the Wolves to the league's top defensive rating, collecting a fourth DPOY along the way. Minnesota enjoyed the best season in franchise history and reached the conference finals that season, essentially validating the pick outlay it took to acquire Gobert.
The Wolves have since dealt away Karl-Anthony Towns and are struggling offensively, but they remain a playoff threat on the strength of their defense.
Utah's side of things is far simpler. It offloaded a costly veteran for an all-time haul of picks and cheap contracts. Though the Jazz have yet to make progress in their rebuild, they're flexible and well positioned going forward. The key indicator Utah sold at the right time: The Wolves wouldn't come anywhere close to getting what Utah did for Gobert if they were to trade the big man today.
Impact: This deal disassembled one contender in Utah and built another in Minnesota.
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2. Boston's Trio of Deals
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The Trades
- February 2022: Celtics acquire Derrick White from the San Antonio Spurs for Josh Richardson, Romeo Langford, 2022 first-round pick, 2028 first-round swap
- June 2023: Celtics acquire Kristaps Porziņģis from the Washington Wizards, No. 25 pick in 2023 draft (via MEM), 2024 first-round pick (top-four-protected via GSW) for Marcus Smart, Danilo Gallinari, Mike Muscala, No. 35 pick in 2023 draft
- October 2023: Celtics acquire Jrue Holiday from the Portland Trail Blazers for Malcolm Brogdon, Robert Williams III, 2024 first-round pick (via GSW), 2029 first-round pick
It was too hard to choose the single Boston Celtics trade that warranted a place among the top five. All three of the above swaps were integral to securing the 2024 title.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown remain the two most important figures in Boston's organization, but the defensive contributions of Holiday and White were key to getting the team over the top. Holiday even has a case for another entry, as the deal that landed him with the Milwaukee Bucks in 2020 also netted a championship.
And though Porziņģis appeared in only seven playoff games during the championship run, he remains the team's ultimate cheat code: a switch-destroying post-up master who can protect the rim and provide elite spacing on offense.
It's still hard to fathom how Boston got two first-rounders along with KP in the three-teamer with Memphis and Washington. That deal easily goes down as one of the biggest heists in recent memory.
Impact: Boston built the best team in the league and appears capable of staying at that level for at least another couple of years.
1. September 2022: Utah Sends Donovan Mitchell to Cleveland
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The Trade
Cleveland Cavaliers Receive: Donovan Mitchell
Utah Jazz Receive: Ochai Agbaji, Collin Sexton (sign-and-trade), Lauri Markkanen, 2025 first-round pick, 2026 first-round swap, 2027 first-round pick, 2028 first-round swap, 2029 first-round pick
Utah got more than it bargained for in Markkanen, who developed into an All-Star upon arriving in Utah. This deal, which came just a couple of months after the one that sent Gobert to the Wolves, was really about the draft picks, though. In completing their teardown, the Jazz amassed another three first-rounders and a pair of swaps by moving Mitchell to Cleveland.
The Cavs still won this deal pretty handily, though that would have been harder to argue before Mitchell signed an extension to stick in Cleveland through 2026-27 with a player option for 2027-28.
Mitchell's first season in Cleveland was his best ever. He made his first All-NBA team and finished sixth in MVP voting. The Cavs have been a high-end playoff team since his arrival and are currently on pace to win over 70 games this year. Utah may turn all those picks into something great, but that's still a speculative issue. Those incoming first-rounders don't look so hot these days, as the Cavaliers are one of the league's top title threats right now.
Rebuilds are hard to execute with picks in the 20s.
Impact: Cleveland ascended to its current top-tier level largely because of Mitchell and looks like a contender for at least the next handful of years, while Utah added to its war chest of picks.
Stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference and Cleaning the Glass. Salary info via Spotrac.
Grant Hughes covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter (@gt_hughes), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
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