Biggest Winners and Losers of Khris Middleton-Kyle Kuzma Trade Between Bucks, Wizards

This is shaping up to be one of the wildest, most difficult to explain NBA trade deadline weeks we've ever seen.

A few days after the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers flabbergasted the sports world with their Luka Dončić-Anthony Davis deal, the Milwaukee Bucks traded franchise legend Khris Middleton for Kyle Kuzma.

The full details of the trade were broken by ESPN's Shams Charania.

The dust is still settling, but we already know enough to declare some winners and losers from this deal.

And those can be found below.

Winner: Kyle Kuzma

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Kyle Kuzma

Judging a player on a losing team can be unfair, but Kuzma has undoubtedly been one of the driving reasons the Washington Wizards are historically bad.

Washington currently has the second-worst average point differential in NBA history. And the Wizards play worse when Kuzma is on the floor.

Thanks in part to dreadful shot selection and often complete detachment on defense, Washington is minus-21.2 points per 100 possessions when Kuzma plays (compared to minus-9.8 when he doesn't).

He's averaging 15.2 points with a 46.9 effective field-goal percentage that's 7.2 shy of the league average.

Statistically, Kuzma has been one of the very worst rotation players in the league in 2024-25, and he's authoring highlights like this.

But now, the 29-year-old forward has been given a career lifeline with a title contender that should play him in a role better suited for his talents.

Washington was using him as a first or second scoring option tasked with carrying the team's most important lineups. Milwaukee should (though it remains to be seen if it will) deploy him as more of a heat-check scorer off the bench who gets to attack reserves.

Regardless of his role, he should get plenty of minutes alongside both Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard, and those two should command a fair bit more defensive attention than Alex Sarr and Jordan Poole.

Kuzma will have significantly more opportunities to attack closeouts and take open catch-and-shoot threes.

Ideally, playing for a winning team will motivate him to get back to the kind of defense he was playing toward the end of his Lakers tenure, too.

Ultimately, going from a borderline joke of a team to one with legitimate championship aspirations makes putting Kuzma on the "winners" side of this ledger a no-brainer.

Loser: Milwaukee Bucks

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Khris Middleton

The rationale for the Bucks here isn't hard to articulate.

Middleton is 33, well past his prime and often injured. He's not even starting this season. Kuzma is 29 and certainly more durable.

After that, it gets a little trickier to understand this deal.

Middleton is a dramatically better passer. He just about doubles Kuzma's 2024-25 assist percentage. He's a far more reliable (both historically and right now) three-point shooter. And he's a franchise legend.

In all of Bucks history, he's first in threes, second in games, second in minutes, third in points, third in assists, fifth in steals, seventh in rebounds, seventh in wins over replacement player and eighth in triple-doubles.

Lofty spots on those leaderboards aren't enough on their own to prevent a trade, but you'd think they might demand a little better return than Kuzma, Patrick Baldwin Jr. and some second-round picks.

On top of that, Middleton (who, unlike Kuzma, has had a positive impact on his team's point differential this season) isn't the only thing Milwaukee gave up.

AJ Johnson is barely 20 years old. He's only played 44 minutes in the NBA, but he's averaging double-figures and shooting 42.6 percent from three in the G-League, where the 6'4" guard is one of the most impressive athletes at that level.

Oh, and somehow, that's not all. Milwaukee also gave up a future pick swap (details on that haven't been reported yet).

This has a chance to be among those rare deals that make one team worse both now and in the future. And that team is the Bucks, who have a super-duper-star in Giannis who's previously said he'd move on if he felt like the team's commitment to winning waned.

There's no guarantee that'll happen, of course. Kuzma's career could be resurrected in Milwaukee. But right now, this is a tough one to sell as a win for the Bucks.

Loser (only for Now): Khris Middleton

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Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton

Middleton spent his rookie season with the Detroit Pistons in 2012-13, but he's been with the Bucks ever since. In today's NBA, he was about as close to a one-team lifer as a player gets.

He helped the team win a championship in 2021, when he averaged 24.0 points, 6.3 rebounds, 5.3 assists and 2.7 threes in the Finals.

And while you could probably argue this may have never happened (given his struggles with availability), Middleton hasn't even had a chance to play a playoff game alongside both Giannis and Lillard.

Instead of getting that chance, he's now headed to the worst team in the NBA, along with a promising young prospect and a pick swap for a player who's been dreadful this season.

Seeing your trade value established like this has to be a little sobering.

But it's also hard to imagine Middleton remains one of the "losers" of this deal for long. The veteran makes absolutely no sense for Washington. He's earned an opportunity to play for a contender, and it feels like he instantly becomes one of this season's prime buyout candidates.

That would mean punting on his 2025-26 player option (worth $34 million), but having a solid playoff run as a buyout pickup would help him make up that money in free agency.

Winner: Washington Wizards

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AJ Johnson

Again, Johnson just turned 20 in December. At the draft combine, he measured 6'4.25" without shoes and has a 6'8.5" wingspan and 38-inch max vertical leap.

And he's shown plenty of upside in the G-League as both a scorer and playmaker. In under 30 minutes per game, he's averaging 13.2 points and 3.5 assists for the Wisconsin Herd.

This is exactly the kind of prospect Washington should've been after in any deals with their veterans. Now, they have another young talent to develop alongside Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly and Bub Carrington.

That'll mean plenty more losses for the Wizards in the short term, but they need as many shots at upside as possible. And this deal gives them that with both Johnson and potentially with that future pick swap.

Given the way Kuzma has played this season, Washington got excellent value for him.