2025 NBA Offseason Winners and Losers So Far
The 2025 NBA offseason is far from over, but much of the big business is already done.
The draft, trades and free agency produced an altered landscape that could see marquee teams like the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers in far worse positions than they once were.
Meanwhile, the Houston Rockets announced their intentions to charge into a title pursuit, the Indiana Pacers cheaped out to a pathetic degree, and the Atlanta Hawks quietly positioned themselves as major threats in the East.
Change is still coming, but early returns suggest the offseason has already produced some clear winners and losers. Time to pass some hasty judgment.
Winner: Atlanta Hawks
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We'll get to much more on the Atlanta Hawks' draft-night heist, but that deal was just one slick move in an offseason full of them.
Atlanta first got in on the Boston Celtics' cost-cutting by bringing in Kristaps Porziņģis, dumping the three years and $47 million remaining on Terance Mann's contract in the process. Porziņģis may or may not stay healthy, but he has just one year and $30.1 million left on his deal and isn't far removed from being a critical floor-spacing weapon for an NBA champ.
The Hawks also beat out several teams to acquire Nickeil Alexander-Walker, whom they took into a $25 million trade exception from the Dejounte Murray deal. His new contract is worth just slightly more than the non-taxpayer mid-level exception that most of the competition could afford.
Caris LeVert's departure won't hurt as much with NAW and Luke Kennard (one-year deal) shoring up the guard rotation.
In all, the Hawks added multiple win-now rotation pieces at key positions while also securing perhaps the best future draft asset to change hands this offseason.
Loser: New Orleans Pelicans
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How lopsided was the New Orleans Pelicans trade that sent an unprotected 2026 first-round pick to Atlanta for the right to move from 23rd to 13th in the 2025 draft?
So lopsided that, per Shamit Dua's In the N.O. substack: "When one Pelicans executive made the call to Atlanta, the Hawks couldn’t believe what was actually being offered. Atlanta asked for clarification multiple times to confirm the unprotected pick was indeed part of the deal. ... But the Pelicans persisted and the Hawks got their steal."
The Pelicans' failure to appreciate downside risk marks them as a colossal loser and gets the Joe Dumars era off to a terrifying start.
That 2026 pick is unprotected and will be the better of New Orleans' own selection or the Milwaukee Bucks'. Though perhaps not likely, it's absolutely possible that the pick will be near the very top of the draft. The Pelicans can't claim to be clearly better than anyone but the Utah Jazz in the West, and the Bucks could fall apart if Giannis Antetokounmpo gets hurt or traded.
All for the privilege to move up by 10 spots to select Derik Queen, whom the Pels could have just taken at No. 7 overall instead of Jeremiah Fears.
Even if New Orleans couldn't live without Queen and Fears, there must have been ways to land them that didn't involve giving away an immediate unprotected first-round pick. No team that's coming off an injury-ravaged 21-win season while still being inextricably tied to Zion Williamson's health should ever surrender an asset like that.
Winner: Houston Rockets
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The Houston Rockets emerged from the first few days of the offseason looking like the truest Western Conference challenger to the recently crowned Oklahoma City Thunder.
We'll need a list for all of the steps they took to solidify that status:
- Acquired Kevin Durant from the Phoenix Suns for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 overall pick and five second-round picks
- Signed Dorian Finney-Smith to a four-year, $53 million contract
- Signed Clint Capela to a three-year, $21.5 million contract
- Extended Jabari Smith Jr. for five years and $122 million
- Extended Steven Adams for three years and $39 million
- Agreed with Fred VanVleet on a two-year, $50 million contract
- Retained Jae'Sean Tate, Aaron Holiday and Jeff Green on one-year minimums
On balance, Houston replaced Green in the rotation with KD, swapped out Brooks for the older but less volatile Finney-Smith, shored up the center position and didn't send out any premium future draft assets or indispensable young pieces.
The Rockets can still count on organic growth from their young crop of talent; Reed Sheppard, Amen Thompson and Smith could all take leaps. But in bringing Durant aboard, Houston also addressed the critical lack of shotmaking that hurt it so much in the postseason.
This is now a dangerous two-way contender with loads of youth-based upside.
Loser: Los Angeles Lakers
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Austin Reaves and his agent shot down a report from Arizona Sports 98.7's John Gambadoro that his client and LeBron James don't like playing with Luka Dončić, but that's a hard bell to unring. Doubly so with James picking up his player option for 2025-26 rather than getting a new deal with another player option in the future, something he's never done before.
Reaves is eligible for an extension as well, but he already declined the Lakers' four-year, $89.2 million max offer earlier this offseason.
Quite clearly, the Lakers aren't interested in adding long-term salary as they reorient around Luka Dončić. One assumes they would have retained Dorian Finney-Smith, a vital three-and-D weapon, if they were gunning for short-term success.
It's not necessarily the wrong move to softly nudge James out the door, but Dončić is in his prime right now and winning should be the priority. There's no guarantee it'll be easy to find a second star to pair with Dončić who's better than a 41-year-old LeBron James.
Deandre Ayton is a solid value signing, but it's hard to get too excited about a player whose former team paid him $25 million to go away.
Los Angeles seems to be entering a gap-year situation. Maybe it'll strike it rich in 2026 free agency and build a contender around Dončić in a post-LeBron world. But the future is uncertain, and the Lakers may not be meaningfully better at present than they were last season.
Winner: Denver Nuggets
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If you view the exchange of Michael Porter Jr. and an unprotected 2032 first-round pick for Cam Johnson as a purely financial move, then it's hard to paint the Denver Nuggets as winners. They earn the designation because the moves that came after that deal suggested it was motivated by at least as much desire to add depth as it was to generate savings.
Porter Jr. is among the league's most dangerous knockdown shooters and holds a career hit rate of 40.6 percent from long distance. Johnson is right there with him at 39.2 percent, and he also put up more triples on a per-possession basis than the guy he's replacing.
Partly thanks to the $17 million Denver will save by swapping out MPJ for Johnson, it was also able to onboard help in the backcourt by adding Bruce Brown Jr. and Tim Hardaway Jr.
The former played the best ball of his career on the Nuggets team that won the 2023 title, and the latter can provide movement shooting on the wing.
Denver will still need a backup big if the Jonas Valančiūnas trade falls through or if he heads to Europe, but it earns strong marks for adding at least two critical pieces to the squad that pushed the Thunder as far as anyone in the West this past postseason.
Loser: Boston Celtics
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Maybe it would have happened regardless, but the Boston Celtics' teardown became inevitable when Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in the Eastern Conference semifinals. That injury made it impossible for Boston to justify paying over $500 million in payroll and tax in 2025-26, triggering the great selloff of the summer.
The Celtics lost Kristaps Porziņģis to the Hawks and Jrue Holiday to the Portland Trail Blazers, taking back Georges Niang and a second-round pick in the first deal. For Holiday, they got Anfernee Simons and two future second-rounders from Portland, completing a massive talent drain that saved the team a total of approximately $27.2 million in salary and another $180 million in luxury-tax payments.
One remarkable win amid all the talent loss: The Celtics are now under the second apron as next season approaches. That won't make fans feel much better about the on-court prospects of the next few seasons, though.
The Celtics disassembled a champion (Al Horford remains unsigned and Luke Kornet left for the San Antonio Spurs) because difficult circumstances made it the only reasonable decision.
Zoom out, and the real loser might be fans who want to see great teams stick together. The CBA's penalties for big spending make that harder than it's ever been.
Winner: Washington Wizards
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Cam Whitmore was going to have an even harder time carving out minutes in the Houston Rockets' rotation following the addition of Kevin Durant, so the Washington Wizards pounced.
The result: The Wizards reeled in a big-wing scoring dynamo whose bucket-getting talents hint at star upside. All it cost them was a pair of future second-rounders.
That bargain addition looks even better alongside the draft selection of Tre Johnson, perhaps the premier shooting threat in the 2025 class. The No. 6 overall pick will join Whitmore in bolstering a Washington offense that needed scoring talent in between point guard prospect Bub Carrington and raw big man Alex Sarr.
Nobody is (or should be) praising the Wizards for targeting specific needs; they're early enough in their rebuild to make best-player-available the proper default setting in any transaction. In going after the top talents they could acquire, though, they also set their incumbent young players up for success.
Washington continued the shrewd financial maneuvering it has employed since dumping Bradley Beal on the Phoenix Suns by swapping out Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey and the No. 40 overall pick for CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk and a future second-rounder. That'll set them up to have as much as $100 million in cap space next summer, putting them in an even more extreme power position than the cash-rich Brooklyn Nets enjoyed this year.
Loser: Indiana Pacers
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The Indiana Pacers handled Myles Turner's free agency as if anything they spent now would forever lock them into the luxury tax (which they haven't paid in 20 years). In reality, exceeding the tax to keep their top free agent wouldn't have been a big deal. Teams can maneuver during the season to duck under that threshold by the end of the year.
Obi Toppin, Bennedict Mathurin and TJ McConnell would have been easy trade candidates at the deadline, tickets to dodge the tax if necessary.
What's worse, Indy only faced minimal tax pain if it had agreed with Turner on a deal in the range of the $107 he got from the Milwaukee Bucks over four years. We're talking less than $20 million in tax, all of which could have been wiped away by shedding salary in another trade.
Instead, Indiana lowballed Turner, never offering more than $22 million per year, according to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line Substack, and lost him for nothing.
It's a good thing the Pacers got their 2026 first-rounder back in a separate deal with New Orleans, which could make a gap-year tank without Tyrese Haliburton worth it. But watching Turner walk away was brutal, particularly because the Pacers could have kept him and traded him for value if they were intent on operating coldly.
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 Bluesky and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, where he appears with Bleacher Report's Dan Favale.
