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Re-Grading Biggest 2024 NBA Offseason Trades and Moves 1 Year Later
The rush to judgment is a huge part of evaluating NBA transactions, a fact made plain by all the grades and winner-loser analysis already applied to this offseason's moves.
It's much easier to evaluate older deals, which is why we're looking back at the biggest moves of the 2024 offseason. With a year's worth of distance from last summer's most ambitious swings, we have a better sense of who connected and who whiffed.
The New York Knicks remade themselves through blockbusters, the Atlanta Hawks shook up their backcourt and several teams splurged on free agents. Now that we've got some perspective, let's see how the 2024 offseason's most significant trades and signings look a year down the road.
KAT and Randle Swap Jerseys
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The Trade: New York Knicks acquire Karl-Anthony Towns and James Nnaji from the Minnesota Timberwolves for Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a 2025 first-round pick (via DET; became Joan Beringer)
Last season, the Knicks posted a plus-5.2 net rating with a 119.5 offensive rating overall, and both numbers were markedly better when Towns shared the floor with Brunson...right up until the playoffs. Against dialed-in opponents, the modest in-season synergy between the Knicks' top two offensive players nearly disappeared while the defense got even worse. Teams spammed pick-and-roll sets those two couldn't cover, exposing a concerning postseason frailty.
Towns and Brunson, together, didn't add up to more than the sum of their parts. New York was better with one or the other playing solo in the postseason than it was with both sharing the floor.
Towns' deal—which pays him $53.1 million next year, $57.1 million in 2026-27 and $61 million in 2027-28—might now be among the hardest to move in the league.
Knicks Grade: C-
Randle is also a second banana, but he distinguished himself with flashes of hugely helpful postseason play and, critically, will earn $70 million less than Towns over the life of his new three-year, $100 million contract.
Minnesota reached the Western Conference Finals for the second straight year, so it's hard to argue Randle's presence hurt the bottom line.
Timberwolves Grade: C
Pelicans and Hawks Exchange Guards
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The Trade: New Orleans Pelicans acquire Dejounte Murray from the Atlanta Hawks for Dyson Daniels, Larry Nance Jr., E.J. Liddell, Cody Zeller, a 2025 first-round pick (via LAL) and a 2027 first-round pick (least favorable of MIL/NOP; protected 1-4)
The Dejounte Murray experiment didn't produce the results the Atlanta Hawks were hoping for, so they re-routed the guard that cost them three first-rounders and a swap.
Murray was coming off two straight healthy seasons marked by very solid individual numbers. He averaged at least 20.5 points, 6.1 assists and 5.3 rebounds across 152 games in Atlanta, which is part of the reason the initial package looked a little light. Most headlines framed it as "Larry Nance Jr. and a couple of picks" coming back to Atlanta which, in hindsight, buried the lede.
Daniels' inclusion made the deal a win for the Hawks on its own. He became an ideal backcourt complement for Trae Young, averaged a ridiculous 3.0 steals per game, finished second in Defensive Player of the Year, won Most Improved Player and landed on the All-Defensive first team.
The 2025 Lakers first-rounder went to Brooklyn in the trade that brought Kristaps Porzingis to Atlanta, and the 2027 first still has real upside if you're not high on the next couple of years in New Orleans or Milwaukee.
Hawks Grade: A
You can't give up the best player and two first-round picks in a deal without winding up a clear loser. The Pels ran into bad luck with Murray tearing his Achilles 31 games into his tenure with the team, but even a healthy version of the guard wasn't going to best Daniels' incredible 2024-25 season.
The only good news is that this trade might look better when measured against the even more reckless one New Orleans swung with the Hawks during the 2025 draft, when it sent an unprotected 2026 first and No. 23 to Atlanta for the No. 13 pick.
Pelicans Grade: F
The Sixers Max Out Paul George
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The Deal: Philadelphia 76ers sign Paul George to a four-year, $212 million free-agent contract
The logic of maxing out George seemed pretty sound at the time. The Sixers were in win-now mode because of Joel Embiid, the 2022-23 MVP who was coming off a 39-game season during which he averaged more points (34.7) than minutes (33.6). When a player provides elite, sporadic production like that, the ceiling's sky-high and the time to capitalize on it is fleeting.
If anyone had good reason to splurge on a veteran free agent, it was Philadelphia. That's part of the reason its offseason was roundly praised as one of the best in the league.
George was hurt early and often, though, topping out at just 41 games played and producing only 16.2 points per game, his lowest scoring rate in a decade. He only suited up with Embiid and Tyrese Maxey 15 times.
Leniency would be easier if Embiid hadn't gotten another knee surgery late last year, and if George hadn't undergone his own knee operation earlier this month. Injury luck is often just that: luck. But Philadelphia had a better sense of these players' durability than anyone else, and while what happened last season was on the low end of all the possibilities, it wasn't totally unforeseeable that a team built around two injury-plagued vets would have some health issues.
Take heart, Sixers fans. We could have graded the three-year, $193 million extension Embiid signed last summer. That would have earned an easy "F".
76ers Grade: D
Jalen Brunson's Extension
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The Deal: New York Knicks sign Jalen Brunson to a four-year, $156.5 million extension
When Jalen Brunson inked this contract extension, he was coming off a career-high 28.7 points per game, his first All-Star nod, a fifth-place finish in MVP voting and one of the most remarkable playoff scoring runs in recent memory. A 43-point eruption against the Indiana Pacers in Game 1 of the Eastern Conference semifinals made Brunson just the fourth player to score at least 40 points in four consecutive playoff games.
A run of accomplishments like that allowed Brunson to ask for whatever he wanted from the Knicks. Had he waited until the summer of 2025 to sign an extension, he could have commanded up to five years and $269.1 million. The Knicks would have happily given it to him.
Instead, Brunson extended early, costing himself a total of $113 million and giving the Knicks a massive discount.
Even if signing last summer positioned Brunson to opt out and re-sign on a four-year, $323 million max extension in 2028, it still represented a tremendous sacrifice of guaranteed money. It was the kind of decision that had to make other stars look around at each other and ask, "Wait, am I expected to take a team-first pay cut now, too?"
If the added flexibility Brunson granted the Knicks allows them to secure Mikal Bridges on his own below-market extension (four years, $156 million) this offseason, this grade will only climb higher.
Knicks Grade: A
Thunder Send Josh Giddey to Chicago For Alex Caruso
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The Trade: Oklahoma City Thunder acquire Alex Caruso from the Chicago Bulls for Josh Giddey
In a rare one-for-one challenge trade, the Oklahoma City Thunder extracted what would become a key piece of their championship rotation for a soon-to-be costly and tricky-to-fit playmaker—one who wouldn't have seen much action as OKC marched to the 2025 championship.
We haven't given any grades yet, but you can see where this is going.
Caruso extended on a four-year, $81 million deal that felt pre-negotiated. Even if he's going to face an aging curve as he ages into his mid-30s toward the end of it, Caruso has already served his purpose. If the Thunder don't win another title, Caruso's contributions to their 2025 success will make that trade worth it.
Thunder Grade: B
Giddey remains unsigned as a restricted free agent in Chicago. The Bulls have major leverage, but it still seems likely the 22-year-old will wind up earning at least as much on an annual basis as Caruso.
In fairness, Giddey went on quite the run down the stretch of his first season with Chicago. He averaged 21.2 points, 10.7 rebounds and 9.3 assists after the All-Star break, upped his three-point percentage to a career-best 37.8 percent for the season and even helped the Bulls to a net-neutral 0.0 net rating when he was on the floor—no small feat on a team that posted a minus-1.4 overall.
Giddey hasn't yet hit his prime, but Caruso was the right player for the right team at the right time, and it may not even be possible for Giddey to prove he can drive winning on a Bulls squad that hasn't exactly surrounded its centerpieces with optimal talent over the years.
With a big financial commitment looming, Chicago might have been better off trading Caruso for picks and young players earlier in their rookie-scale deals.
Bulls Grade: C-
Lauri Markkanen's Extension
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The Deal: Utah Jazz agree to renegotiate and extend Lauri Markkanen for a total of five years and $238 million
Markkanen was the source of much trade speculation throughout July of 2024, as the sweet-shooting 7-footer seemed out of step with the rest of the Jazz's young pieces. Add to that his pre-extension salary figure of just $18 million, and he was a gettable commodity for virtually every contender in need of spacing—which is all of them.
Utah tacked on $220 million in new money and, most importantly, Markkanen inked the deal on Aug. 7. The six-month prohibition on trading players who've signed extensions like that one meant he couldn't be dealt prior to the deadline and would spend all of 2024-25 with the Jazz.
It wasn't a great year for Markkanen, who averaged 19.0 points and shot 34.6 percent from deep across just 47 games. Utah was in the cellar all season, and Markkanen got plenty of suspect DNPs along the way. But the end result was that his contract looked significantly less valuable a year later.
In the second-apron era, teams are increasingly hesitant to max out players in the "very good; not great" category. Markkanen, a one-time All-Star entering his age-28 season, fits that description and now may not be tradable for positive value.
He can change all that by showing out in 2025-26, but that won't be easy with Utah still severely lacking in talent and win-now ambition.
Jazz Grade: D
Knicks Spend Big on Mikal Bridges
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The Trade: New York Knicks acquire Mikal Bridges, Keita Bates-Diop and a 2026 second-round pick from the Brooklyn Nets for Bojan Bogdanović, Mamadi Diakite, Shake Milton, a 2025 first-round pick, a 2025 first-round pick (via MIL; protected 1-4), a 2027 first-round pick, a 2029 first-round pick, a 2031 first-round pick, a 2028 first-round swap and a 2025 second-round pick
The Knicks clearly viewed Bridges as a missing piece, though most of the league probably felt similarly about such a scaleable three-and-D player with just two years and $48.2 million left on the extension he signed in 2022. New York's willingness to part with such a shocking number of first-round picks for a non-star set it apart—and it also resulted in a deal that is now the standard against which others are measured.
Well, if it cost five first-rounders for Bridges, what's this guy worth?
Bridges was mostly fine for the Knicks last year, though his scoring average and three-point accuracy (17.6 points and 35.4 percent, respectively) fell short of where they were in Brooklyn and his later years in Phoenix.
If Bridges re-ups on a below-market extension worth just $156.5 million over four years, this deal will look better. But if he winds up holding out for a max worth much more than that in 2026 free agency, or if the the Knicks determine they have to trade him this season to avoid that possibility, this grade could slip even lower.
Knicks Grade: D-
The Nets have yet to turn any of the first-round assets they got for Bridges into anything exciting, but that's because Nolan Traoré and Ben Saraf, the rookies they drafted using 2025 firsts from New York and Milwaukee, have yet to see the floor in a game that actually counts.
Depending on what becomes of those two and the other picks Brooklyn hasn't even made yet, this grade has plenty of room to rise. Even if everyone the Nets eventually land underwhelms, saying yes to so much draft capital for a player of Bridges' caliber will have been the right decision.
Nets Grade: B
