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Re-Grading NBA Offseason's Biggest Trades So Far
Roughly one quarter of the 2025-26 NBA season is done, enough of a sample to raise an important question about the most significant trades of the offseason.
How early is too early for a victory lap?
The Miami Heat and Atlanta Hawks would like to know.
Those two appear to have come out on the right side of major deals, while the New Orleans Pelicans and LA Clippers are among the crowd that might prefer a do-over on some of their summertime decisions.
Let's check in on several of the offseason's most high-profile trades to see how they're working out 20-plus games into the season.
Desmond Bane to the Orlando Magic
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Orlando Magic Acquire: Desmond Bane
Memphis Grizzlies Acquire: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Cole Anthony, 2025 first-round pick, 2026 first-round swap via Phoenix or Washington, 2028 first-round pick, 2029 first-round swap swap, 2030 first-round pick
Magic Grade: B
Orlando finished the first 20 games of the season with the No. 12 offense, which might make it seem like the Bane acquisition was a rousing success. However, he spent most of that season-opening stretch shooting under 30.0 percent from three and struggling to fit into a new system.
That said, the Magic's clear prioritization of shooting and spacing showed they understood where their deficiencies were. So if you want to get charitable, and if you want to view the Bane trade as part of a larger emphasis on getting the offense up to standard, maybe Orlando deserves a little more credit. That was clearly the problem in seasons past, and the Magic swung big to solve it.
Greater grade upside is still on the table if Bane continues to put his slump behind him. A strong performance in a playoff run could move the Magic up into the "A" range.
Grizzlies Grade: A
It's not totally fair to view it this way, but the Grizzlies might still deserve an "A" here if they'd only traded Bane for the pick that became Cedric Coward.
The extremely promising rookie came aboard via another deal, which saw the Grizz send the 2025 and 2028 first-rounders they got from Orlando for Bane to the Portland Trail Blazers.
The No. 11 pick Memphis got back became Coward, a big wing with deep shooting range, excellent positional size and serious defensive potential. He'd be on an All-Rookie team if the season ended today.
Coward was far from the only asset Memphis secured for Bane, whose departure also created financial flexibility. The Grizzlies still have swap rights on 2026 and 2029 first-rounders, plus outright ownership of Orlando's 2030 first.
Considering a Ja Morant trade and subsequent rebuild feel more likely than they have in years, all those draft assets arrived at just the right time.
Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets
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Houston Rockets Acquire: Kevin Durant, Clint Capela*
Phoenix Suns Acquire: Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, 2025 first-round pick, five second-round picks
Rockets Grade: B
Durant isn't quite meeting his own high efficiency standards, but he's still a more effective scorer than roughly 90 percent of players in the league. He's on pace to post a true shooting percentage above 60.0 percent for the 16th straight season.
The Rockets ended November with the NBA's No. 2 offense, and Durant's shotmaking has been a valuable bailout option when opponents force the rock out of Alperen Sengün's hands.
Houston hasn't missed Green's low-efficiency scoring, and its No. 2 defensive rating suggests Brooks' absence hasn't hurt either.
Suns Grade: B-
Phoenix was over a barrel in the Durant situation, and it did well to get a single first-rounder. This grade would be higher if the player it selected, Khaman Maluach, didn't look so far away from contributing.
Brooks might deserve some credit (though head coach Jordan Ott gets the lion's share) for the Suns' newfound interest in playing extremely hard and defending intensely, but Green has provided next to nothing while battling hamstring injuries all year.
The Suns are one of the league's most pleasant surprises, but unless you buy the "addition by subtraction" theory as it pertains to Durant, it's hard to view this trade as one of the main reasons for their success.
And yes, Phoenix fans should be a little uneasy that Brooks is getting up a career-high 17.1 shots per game—just one fewer than Devin Booker.
*This wound up being a massive, seven-team trade. We've simplified it to focus on what Phoenix and Houston got out of it.
New Orleans Surrenders An Unprotected 1st-Rounder
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Atlanta Hawks Acquire: 2025 first-round pick (No. 23 via NOP), 2026 first-round pick
New Orleans Pelicans Acquire: 2025 first-round pick (No. 13 via ATL)
Hawks Grade: A
The deal of the decade (non-Luka Doncic division) fell into the Hawks' lap, and they still probably can't believe their luck.
For a mere 10-spot climb in the first round, Atlanta netted a pick that could deliver a generational superstar in the 2026 draft.
Much has been made of Trae Young's future with a Hawks squad that has looked capable of going forward without him, and the decision to move him for future assets will only be easier if the Hawks have a chance to replace him with a cornerstone rookie in June.
We should never get over Shamit Dua's "In The N.O." report in which a source chronicled Atlanta's disbelief in the deal it was getting, and that Hawks GM Onsi Saleh actually called the Pelicans to verify what seemed too good to be true: The 2026 first-round swap (best of Milwaukee's or New Orleans' picks) was unprotected.
Pelicans Grade: F-
Laughable. Unhinged. Malpractice. Choose whichever word you like; they're all applicable.
The Pelicans' massive mistake was obvious from the moment it happened. That's true even though Derik Queen looks like a promising prospect. He has unusual ball-handling and playmaking skills for a player of his size, and he's already shown flashes of advanced feel and scoring creativity.
It doesn't matter.
Even if he becomes a star, the Pels' decision to trade an unprotected 2026 first-rounder and the No. 23 pick in the 2025 draft to move up 10 spots for Queen will be a catastrophic failure.
New Orleans is circling the drain this year and is a real threat to finish with the worst record in the league. That means it could convey the top overall pick in a loaded draft to Atlanta. The Queen deal removed the safety net from a season that desperately needed one.
New Orleans is lucky the Luka Dončić trade happened just a few months before its embarrassing blunder. Otherwise, this deal would be regarded as the worst trade in recent memory.
Nuggets Land Cam Johnson for MPJ
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Denver Nuggets Acquire: Cam Johnson
Brooklyn Nets Acquire: Michael Porter Jr., 2032 first-round pick
Nuggets Grade: C-
Johnson's start was among the most disappointing in the league, though he put together double-digit scoring nights with increasing frequency as November wound down.
By no objective measure has he been better than MPJ, though, which means this trade is a miss for the Nuggets.
If Johnson and MPJ had performed equally with their new teams, maybe you could have credited the Nuggets for cutting $17.3 million in costs, the difference between their 2025-26 salaries. If you also thought that 2032 pick was either too distant to matter or unlikely to be valuable (because Nikola Jokić will remain a superstar deep into his 30s), then maybe it was worth surrendering for flexibility's sake.
That was always a flimsy argument. Denver has a history of getting cheap, and this felt like another entry in that ledger. A future first-rounder is too valuable to use in a trade for an inferior player, even if that player doesn't cost quite as much.
The short-term bottom line remains unaffected; Denver is off to a brilliant start and is a true contender. That's why the grade is merely below-average.
Nets Grade: B
MPJ is on the books for $40.8 million in 2026-27 before hitting free agency, but the Nets would still probably do this deal again because of the draft capital they snagged.
It may not seem like it now, but Jokic won't be the best player on the planet forever. That 2032 pick will convey after his age-36 season is complete. The Nuggets might be rebuilding by then, which gives the selection serious upside.
Porter Jr. has been durable and scored the ball at higher volume than ever with Brooklyn, which also opens up the possibility that the team could trade him to a contender, perhaps taking back more bad, longer-term salary with another asset attached.
Even if the Nets just ride out this year and the next while paying Porter to rack up points on a losing team, the deal will have been worth it.
3-Teamer Lands Norman Powell in Miami
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Miami Heat Acquire: Norman Powell
LA Clippers Acquire: John Collins
Utah Jazz Acquire: Kevin Love, Kyle Anderson, 2027 second-round pick (via LAC)
Heat Grade: A
Powell only averaged 14.4 points per game after the All-Star break last year, which cast some doubt on the repeatability of his career-best season. In a backward way, skeptics were right: Powell hasn't matched 2024-25's productivity.
He's exceeding it.
Looking like a perfect fit in Miami's screen-free, constantly attacking style, he is on track to set new career highs with 24.7 points per game and a 44.4 percent hit rate from long range. He narrowly missed an All-Star bid last year but is in line to remedy that this season.
The only knock on Miami is that Powell will hit free agency after the year, which means he'll either be a rental who gets away or a much costlier investment than expected.
Even if the 32-year-old is only around for this season, he's been an enormous value and a ridiculously good return for Anderson and Love.
Clippers Grade: D
Collins filled a theoretical need at forward, and Powell's exit cleared the decks for L.A.'s acquisition of Bradley Beal. Maybe in an alternate universe, this deal could have worked out for the Clips. In this one, it's been a disaster.
Collins' efficiency is down from his Utah days, and he's been part of a wildly disappointing supporting cast that also lost Beal for the season in November. That L.A. also gave up a second-round pick to send away the best player in the deal only makes things worse.
Jazz Grade: C
Apparently, the Jazz got out of the Collins business at the right time. They were wise to move on from a player whose value was unlikely to climb—particularly with several young players needing minutes and Lauri Markkanen ready to play more than he did a year ago.
Neither Love nor Anderson is a factor for this season or in Utah's long-term planning, but that second-rounder was a nice pickup.
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.
