NBA intel – 5 players most likely to be traded before the deadline
The NBA on Wednesday began its sprint to the Feb. 6 trade deadline, as virtually every player in the league became eligible to be moved.
One of those players — forward Josh Okogie — was traded from the Phoenix Suns to the Charlotte Hornets within hours of becoming eligible, marking the first deal of 2025 and the league’s third significant trade of the regular season. The Suns, who have been perhaps the most active team in trade discussions since Jan. 1, acquired center Nick Richards from the Hornets in the deal that also saw four second-round picks change hands.
It’s fair to ask if these types of deals — for borderline starters and role players — are going to define the run up to the deadline, or if there will truly be a star-quality player moved, such as the Miami Heat’s Jimmy Butler, Chicago Bulls’ Zach LaVine or Suns’ Bradley Beal.
League coaches, agents and executives are wondering the same.
We have the five names they’re watching closest with less than three weeks until the deadline, plus the ever-growing tail of the Suns’ Kevin Durant trade from 2023, an upcoming turning point in the Philadelphia 76ers’ season, and what to make of the news that Maverick Carter, LeBron James’ longtime business manager, is advising a $5 billion effort to start new basketball league.
Jump to league intel:
Five to watch ahead of the deadline
Suns still paying after KD trade
The $5B plan to rival the NBA
Sixers stall; time for a strategy shift?
Who is most likely to be traded before the NBA’s deadline?
As we canvassed the league this week for the most likely players to be moved before the deadline, one name was unanimous: Brooklyn Nets forward Cameron Johnson, who is in the middle of a career season for the Nets — 19.6 points per game on 49.9% shooting overall and 42% from 3-point range.
The reasoning is obvious: The Nets, who were the early movers in the trade market by trading both Dennis Schroder (to the Golden State Warriors) and Dorian Finney-Smith (to the Los Angeles Lakers) over the past few weeks, continue to hunt for as many pingpong balls as possible in the upcoming NBA draft lottery. Johnson is arguably the one legitimate difference-making player who could change teams over the next several weeks, with his teammate Nic Claxton also mentioned as a possible trade candidate.
“The Nets asking price is high,” one league executive said, referring to both Johnson and Claxton, “and they [have made] it known they don’t feel like they have to trade them now. But if they’re helping them win games, they’ll trade them or put them on the bench.”
Veteran center Jonas Valanciunas received several mentions as another example of a player who could be traded for draft assets for a Washington Wizards team aiming to pick as high as possible in June. Ditto for Portland Trail Blazers center Robert Williams III. Trading him would also clear playing time for Portland’s 2024 lottery pick, center Donovan Clingan.
Boston Celtics guard Jaden Springer also received several mentions as a clear way for the extremely expensive defending champions to save money ahead of the stretch run. In a similar vein, several scouts and execs mentioned the Cleveland Cavaliers, LA Clippers and New Orleans Pelicans — all nearly $2.5 million over the luxury tax line — as teams that should be expected to make similar moves to get under the threshold.
What about Miami’s Butler? He wasn’t mentioned among the players most likely to be moved. But with his seven-game suspension set to end Friday for the Heat’s home game against the Denver Nuggets, the focus will again shift to whether he’ll return to the court after the trade deadline. As another league executive pointed out, the team and its president Pat Riley aren’t the type to rush into moves.
“The Heat don’t have to make a deal with Jimmy until the summer and don’t have to make a decision about the rest of this season until Feb. 6,” the executive said. “They don’t need to do anything in January and that’s how they’re conducting business.”
Phoenix’s KD trade is still being felt across the league
Windhorst: The Suns traded their 2031 second-round draft pick to the Hornets as part of this week’s Richards trade. Let’s pause for just a moment to note that since Mat Ishbia acquired controlling ownership in the Suns on trade deadline day in 2023, and then immediately acquired Durant, he now has overseen the trade of eight consecutive years of the Suns’ second-round picks (2023 to 2031).
Since Ishbia arrived, the Suns have also traded four first-round picks and five first-round pick swaps. If that math doesn’t look quite correct, note the Suns found a way to trade two swaps on their 2026 first-rounder. (It might be the most complicated pick machination in NBA history, with five teams involved, so just trust us.)
Phoenix has also discussed using the one first-round pick it is still allowed to trade (2031) in various talks around trying to acquire Butler, multiple league sources told ESPN.
Bontemps: Though it’s an open secret Phoenix would love to land Butler, the Richards trade is the latest example of the Suns under Ishbia’s leadership tossing assets out the door as quickly as they can. Before this trade, Phoenix had only four draft picks in its possession over the next seven years: their first in 2031, seconds in 2026 and 2031 from Denver as part of some shrewd maneuvering by the Suns last June, and their second in 2031.
Now, they only have a 2025 second-rounder from Denver — which they received from Charlotte as part of the Richards deal. (Right now, that pick would land 54th in the draft.)
The fact the Suns already had so little to trade, and that Richards — a serviceable backup center but hardly a difference-maker — cost them much of those assets had several sources around the league underwhelmed by the move.
Windhorst: One executive joked about implementing a new rule similar to one on the books about dealing first-round picks.
Named after former Cavaliers owner Ted Stepien, the rule forbids teams from trading firsts in back-to-back years, though plenty of loopholes remain. Stepien famously traded four consecutive years of first-round picks as part of three transactions to the Dallas Mavericks in the mid-1980s.
“Everyone knows about the Stepien Rule. I don’t know how this is all going to play out, but depending on how that KD trade ends up, there might be an ‘Ishbia Rule’ proposed where new owners can’t make a trade for six months after buying the team,” the exec quipped.
In the Durant deal, the Suns traded four first-round picks and a first-round swap to Brooklyn, plus Mikal Bridges and the aforementioned Cam Johnson. The Nets subsequently traded Bridges to the New York Knicks for five first-round picks. That currently has the Durant haul at nine first-round picks for the Nets — and that’s before a potential Johnson trade over the next few weeks.
Perhaps more interesting, last summer the Nets used one of the Suns’ first-round picks and the swap they got from Phoenix to regain the rights to their 2025 and 2026 first-rounders from Houston, where they had been since the trade that brought James Harden to Brooklyn.
Dangling those future Suns assets got the Rockets to bite and hand the Nets’ picks back to them, wagering the Suns’ picks could be more valuable in the medium term and clearing the way for the Nets to full-on tank this season.
If the Nets’ tank ends up scoring big and they land Duke’s Cooper Flagg or one of the other top names this summer, or perhaps a 2026 top prospect, those gems could be traced to the Durant trade as well.
Bontemps: It’s interesting to look at the two teams that made this deal Wednesday, because while the Suns have churned through one asset after another across the two years Ishbia has owned the team, it has been the opposite in Charlotte.
Rick Schnall and Gabe Plotkin acquired control of the team from Michael Jordan in the summer of 2023, about six months after Ishbia bought the Suns. Over the past 18 months, the Hornets have picked up first-round picks by trading P.J. Washington and Terry Rozier, and added eight total second-rounders in other deals.
The Hornets are still in the nascent stages of building a contending team. But between these kinds of moves, plus the hiring of Jeff Peterson to run the front office and Charles Lee as coach, there is a promising long-term vision in place in Charlotte that should pay off down the road.
What to make of basketball’s newest billion-dollar idea?
Windhorst: On Wednesday, ESPN’s Shams Charania confirmed a Bloomberg report that a group of investors had enlisted Maverick Carter, LeBron James’ longtime business partner, as an adviser to raise $5 billion for a new global basketball league. The group noted that it hoped to have six men’s and six women’s teams and raise money from institutional investors — including sovereign wealth funds.
Currently, the NBA allows hedge funds and sovereign funds to make up a maximum of 20% of a team’s ownership. Those stakes must be passive, meaning they don’t have a say in team governance. There are no current plans to change that policy, league officials have told ESPN. That is relevant to this start-up’s strategy, as is Carter’s inclusion.
In 2023, Carter and James went to Saudi Arabia and met with Prince Badr bin Abdullah Al-Saud, a member of the Saudi royal family and the nation’s Minister of Culture.
Middle East governments with massive sovereign funds have invested heavily in basketball over the past several years. The NBA and USA Basketball have an association with Abu Dhabi, which is currently in negotiations to fund a new global academy for the league there, sources said. Recently, Abu Dhabi won the rights to host the 2025 EuroLeague Final Four, the first time the event will be held outside of Europe.
Dubai has started the process of landing a team in the EuroLeague as the expansion BC Dubai started play in the Adriatic League this season. Qatar won the bid to host the 2027 FIBA World Cup of basketball and its sovereign fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, made a $200 million investment in the parent company of the Washington Wizards.
Why the Sixers could soon change their entire season strategy
Bontemps: The reeling 76ers were competitive during two home games against the Oklahoma City Thunder and New York Knicks this week, but they still lost both.
It could be a sign of things to come in Philadelphia, where the 76ers have now dropped four in a row and are entering into a brutal stretch of their schedule. Between now and the trade deadline, Philadelphia has 10 out of 11 games against teams .500 or better, and eight of those 11 games come as part of back-to-back sets.
That leaves open the possibility that this stretch in the schedule could leave Philadelphia in such a massive hole that even making it into the play-in tournament — the 76ers are currently two games behind the Bulls for 10th — could prove to be impossible. That could, in turn, lead to a pivot toward maximizing the team’s chances of keeping its top-six protected first-round pick in this year’s draft. And while sources said the team remained focused on maximizing this group’s potential for this season, rather than maximizing its lottery odds, the next three weeks could easily see the 76ers change their tune.
Source: espn.com