With all the movement that has already been made ahead of the NBA’s trade deadline, it can be hard to keep track of who went where and why, so we’re going to sort through the list of early transactions by playing a self-explanatory game called, “Did they get better?”
The point of a trade, you might think, is to get better, though “most of the stuff is cap cleanup and draft-choice grabs to extend your time on the job,” one league insider said.
[NBA Power Rankings: Trade deadline edition]
So, let us separate the wheat from the chaff. (And what is the chaff, you wonder? It is an inedible husk around the edible part of the grain. See: We’ve already learned something.)
By the way, this is the Contenders Only: Edition of, “Did they get better?” We are only talking about teams that can win the championship this season. (The rest of the teams? They’re just chaff. See: We can already use our new vocabulary word in a sentence.) Apologies to fans of the Utah Jazz and Washington Wizards, who respectively acquired Jaren Jackson Jr. and Anthony Davis, and who remain outside our title portrait … for now.
What they’ve done: The Cavs traded 26-year-old two-time All-Star guard Darius Garland and their 2026 second-round draft pick to the Los Angeles Clippers for 36-year-old future Hall of Famer James Harden. In a separate deal that did not include draft picks, they sent De’Andre Hunter to the Sacramento Kings for Keon Ellis and Dennis Schröder. Cleveland also traded a pair of second-round picks and Lonzo Ball to Utah, where he will be waived.
Did they get better? That is up for debate. In the aggregate, they probably did. Slightly.
Big picture: The Cavaliers swapped a young star (Garland) for an old one (Harden), and used a small asset (their second-round pick in June) to do so, which is never a good idea.
However, in this case, the young star is having trouble staying on the floor. Garland has missed half the season, including the last nine games, to a series of toe injuries, which is a big deal for a ball-handler whose sharp drives and cuts are key to his game. The toe injuries have lingered since the end of last season, when he enjoyed a bounce-back campaign.
Garland does not turn 27 until January 2027. He has made All-Star teams as a 22-year-old driver of a 44-win team, averaging 21.7 points and 8.6 assists per game, and as a 25-year-old sidekick to Donovan Mitchell on a 64-win contender. In between, he missed more time.
On the other hand, the old star has been a workhorse, at least since poor conditioning and a series of quadriceps injuries threatened the end of his stardom in his earlier 30s. We are, of course, talking about Harden, who has missed only a handful of games in each of his past three seasons, including last season, when he made the All-Star team for an 11th time.
Harden, once a top-three MVP candidate in four straight seasons, averaged 25.4 points and 8.1 assists across 44 games for the underperforming Clippers this year. He and Kawhi Leonard were the engines of a team in L.A. that began the season with a 6-21 record, only to bounce back with a 16-3 stretch, featuring top-five outfits on both ends of the court.
It is that stretch that must have sold the Cavaliers on Harden. Why, exactly, is a bit of mystery, beyond his availability. Neither Garland nor Harden is a defensive stopper. In fact, both are defensive liabilities in the playoffs, and each will continue to be attacked until either proves the strategy ineffective. In Harden’s case, we have 17 years of evidence.
Those 17 seasons also include a ton of high usage. Harden is accustomed to having the ball in his hands, prodding the defense, either in isolation or attacking the pick-and-roll, and Mitchell is used to doing the same. Meshing them together may take longer than the 31 games that are left in this season, and if that is the case, then this is a disaster of a deal, because Harden can opt out of his contract at the end of June, and he wants more money.
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And giving more money, or anything more than a massive pay cut, to Harden is a mistake. And he was not shopping for a massive pay cut when he sought his exit from the Clippers.
You see, even at his peak, Harden’s playing style — the high-usage ball dominance and the porous defense — never was able to carry his team beyond a Western Conference finals.
Was it worth the second-round pick? If Harden is more available than Garland this season, and if he leads the Cavaliers to the Eastern Conference finals or beyond, then, probably, yes, it was worth the squeeze. But those are some pretty big ifs. One could argue it is just as likely, if not more so, that Harden limits them to the same second-round playoff ceiling.
Maybe the Cavaliers just did not want to assume the injury risk of carrying Garland’s $40 million salary through the end of the 2027-28 season. That brings us to the Hunter trade, which also saved them considerable luxury tax and increased their salary cap flexibility.
It additionally brought in two useful players, Ellis and Schröder, who made Lonzo Ball’s $10 million salary expendable. It reportedly took a pair of second second-roud draft picks to unload Ball’s contract on the Utah Jazz. By doing so, Cleveland created the kind of roster flexibility required to pursue Giannis Antetokounmpo, the deadline’s real difference-maker.
What they’ve done: The Celtics reportedly traded 26-year-old reserve guard Anfernee Simons and their 2026 second-round draft pick to the Chicago Bulls for Nikola Vučević.
Did they get better? They got … different?
Simons was a helpful player off the bench for Boston, delivering consistently superb shotmaking, along with improved defense, as one of a handful of players who have made the Celtics better than we thought they were going to be. They will miss him, though his absence will sting a lot less, or not at at all, if and when Jayson Tatum returns to the lineup.
Vučević joins a crowded (though not great) frontcourt rotation that includes Neemias Queta, Luka Garza, Amari Williams and Chris Boucher. The 35-year-old two-time All-Star is better than all of them but Queta, their starter, who has been a rim-running force for the league’s second-rated offense and a rim-protecting presence for its 11th-rated defense.
Vučević, meanwhile, was the anchor in Chicago of the NBA’s 24th-rated defense. He does space the floor offensively, shooting 39.1% on 4.5 3-point attempts per game over the past two seasons, and he is a double-double machine, averaging 17.2 points and 10.4 rebounds over a 15-year career. He is one of 28 players ever to log 15,000 points and 10,000 rebounds.
Vučević is hardly the center of their future, not like Jaren Jackson Jr. might have been if Utah Jazz executive Danny Ainge had not swooped in to score the 26-year-old two-time All-Star and 2023 Defensive Player of the Year. Now that would have made them better.
Instead, the Celtics saved nearly $30 million in salary and luxury taxes and upgraded their reserve center position in the process. If Tatum returns, Boston is a contender. If not, they are not. Plain and simple. Whether Vučević helps move that needle is now up for debate.
He is probably more helpful than Garza in a first-round playoff series, especially as a shooting threat. He must be respected. He has never played in a conference semifinals. Best of luck as he tries to defend more talented bigs in Detroit, New York and Cleveland.
What they’ve done: In a three-team deal with the Chicago Bulls and Minnesota Timberwolves, the Pistons swapped Jaden Ivey for Kevin Huerter and Dario Šarić.
Did they get better? They got a little deeper. Maybe.
Ivey, the NBA’s No. 5 overall pick in 2022, has not lived up to that billing. He has averaged as many as 17.6 points, 5.2 assists and 4.1 rebounds per game, but for the past two seasons he has not been able to stay consistently healthy. He is also owed a contract at season’s end, which surely is why Detroit moved on from him. They did not want to invest in his future.
Ivey, who will turn 24 years old on Feb. 13, is a worthwhile investment for a Bulls team that has been searching for youth and places to spend its salary cap space over the summer.
The Pistons will instead receive the expiring contracts of Huerter and Šarić. The latter is unlikely to see the floor much in a frontcourt rotation that includes All-Star center Jalen Duren and Sixth Man of the Year candidate Isaiah Stewart. Huerter will join Duncan Robinson on the wing, allowing the Pistons to employ a full 48 minutes of floor-spacing.
Not that either Huerter or Robinson — or Tobias Harris, for that matter — is the sort of wing we should expect on a team that projects as a contender. Then again, with only Robinson as their sharpshooter, the Pistons have taken a 5.5-game lead on the Eastern Conference.
What they’ve done: The Thunder reportedly traded the Houston Rockets’ 2026 first-round pick and three second-round picks to the Philadelphia 76ers for Jared McCain.
Did they get better? Sure, why not.
The Thunder already own the NBA’s best record (40-11), so why not add another 21-year-old guard who showed promise as a rookie, averaging 15.3 points per game last season, before a left lateral meniscus tear required knee surgery. That injury — and the development of a Sixers roster around him — limited McCain’s minutes (and impact) in Philadelphia this year.
McCain is reserve guard insurance for the injured Ajay Mitchell, another promising young player, who has lost the last six games to a right hip contusion. Worse news for Oklahoma City on Wednesday: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander suffered an abdomen strain and will not be reevaluated until after the All-Star break. McCain can only help, though Cason Wallace, Lu Dort and Alex Caruso already form the basis of the NBA’s most talented guard rotation.
