The 2025 NBA trade deadline has come and gone. What a ride it was. From a midnight blockbuster featuring two All-NBA talents to a flurry of rotation players changing teams right up until the buzzer sounded at 3 p.m. ET, this deadline truly had it all. It’s no exaggeration to call it the most consequential trade deadline in recent memory. The remainder of this season will look very, very different.
Here are the teams and players who appear to be the biggest winners and losers from this year’s NBA trade deadline.
Winners
Los Angeles Lakers
The Lakers were resounding winners at this deadline and maybe one of the all-time biggest deadline winners in NBA history. They exit with Luka Doncic, a 25-year-old perennial All-NBA player who can and likely will be the face of the franchise for the next 15 years while being good enough to win a title now—and they got him for a bargain. Giving up Anthony Davis surely stings, but not giving up much more than that is a coup for general manager Rob Pelinka.
The Mark Williams trade is less of an obvious home run and has the potential to age pretty poorly, but who cares at this point? The Lakers, staring down the barrel of a listless future post-LeBron James, pulled a rabbit out of their hat and landed one of the five best, most coveted players in the entire league at a price universally considered to be very favorable. They won this deadline by a country mile.
Jimmy Butler
Butler did not end up at the destination he reportedly wanted the most, which was the Phoenix Suns. But he got everything else he wanted—a new team and a new, very lucrative contract. After demanding a trade from the Miami Heat using every tool in his bag (and receiving an indefinite suspension from the team as a result), Butler was shipped out to the Golden State Warriors. Shortly thereafter, Butler signed a two-year contract extension that will pay him $55.5 million annually beginning next season. Not too shabby for the 35-year-old forward.
Butler’s antics in Miami may not be well received, but they definitely worked. He’s in a new uniform next to two Hall of Fame–caliber talents with a fat new contract to boot. He should be grinning all the way to the Bay Area.
San Antonio Spurs
Amid the fallout of the Doncic-Davis trade in the West, the Spurs quietly pulled off their own blockbuster that landed them a star player for a bargain-bin price. San Antonio acquired De’Aaron Fox to pair with Victor Wembanyama, giving up only draft capital and rotation players in the process. The Spurs impressively managed to hang onto every member of the young core they’re building around Wembanyama, keeping Devin Vassell and Stephon Castle.
Landing Fox is the biggest win, of course. The 27-year-old speed demon point guard is a great fit with Wembanyama and is entering his prime right as the French star is beginning to really come into his own. They’re set to make noise in the West this season and beyond. Acquiring such a player without giving up much of note outside of draft picks makes for excellent work by San Antonio’s front office.
Cleveland Cavaliers
The Cavaliers were faced with a tough choice many contenders face every deadline: stand pat and let the good vibes roll? Or seize on any opportunity to improve, sacrificing players who helped them get to this point in the process? Cleveland surveyed the landscape and ultimately landed on the latter option, trading Caris LeVert and Georges Niang to the Atlanta Hawks along with a handful of draft picks to acquire De’Andre Hunter. It’s a bold choice, but one that looks very good from the outset.
Hunter is in the midst of a breakout year. He hasn’t quite lived up to the elite three-and-D archetype Atlanta hoped he would be after he was taken with the fourth pick in the 2019 NBA draft, but the former Virginia star is averaging career-highs in points (19.0) three-point shooting percentage (39.3%) and true shooting percentage (61.6%). Perhaps most importantly he’s a big body for Cleveland to throw at the various elite wings who litter the East—most predominately the Boston Celtics, who have two such players and will almost certainly stand in the way of the Cavs’ path to the NBA Finals. It’s rare to see a 41–10 team make a big addition at the deadline, but Cleveland is swinging big for this season, and Hunter fills a need perfectly.
Losers
Dallas Mavericks
Even the rosiest view of the Mavericks’ decision leads to the conclusion they might be winners. Eventually. Some years down the road. In the immediate, they are losers. It’s impossible to see the franchise in any other way after they traded Doncic without any indication the superstar wanted to leave. To do so without shopping him around and squeezing the best possible deal out of the situation is borderline malpractice by GM Nico Harrison.
Honestly, the return doesn’t even matter all that much. The Mavericks had a generational talent as the cornerstone of their organization—and they gave him away. It’s baffling, stunning and will take years to fully unpack. For now, they’re just the biggest losers of the trade deadline.
Golden State Warriors
The Warriors ultimately got what they wanted—another star teammate for Stephen Curry to try and make one final push in the last years of the all-time great’s prime. Landing Butler accomplished their goal. But Golden State only ended up with Butler after GM Mike Dunleavy Jr. was rebuffed numerous times in his efforts to land other stars. Kevin Durant gave an outright no when gifted the opportunity to reunite with Curry and rejoin the Warriors. James and Paul George were declared unavailable. Even Butler reportedly attempted to nix a trade to the Dubs in the days leading up to his eventual acquisition.
It seems the days of Golden State being “light years ahead” of everyone else is over. The Warriors are now the team flailing desperately to try to land someone who can help their aging superstar. This deadline served as a very harsh reminder of that and is why they rank in the losers section despite adding a great player in Butler.
Phoenix Suns
The Suns had an absolute nightmare of a trade deadline. They started off in the enviable position of being the desired destination for a disgruntled star. For over a month, Phoenix seemed fated to land Butler. Then it all went downhill. Bradley Beal was spending his postgame media availability telling reporters he won’t waive his no-trade clause. That roadblock ended up significant enough that Phoenix apparently then pivoted to shopping Durant. The future Hall of Famer and leading scorer on the roster was “blindsided” by seeing his name in trade rumors and shot down a potential Warriors trade.
Now with Butler in Golden State for the foreseeable future, the Suns are in the incredibly unenviable position of dealing with the fallout of trade rumors without actually having done anything to get better. It’s as close to the worst-case scenario as one could have imagined for Phoenix.
Chicago Bulls
The Bulls entered the deadline with a bunch of mediocre players and the opportunity to offload them at the deadline for assets. Again. The Bulls largely failed to do so. Again. They did manage to trade Zach LaVine (finally), sending him to the Sacramento Kings as part of the Fox deal, but the primary return was their own 2025 first-round pick that was top-10 protected. If Chicago had just traded LaVine, the Bulls would have been bad enough to keep the pick anyway. Then they didn’t trade Nikola Vucevic, who was a pretty popular name at this year’s deadline, and signed Lonzo Ball to an extension rather than trading him.
All this means the Bulls are going to end up at the bottom of the lottery or lose in the play-in tournament. Again! This deadline was their best opportunity yet to hammer the reset button. They, yet again, did not do it. The future is murky in Chicago because the front office continues to tread water rather than make a decision. It is not inherently bad to be an average basketball team, but the lack of a cohesive plan makes the Bulls’ inertia impossible to understand.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as NBA Trade Deadline Winners and Losers: Jimmy Butler Gets Wish, Suns Flop.
