By Michael PinaFeb. 6, 11:17 pm UTC • 10 min

Well, that happened. Going back to the Luka Doncic mega-blockbuster that tipped things off Saturday night, I don’t think there’s ever been a more entertaining, dramatic, and meaningful trade deadline in the history of the NBA. With seemingly everyone who matters now playing for a different team, here are my biggest winners and losers. 

Winners: Jimmy Butler and the Golden State Warriors

Desperate times call for desperate measures. The axiom applies here, but only to a certain extent. The Warriors spent this week desperate to regain their relevance as a championship contender, yes. And trading for Jimmy Butler, on the surface, is somewhat of a desperate measure. 

But Golden State didn’t have to mortgage its future to get a multifunctional star who can play how Steve Kerr likes on both sides of the ball. Jonathan Kuminga and Brandin Podziemski are still around, and, above all else, Steph Curry got the most talented teammate he’s had since Kevin Durant, who left in 2019. 

Even though Butler and Draymond Green are low-volume 3-point shooters, spacing should not be that big of an issue in Golden State. Defenses are very much aware of where Miami’s ex-franchise player is at all times when the ball is not in his hands. He screens, cuts, rebounds, and can’t be ignored just because he’s floating along the perimeter. Give Jimmy a split-second advantage over whoever’s guarding him and he’ll either drill a jumper, draw a foul, or collapse the defense and find an open teammate. Whether it’s as a fearless crunch-time scorer, steady pick-and-roll playmaker, or chaos-inducing pressure applicator who knows how to disrupt an opposing offensive set, Butler impacts winning in myriad ways that will all make Curry’s life easier.

The obvious caveat here should be clear to anyone who’s followed Jimmy’s career. This is someone who loves testing other people’s patience, poking and prodding for reasons that may seem unjustified to his more rational-minded targets. The dynamic between him and Draymond Green will be one to watch, to say the least. But, next to Curry, Butler has no reason to act out. The Warriors have already given him the two-year, $111 million extension Pat Riley would not

Now, collectively in a more stable environment, the Warriors, Butler, and Curry have found a mutually beneficial situation that, at the very least, gives them a puncher’s chance to win at the highest level, which they didn’t have before this trade went down.

Loser: Phoenix Suns

Trading Kevin Durant should’ve been Phoenix’s be-all and end-all. They reportedly came close to a deal that would’ve sent him to either Miami or Golden State. Not getting anything done may haunt this organization for years to come, especially if Durant decides to not sign an extension this summer and signals to the entire league he wants out. What an embarrassing disaster!

The Suns are an obscenely expensive team that aspires to win a championship right now. They’re also 25-25 and in 10th place in the West. But instead of using their highly coveted 2031 first-round pick to improve a floundering on-court product, a couple of weeks ago they turned it into three less valuable first-round picks and then traded their 2026 pick (and Jusuf Nurkic) for Cody Martin, Vasilije Micić, and a second-round pick. Yes, that shaves $19.4 million off Mat Ishbia’s tax bill next season, but the Suns are still likely to be over the second apron and nowhere close to competing for an NBA title. 

Winner: Cleveland Cavaliers

Anytime you can upgrade on the wing and get under the luxury tax without surrendering an excessive amount of draft capital (in this case: three second-round picks and two swaps), you should do it. The 41-10 Cavaliers already had the best offense in the NBA, and they just added De’Andre Hunter, a large wing who can provide some (not a ton, but some) more defensive resistance in a potential playoff matchup against the Boston Celtics than Caris LeVert could. 

Hunter still has about $48 million left on his contract over the next two seasons, but he’s also been a knockdown 3-point shooter (making 47.1 percent of his wide-open attempts), and, whether he’s coming off the bench or starting as Cleveland’s small forward, he meaningfully enhances an ascending title contender. 

Loser: Dallas Mavericks

Nico Harrison was recently disinvited from next year’s Atrocious GM Summit for fear of embarrassing every other attendee. Not the greatest week for him or the organization he’s responsible for. And by “not the greatest week,” I mean it might go down as one of the worst weeks any team has ever had.

Winner: Los Angeles Lakers

Setting the Luka Doncic deal aside for a moment—primarily because there’s nothing left to say about what will likely go down as the biggest coup in NBA history—L.A.’s other deadline move is a soft win. Mark Williams is a rim-running, lob-catching, freakishly athletic developmental center who can eventually be the answer to what instantly became this team’s biggest question after Anthony Davis was dealt. 

Every decision the Lakers make from this moment forward is about Doncic; Williams is, on paper, the ideal complement to help maximize all the prodigious gifts L.A.’s new franchise point guard can offer. He is twitchy and long, gets off the ground extremely fast, and, as a screener, can make quick reads out of the short roll once the ball handler (i.e., Doncic) is blitzed. There’s a lot to like, and plenty of time for Williams (who turned 23 in December) to grow. His box score averages are nice: 15.6 points, 9.6 rebounds, 2.5 assists, and 1.2 blocks per game. There were some monster performances in January, including a 38-point outing against the Grizzlies and a 31-point, 13-rebound showing against the Jazz.

But there’s also serious risk involved in this deal. The Lakers gave up their unprotected 2031 first-round pick and Dalton Knecht, a 3-point shooter with good size in the first year of his rookie-scale contract, which means he was one of the more valuable assets Los Angeles had. Meanwhile, in 2.5 seasons, Williams has played in 40 percent of the Hornets’ games and is eligible for a contract extension this summer. If he can’t stay healthy or doesn’t prove capable of anchoring a championship-level defense, it’ll be back to the drawing board for Rob Pelinka, with a depleted collection of trade chips to play with. 

His defensive growth, in particular, is worth keeping an eye on. Williams is good enough to lead the league in rebounding someday, and he has rare physical tools that allow him to make plays very few can: 

He also currently ranks 462nd in defensive estimated plus-minus, and opposing field goal percentages at the rim are actually 2.0 percentage points higher than the player’s average when Williams is contesting a shot. This is extremely not what you want. 

Still, you have to respect how dauntless the Lakers were. It’s an aggressive decision that shows a certain type of urgency—Los Angeles has to keep Luka happy!—and is wiser than going after an established rim protector who’s either already in his prime, on the downside of his career, or very expensive. If all goes well, Williams can be Doncic’s pick-and-roll partner for the next 10 years. He has some maturing to do on the defensive end but has the body to dominate if he ever figures out how. 

Loser: Toronto Raptors

I might be the only NBA writer who still thinks Brandon Ingram has an All-Star appearance or two in his future. But if you’re the Raptors … why would you do this? The 2026 top-four protected first-round pick they surrendered for Ingram comes from the Pacers and might not be great. Keeping the pick also makes more sense for where Toronto is and what it’s trying to build toward than Ingram. Acquiring him now feels like a fraught, premature lunge for talent that doesn’t fit the preexisting core. There are legitimate on-court concerns about his compatibility with Scottie Barnes, even if an emerging Gradey Dick and the addition of some more outside shooting can quell some of them. 

But then there’s also the possibility that Ingram, who’s an unrestricted free agent this summer, will simply decide he doesn’t want to be in Toronto. What if the Brooklyn Nets make him a massive offer? Maybe this all works out, with the Raptors cracking the playoffs next season as Barnes benefits from playing off someone who can attract a ton of defensive attention. But sitting here, writing about the deal now, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense for Masai Ujiri to make such a random bet.  

Winner: De’Aaron Fox

With the player empowerment era on a respirator, Fox told the Sacramento Kings he wanted to play with Victor Wembanyama and then watched his team find a way to send him to the San Antonio Spurs without San Antonio losing any of its best players or prospects. No individual in the NBA should be happier right now.

Winner: Los Angeles Clippers

In a week, via three separate trades, the Clippers turned Terance Mann, Bones Hyland, Kevin Porter Jr., PJ Tucker, Mo Bamba, and a second-round pick into Bogdan Bogdanovic, Drew Eubanks, Patty Mills, MarJon Beauchamp, and three second-round picks. That’s a lot of movement. Here’s a brief summary: If Bogi rediscovers his outside shot, this deadline flurry clarifies and improves L.A.’s roster in what may be a significant way

Of the outgoing players who actually saw the court, Mann’s minutes were unpredictable, while Porter regularly took terrible shots and made even worse decisions. Mann will be missed but doesn’t quite complement James Harden, Norm Powell, and Kawhi Leonard like Bogdanovic can. So, basically, the Clippers got better without drifting into the tax. Not bad. 

Loser: Milwaukee Bucks  

I mean, what? The Bucks were an “if absolutely everything goes right and Jayson Tatum breaks his wrist” type of contender before the deadline. Then they traded Khris Middleton to the Washington Wizards (ouch) for … Kyle Kuzma. 

Moving Middleton isn’t a shock by itself, especially in a trade that gets the Bucks under the second apron and allows them to unfreeze their 2032 first-round pick. But it does mark the end of an era, and the start of a perilously uncertain future. Last month, after he scored only two points in a three-point home loss against the Portland Trail Blazers, Doc Rivers officially informed Middleton that he would come off the bench for the foreseeable future. 

“I think we’re thinking about this way too much, I’m just being honest,” Rivers said a few days later. “The bottom line is he’s just not moving every night the way you like him to. One night, you see he’s moving great, one night he’s not. His minutes go up and down with the way we want to do this medically, and it’s just a tough go for him.”

Middleton had only 16 touches in another scoreless effort against the Blazers last week. His minutes were forgettable, entirely absent of any tangible contribution to the final score. (I won’t claim this as a fact, but it almost looked like the Bucks froze Middleton out in this game.) Then, last weekend, he scored 21 points on nine shots in 23 minutes against the Spurs. Instead of waiting to see which version of Middleton could appear in the playoffs (where he was awesome in Milwaukee’s first-round loss to the Pacers last year), Milwaukee acquired Kuzma to buttress a starting five that’s already played the sixth-most minutes in the league, with an offensive rating that’d rank 25th. 

Rivers knew the Bucks would get carved up defensively if he didn’t have someone to credibly hound the opponent’s primary ball handler in his starting lineup, so Andre Jackson Jr. became indispensable despite not being that much of a 3-point threat. 

This roster couldn’t strike the right balance with Middleton and has an even slimmer chance of doing so with Kuzma, who’s been one of the least efficient and least effective rotation players in the entire NBA this season. 

As if things weren’t depressing enough, the Bucks then traded MarJon Beauchamp for Kevin Porter Jr., who, aside from Kuzma, might be the worst non-rookie rotation player in the NBA. What all this means for Giannis Antetokounmpo’s future with the Bucks is, once again, something to monitor. 

Loser: The Dallas Mavericks Again

It has been nearly a week, and I still can’t process what happened. But, while we’re here, even though it’s mostly inconsequential, I also think trading 24-year-old Quentin Grimes for 29-year-old Caleb Martin after Grimes turned down a tepid extension offer a few months ago is annoying. 

Winner: Adam Silver

The man wanted parity, and parity he got! A few days ago there were conceivably four, maybe five teams that could truly compete for this year’s title. Today, with several franchise-altering moves completed—not including ones that just, like, make the league way more interesting—it feels like that list now stretches to seven or eight. 

Loser: The National Football League

It’s the week before the Super Bowl, and nobody is talking about football. That’s a shame, especially when you consider how much credit the NFL deserves for the instrumental role it played in putting an end to racism, once and for all. The United States of America’s multi-century-long nightmare is finally over. But, sadly, Roger Goodell’s league has been overshadowed by a tectonically shifting NBA trade deadline. Sometimes life is unfair and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. Better luck next year!

Michael Pina

Michael Pina is a senior staff writer at The Ringer who covers the NBA.