The 2025 trade deadline was technically one month ago, but it doesn’t really feel that way. No, with nine former All-Stars traded, it feels as though we’re somehow playing out a second season within the first. Remember when the Phoenix Suns were 9-2 and looking like contenders? How about when the Los Angeles Lakers were plodding their way toward another Play-In berth? All of that happened during the same season that is currently getting played out, but the entire board has been flipped upside down. It seems as though almost nothing that happened until February actually mattered.

It’s a whole new league now, one defined by arguably the most exciting deadline the NBA has ever seen. So let’s look back on the transaction cycle that set up the second 2024-25 NBA season. With one month of hindsight, who emerged from the chaos as victors? And who did irreparable harm to themselves as they set up for the season that actually counts, and the ones beyond?

Winner: Los Angeles Lakers

The team results speak for themselves. The Lakers are 7-1 since the All-Star Break and 11-2 since landing Luka Dončić overall. They’ve climbed up to the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, turned a 31-year-old sidekick into a 25-year-old cornerstone and set themselves up for perhaps a decade of winning. Of course the Lakers, as a team, are winners.

But let’s go deeper. Look at the individual component parts here. Austin Reaves is averaging over 20 points per game since Dončić debuted, excluding the game in which he got injured, because teams no longer have the defensive resources available to pay attention to him. Jarred Vanderbilt is suddenly offensively viable because, well, who cares if one guy can’t shoot on a roster with two of the smartest offensive engines ever? His presence is a big part of what supercharged this defense. Jaxson Hayes is shooting over 80% from the floor since Dončić joined the team because all of his shots are now easy dunks. He’s suddenly a viable NBA center because Dončić and LeBron James are feeding him the easiest looks of his life, which has created a pretty valuable showcase ahead of his impending free agency.

Hey, speaking of James, he’s been pushing for some version of this for basically his entire Lakers tenure. Remember when Magic Johnson tried to surround him with ball-handlers instead of shooters? How about the Russell Westbrook trade? Those moves were executed poorly, but the hope was to get James where he is now. His scoring is up significantly since the Dončić trade, but he’s holding the ball for shorter spans and dribbling less, per NBA.com tracking data. His workload has been trimmed tremendously, and as a result, he’s not only getting easier shots, but defending harder and stretching defenses with his stellar shooting off the catch (21-of-40 since Dončić arrived!) For the first time in his career, James doesn’t have to be the alpha and the omega of his offense. He looks five years younger.

Every player on the Laker roster is benefitting from Dončić’s presence. He’s helped establish JJ Redick as one of the NBA’s most promising young coaches. It’s not even enough to say that the Lakers won the trade. Each individual Laker has his own separate claim as the trade’s great winner.

Loser: Nico Harrison

You knew the Lakers were a winner. You know the Mavericks are a loser. We’ve covered why in plenty of depth. This week alone, we’ve covered why they should tank, why they should trade Anthony Davis, and why they have one of the grimmest overall outlooks in all of basketball. You knew all of this already. With a month of hindsight, though, it’s probably worth at least starting to contextualize what this could mean for the man who did this to Dallas.

There is a pretty firmly established “worst owner in NBA history.” That would be Ted Stepien, who was so bad that the NBA had to create a new rule (the Stepien Rule, which prevents teams from being without a first-round pick in consecutive drafts) just to make sure no one ever topped him. We don’t, however, have an obvious “worst general manager in NBA history.”

Nico Harrison’s short-term plan for the Mavericks is already blowing up in his face

Jasmyn Wimbish

Oh, there are certainly candidates. David Kahn passed on Stephen Curry twice… but remember, four other teams also passed on him once. Isiah Thomas flopped for multiple teams, but he was at least a strong drafter who landed Tracy McGrady out of high school. Vlade Divac also passed on Dončić, but did so before ever seeing him play an NBA game. If you look hard enough for positives basically anywhere else, you can find them.

That’s true for Harrison as well. He did build a Finals team, after all. But the Dončić trade has thus far been so horrific and, perhaps more importantly, caused such an outcry within his home market that there’s just no way that any of that ever gets remembered. The Dončić deal did not have a single defender when it happened and it has somehow already gotten substantially worse. If things continue on this path, there is a real chance that he becomes synonymous with bad roster management in much the same way that Stepien became synonymous with poor ownership. Even if others have worse overall track records, it’s entirely possible that Harrison just made the single most destructive trade in NBA history, and if that indeed proves to be the case, there is a real chance that his professional legacy is as the worst general manager the league has ever seen.

Winner: Quentin Grimes

The city of Dallas might not be thankful for Harrison, but Grimes certainly is. Dallas seemingly traded Grimes, in part, because it did not want to pay him. Grimes is headed for restricted free agency next summer. The Mavericks flipped him for Caleb Martin, who ostensibly had a similar skill set, but came with a cheap four-year contract. The Mavericks weren’t using him much when they had him anyway, playing him just 22.8 minutes per game before the trade.

But in Philadelphia? He’s up to 32.7 minutes, and with all of the injuries that the 76ers have endured, he’s had far more opportunity to actually play with the ball in his hands. Grimes scored 44 points on Saturday against Golden State and then poured in 30 more on Tuesday against Minnesota. The 76ers seem to have plucked a long-term starter right off of Harrison’s roster, and now Grimes is going to get a much heftier contract precisely because he was traded. Meanwhile, the Grimes-for-Martin swap may have saved Dallas long-term money, but it cost them in the short term because Martin earns more this season. That basically took them up to their first apron hard cap, making it far more difficult for them to add reinforcements while Kyrie Irving is injured. Just another feather in Harrison’s dubious cap.

Loser: Klay Thompson

There is a certain tact that is supposed to come with signing an all-time great. Players of Thompson’s caliber are typically drawn to teams, first and foremost, by the presence of similarly accomplished talents. Spoken or not, Thompson’s interest in joining the Mavericks likely relied on the presence of Dončić. Had he known that the Mavericks were going to trade him, he might not have signed in Dallas in the first place. The entire rest of the roster is injured, depriving Thompson of any chance to win this season. His own father, Mychal Thompson, recently described the situation by saying, “Klay is stuck in purgatory right now.”

What makes this so much worse, though, is that the other team that pursued Dončić last summer was the Lakers. He could have been in Los Angeles right now alongside James and Dončić, and it wouldn’t have even cost them anyone off of the current roster. James himself offered to take a pay cut to facilitate Thompson’s acquisition. He chose Dallas, and Dallas proceeded to blow up the team he chose to sign with. That’s hardly the way to treat a Hall of Famer. Hopefully, Thompson can find himself in a better situation next season, whether that’s in Dallas or more likely elsewhere.

Winner: Golden State Warriors

The Warriors have gotten lost in the Laker hoopla. Since Feb. 8, the day of Jimmy Butler‘s Warriors debut, the two share identical 9-2 records. Golden State’s +13.3 net rating dwarf’s the +8 rating the Lakers have in that period, though the Lakers have admittedly played the harder schedule. Butler isn’t as good as Dončić, but the things he provides were needed more in Golden State than shot creation was in Los Angeles.

The Warriors ranked 27th in free throw attempts before Butler’s arrival. They’re up to ninth since. They’re allowing only 101.4 points per 100 possessions with Butler on the floor for them defensively after languishing in the middle of the pack for most of the season. Stephen Curry is averaging nearly 30 points per game with Butler in tow because defenses finally have to respect another ball-handler on their roster. Butler has been everything the Warriors could have hoped and more, and when you consider the specific fit and how quickly he hit the ground running, you could even argue he’s done more for his new team than Dončić has thus far.

Loser: Phoenix Suns

A deal to send Kevin Durant to the Golden State Warriors fell apart in the days leading up to the deadline because Durant was not interested in returning to his former team. Fine. That was out of Phoenix’s control. But once that news got out, the ship had sailed. There was no fixing this season once the best player on the team found out he was nearly traded. At that point, the Suns needed to be proactive and find the best deal possible for Durant from a team eager to win with him right away. Instead, they kept him and have gone 4-8 since deadline day. Why they thought Nick Richards and Cody Martin would be enough to fix this mess remains unclear.

Now Phoenix is two-and-a-half games out of the No. 10 seed, meaning a lottery season in which their pick goes to Houston is entirely in play. They’re seemingly barreling towards their fourth coach in four seasons. Oh, and they traded their unprotected 2031 first-round pick, an asset Utah general manager Justin Zanik outright called “the most valuable asset on the market right now,” in exchange for two bad first-round picks and the ability to dump Jusuf Nurkić. This entire season has been a disaster, and the deadline only underlines that fact.

Winner: Cleveland Cavaliers

A rule I think we can all abide by is that if a team doesn’t lose for the entire month after the trade deadline, they are one of that deadline’s winners. Cleveland is 11-0 since deadline day and 10-0 with De’Andre Hunter in the lineup, but more than that, he offers security in an essential area. 

With two small guards and two big men with limitations as shooters, Cleveland badly needs a big wing that can hang on both ends of the floor. As valuable as players like Max Strus and Isaac Okoro are, they both have weaknesses that limit them in this regard. But when Dean Wade is healthy? Cleveland is 103-37 over the past three seasons. The trouble is that Wade is rarely fully healthy. Hunter is, to an extent, Wade insurance. Cleveland went from often having no big, versatile wings to now having at least two. They are now 40-5 with either on the floor this season.

Cavaliers become first NBA team to clinch playoff spot after tying Heat 3-pointer wiped away in wild finish

Sam Quinn

Now Cleveland enters the playoffs with more lineup flexibility than any team in basketball. They occasionally close small, with Evan Mobley at center, but they can also close big, with Darius Garland off of the floor in favor of a wing or even Ty Jerome. They can build lineups around offense, defense or both and are covered in the case of basically any short-term injury. That doesn’t guarantee a championship, but they’re set up as well as they possibly could be as they try to win one.

Loser: Memphis Grizzlies

The Grizzlies are losers through inaction rather than incorrect action. They didn’t make a major upgrade. The Warriors and Lakers obviously did, creating a much more formidable overall Western Conference gauntlet. 

They paid a meaningful price to dump Marcus Smart because they believed that they’d need cap space to renegotiate and extend Jaren Jackson Jr. over the summer. At the time, that might have made sense, but because of injuries that have happened to players on other teams (Victor Wembanyama, Kyrie Irving, Anthony Davis) Jackson will now likely become super-max eligible through either an All-NBA or Defensive Player of the Year selection. If he is, they wouldn’t have needed that cap space overall, costing themselves anything Smart might have contributed on the court and his salary as a trade tool off of it this summer for very little gain.

Does any of this preclude a deep playoff run for the Grizzlies either this year or beyond? No. They’re still reasonably young and playing very well. They could feasibly reach the Western Conference finals in a few months. It’s just going to be harder now than it looked like it would be a few months ago, and if they fail and need to retool over the summer, they have less chips with which to do so.