A 10-time All-Star is apparently anonymous. A promising 20-something can’t find a home. Losing teams are gobbling up draft picks. And a couple of dudes rolling around in mud can finally take a shower.
Let’s open up the NBA notebook to run through four effects of Thursday’s trade deadline that caught my eye:
The forgotten man
Tuesday night, while watching Max Christie warm up for his first bout as a member of the Dallas Mavericks, a scout leaned over to make a proclamation.
“This guy,” he said, “is the most underrated part of the trade,” a reference to the blockbuster that sent Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday night.
But that statement, no matter Christie’s potential, is precisely why the promising 21-year-old is not close to the most overlooked aspect of the stunning move. Whether because Dončić is so dominant at such a young age or because the Mavs failed to receive a large enough package to justify dealing him, the world seems to have forgotten one person who has become more underrated than Christie:
Despite reaching his elderly 30s, a class of people so ancient that they pay for cable and know their friends’ phone numbers by heart, Anthony Davis is far from decrepit.
Davis remains at the peak of his powers, an All-Star shoo-in, a top-of-the-line defensive backbone and one of the league’s scariest finishers. But he does bring speedbumps, such as the potential for scrunched spacing.
After pleading with the Lakers to find a center so he could slide to power forward, Davis received his wish … somewhat. He will slot alongside 7-footer Daniel Gafford for now and fellow 7-footer Dereck Lively II once Lively is healthy. Both big men are at their best inside the 3-point arc, as is Davis, who doesn’t take many deep balls (though he’s shot better from midrange in 2024-25 than he has in any season dating back to his New Orleans days).
Of course, there are ways to smoothen out an offense, even when it deploys a couple of bigs who don’t shoot 3s.
For example, the Cleveland Cavaliers play Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen together and still own the league’s most efficient attack.
“I’ve coached A.D.,” said Mavs coach Jason Kidd, who was an assistant with the Lakers while Davis was there. “I understand he’s high-level. I’ve coached two bigs. … So I’m looking at being able to take a little bit of everything I’ve seen or been around to put those bigs in a position to be successful.”
One place Kidd has peered, he says, is Ohio.
The Cavs survive — nay, excel — in the Mobley-Allen minutes with cohesive cutting and clever playmaking. Allen and Mobley are both skilled passers, which the Mavericks can replicate with Davis and Lively, who can slice up defenses after rolling off ball screens.
Cleveland will strategically place one of its bigs in the corner, even if he isn’t likely to chuck up a 3-pointer, if only because he can cut behind defenders or crash for offensive rebounds more effectively from there. Defenders don’t worry about rushing to Allen for a jump shot, but they do have to pay attention to him, lest he darts to the basket behind their backs.
Kidd mentioned his confidence in Davis’ ability from deep, despite 3-point accuracy that’s a shade below 30 percent this season. Davis has hit more than a third of his 3-point attempts in only one season of his career, and that was seven years ago.
But Davis may now have to take more than the couple of 3s he averaged with the Lakers — if only to open the court.
Shooting isn’t just about three being greater than two. It’s also about the space it creates. If a player rarely lifts from beyond the arc, then defenders won’t venture as far from the paint to guard him, and the middle of the court will shrink once drivers like Kyrie Irving get there.
“A.D. is capable of shooting the 3,” Kidd said. “He’s also capable of putting it on the floor and playmaking.”
Cleveland’s big-to-big two-man game can stand out, which Dallas could replicate. Davis can facilitate from the high elbow. Lively and Gafford can hang around the dunker’s spot, down low by the basket.
The Cavaliers emphasize pushing pace after stops when the two bigs are on the court, too. They create mismatches or score quickly that way. But the Cavs also have two All-Star off-the-dribble hounds, Donovan Mitchell and Darius Garland. Dallas is now down to one in Irving, who has excelled most in his career while alongside larger facilitators who can allow Irving to dazzle as Irving does. Now, he is the team’s lead facilitator, responsible for getting everyone else going.
Of course, Mobley and Allen haven’t always made music together. As recently as last season, Cleveland had to choose one or the other down the stretches of games. Now, with Coach of the Year candidate Kenny Atkinson taking over, things have changed.
Teams with a couple of non-shooters can figure out how to score. Heck, they have done it with Davis, who played power forward for most of the 2020 season, when the Lakers earned a ring. But it’s worth noting that, for many of the playoff run’s high-leverage moments (save for the series against Nikola Jokić’s Denver Nuggets), Davis played the five with the Lakers’ other centers sitting on the bench.
These strategies don’t usually jell overnight — and often, they require at least one training camp.
Irving is a special talent. Klay Thompson still induces nightmares on the perimeter (and he’s getting hotter lately). P.J. Washington, though his lack of playmaking could stand out more when he plays the three instead of the four, is still a threat from deep.
But the floor is more compressed now than it was pre-Davis. The Mavericks are loaded with good players, but meshing will take creativity.
GO DEEPER
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The P.J. Washington Corollary
The worst decision of this NBA season didn’t come from any front office executing a trade. It happened two weeks ago on a basketball court in Arizona.
With the Washington Wizards staging a fake, fourth-quarter comeback against the Phoenix Suns, Kyle Kuzma recovered a defensive rebound and pushed the other direction, a backpedaling Kevin Durant in front of him.
This is the modern age, when teams hunt long balls, even on fast breaks. But in no era — not before the invention of the 3-point arc, not in the ’90s when anyone could flip up a midrange jumper and not now — was Kuzma’s next movement advisable. With 21 seconds to go on the shot clock, he pulled up from the top of the key, his left foot cleanly on the 3-point line and his right one an entire size 15 into 2-point land.
The ball clanked off the back of the rim. Only 15 seconds later, Kuzma strayed off his assignment, Durant, to fly into the face of an off-balance Devin Booker, who appeared on the verge of a difficult, midrange fadeaway. Instead, with Kuzma soaring in front of him, an unperturbed Booker whipped the ball to Durant, who swished a wide-open 3.
Kevin Durant defends Kyle Kuzma. (Aryanna Frank / Imagn Images)
These are the decisions the Milwaukee Bucks, Kuzma’s new employer, cannot afford, the ones franchise legend Khris Middleton, who heads to the D.C. in exchange for him, would not make.
The Bucks are hoping Kuzma can be the next P.J. Washington.
A year ago, the Mavericks rescued a couple of talents from losing situations, trading for Washington and Gafford, who had both wallowed on losing teams for most of their careers. Each one took off upon arrival in Dallas. A winning culture created winning habits.
The idea of Kuzma — a tough perimeter defender and rugged rebounder who isn’t scared of the moment, can knock down big shots and can create looks for himself — would help the Bucks, who lost faith in Middleton’s health, though the veteran wing is still a highly efficient scorer. It wasn’t long ago that Kuzma was a prominent member of the Lakers’ 2020 title team. Clearly, you can win with that version of him.
But he’s taken hundreds of ill-advised shots and made countless unnecessary gambles since then. He’s shooting just 28 percent from 3 this season. Of the 99 qualifying players who finish at least 20 percent of their team’s possessions (the league-average number) with a drawn foul, a shot or a turnover, Kuzma ranks 96th in true shooting percentage. Many of his shots, like the one against Phoenix, never needed to occur.
The Bucks hope Kuzma can recover old habits — but you don’t know it until you see it.
The same goes for Mark Williams and the Lakers, whom Los Angeles snagged from the Charlotte Hornets on Wednesday, sending out more draft capital for the burly 7-footer than they did for Dončić. L.A. gave up its 2031 first-rounder, a 2030 first-round swap and Dalton Knecht, the 17th selection in the 2024 draft, for the 23-year-old Williams, who is averaging 15.6 points and 9.6 rebounds in only 25 minutes.
No one provides alleys to a rim-runner’s oops quite like Dončić can. A season ago, Gafford and Lively both finished inside the top five in lob finishes, according to Second Spectrum. Williams boasts a similar skill set, but his defensive effort is questionable. Opponents are shooting 68 percent on dunks and layups when he’s the closest defender, which places him 52nd out of 58 qualifying centers in that statistic, per Second Spectrum .
But Williams is 7-2. His standing reach places his fingertip literally one inch short of the rim. He can jump over most of his counterparts. The raw ability is apparent. Often, so are the results.
Does he straighten out alongside LeBron James or away from a losing situation for the first time as a pro? Can he be the next Washington or Gafford or even better than that? Can Kuzma? Or do habits from D.C. and Charlotte persist?
Pick-gorging
A tip of the cap to the Hornets and Wizards. Those two teams have combined for fewer wins than the Chicago Bulls this season. But if you’re losing, you may as well load up on draft picks while doing so.
In a series of trades, the Wizards sent out one first-rounder destined to be in the 20s along with Kuzma and expiring salary. In return, they received a better first-round pick for taking on Marcus Smart, four second-rounders for adding Reggie Jackson, a 2028 first-round swap from Milwaukee and 2024 first-rounder AJ Johnson.
The Hornets’ future looks better off, too. They received a first-rounder for absorbing the unwanted Jusuf Nurkić from the Suns a few weeks after receiving three second-rounders from Phoenix for Nick Richards.
An aside: You have to wonder if Phoenix ordered its transactions wrong. It traded its only three remaining second-round picks for Richards and received a career backup center along with a second-round swap. Not long after, it traded its only remaining first-round pick, unprotected in 2031, to the Utah Jazz for three less-valuable first-rounders, all of which project to be in the 20s. The thought was that the Suns could use a trio of mediocre first-rounders to help with multiple trades as opposed to one high-value pick they could wield only once. They ended up attaching one of the new firsts to Nurkić to get off his 2025-26 money.
But what if they reversed those two deals, pulling off the one with Utah first and then the Richards’ trade second? Would they have needed to include three second-round picks along with a first to receive Richards and get rid of Nurkić? Or would the same first-rounder along with one or two or maybe even zero second-round picks have been enough to get the Hornets to say yes, still sending Nurkić to Charlotte and Richards to Phoenix, keeping a little more draft capital for an asset-strapped team and holding onto Josh Okogie’s $8.3 million salary to use in another deal?
The Hornets played this well. They added another first-rounder from the Lakers in the Williams trade, this one unprotected, along with a 2030 first-round swap and Knecht. Williams could blow up, but a team far from contending landing multiple first-rounders and a young player for a non-All-Star, oft-injured center who is eligible for an extension this summer is smart business.
Both of these teams are richer today.
GO DEEPER
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Quentin Grimes’ Merry-go-round
Why does everyone keep re-gifting Quentin Grimes?
Only a year and a half ago, he was a young starter for a second-round playoff team. But he fell out of favor, and the New York Knicks flipped him to the Detroit Pistons in a deal that brought them what they hoped would be a couple of win-now offensive weapons, Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanović.
Yet, Grimes has been on the carousel since.
The Pistons needlessly tossed the 24-year-old, who played only six games for Detroit, into an offseason deal for Tim Hardaway Jr. Even after the Mavs, who had to dip below the first apron to execute a sign-and-trade for Klay Thompson, broadcast to the league their desperation to dump Hardaway’s salary, Detroit somehow included Grimes, a pesky on-ball defender, dangerous 3-point shooter and grand attacker of closeouts.
He’s been feisty manning the perimeter in Dallas and has shot 40 percent from deep. And yet, after Davis waived a $5.9 million trade kicker to give the Mavs flexibility for another move, the team traded him to the Philadelphia 76ers for Caleb Martin.
Dallas likes Martin’s toughness. He’s a proven playoff performer. But he’s also five years older than Grimes, isn’t as accurate a shooter and doesn’t have the same upside.
There’s greater context to this. Martin is locked into a team-friendly deal through 2027. Grimes is a restricted free agent this summer, when he hopes to get paid. He hasn’t accepted his role to the appeasement of every coaching staff he’s played for, not causing trouble but also not diving headfirst into an off-the-bench 3-and-D part. So teams have moved on, even though he’s a young, high-effort, two-way player with an analytically friendly shot profile and a skill set that could enhance any group on both sides of the ball without disrupting its ecosystem.
Maybe Philadelphia, which could use an injection of energy, will be the place he finally sticks.
(Top photo of Anthony Davis: Brian Fluharty / Getty Images)
