From the Bucks drafting Giannis Antetokounmpo to the Luka Dončić trade we look at some of the most significant transactions of this century.
By The Athletic NBA Staff
The biggest story about NBA transactions over the past 25 years is how much we’ve come to care about transactions. A quarter-century ago, we talked a lot about Shaq and Kobe, but it was about how they operated on the basketball court or in the locker room, not in relation to their cap numbers and impact on the second apron.
Contrast that with my experience on a Saturday night in San Antonio this past February. I saw a fantastic game between the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat that ended on a Bam Adebayo buzzer-beater … and all that was totally forgotten by the time I got back to my hotel and saw that (gasp!) Luka Dončić had been traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
This was the biggest story of the year, and the words I wrote that night are my most-viewed story at The Athletic. (To be clear, I wrote about the trade, not about Bam’s shot. Apologies to Erik Spoelstra, who gave me some good material that night.).
Again, this story was not about a basketball game — or about a basketball player, really — but about a transaction. A shocking transaction, yes, but a transaction nonetheless.
The NBA has also become a much more transactional league for two reasons. First, we are in an era where nearly everyone abhors the middle; you’re either “going for it” or “tanking” “rebuilding.” That thinking has made teams much more transactional, as they load up on elite, expensive players for brief runs at glory and then tear it all down once decline is inevitable just to build it back up later.
Second, the so-called player empowerment era has liberated the best players to agitate to leave unfavorable situations, sometimes long before their contracts expire and they could hit free agency.
So that’s where we are. The most important day of the NBA calendar isn’t one with any games played. It’s July 1 — the first day of free agency (technically, the evening of June 30). The second one is the trade deadline, an increasingly busy date on the transactional calendar that, back in gentler times, would blow by with just a small handful of swaps.
However, everything still gets back to the game. We care about transactions because they can have a massive impact on teams’ fortunes on the court, especially in a sport such as basketball, where one great player can make a huge difference. That should be immediately evident by the moves on this list, all of which were franchise-altering gobsmackers, even if we didn’t necessarily realize it at the time. — John Hollinger
1. LeBron takes his ‘talents to South Beach’
This was the ultimate game-changer in how we thought of free agency and media in the digital age. LeBron James was the most sought-after free agent ever.
The supernova 25-year old destined for championships was hitting the open market in 2010. We saw teams clear the books and gut their rosters to have the flexibility to deliver whatever he wanted. And there wasn’t a report or breaking news or press release to announce it.
The Bulls, Knicks, Nets, Heat and incumbent Cavaliers would hear first from LeBron telling Jim Gray on national television what The Decision would be. He announced he was taking his talents to South Beach, and the basketball world erupted.
Excitement.
Vitriol.
Confusion.
In the blink of an eye, he was a hero to some but a villain to many. And the pressure to deliver “not one, not two, not three, not four, not five…” championships to Miami dropped on his shoulders as if he were Atlas. — Zach Harper
2. Warriors sign Kevin Durant
After nine seasons with Seattle/Oklahoma City, Kevin Durant, the youngest scoring champion in NBA history and 2014 MVP, changed the free agency landscape when he signed with the Warriors in July 2016.
OKC, then led by Durant and Westbrook, might have lost the star months earlier when they surrendered a 3-1 lead to the Warriors in the Western Conference finals. The decision drew a ton of scrutiny, as teams scrambled to the Hamptons to make their pitch to Durant before he decided to join the core of a team that won 73 wins the previous year. It also continued the 2010s trend of superstars teaming up to form “Big Threes.”
The move was the biggest in the epic “cap surge” summer of 2016, and also one of the few contracts that teams didn’t regret in the coming years. Durant won two titles in Golden State, and “cap smoothing” became a non-negotiable element of the 2023 Collective Bargaining Agreement. — Shakeia Taylor
3. Danny Ainge creates 21st century’s first big three
The rebirth of the Celtics as a championship-level franchise happened reluctantly.
In the summer of 2007, Kevin Garnett did not want to leave Minnesota. His loyalty to the team that drafted him ran too deep. Garnett’s friends in the league urged him to relent. But it wasn’t until the Celtics acquired Ray Allen in a draft-night trade with the Seattle SuperSonics that KG truly started to consider the possibility of leaving.
Once he finally agreed to go, the Celtics sent five players and two draft picks to Minnesota for him, assembling the new age Big Three of Garnett, Allen and Paul Pierce that delivered the franchise’s 17th title, putting the Celtics back where they belonged — on top of the league. — Jon Krawczynski
4. The Luka trade
Tears filled the bottom of Luka Dončić’s eyes while his lips trembled. It had been a little more than two months after Dallas, because of injury and conditioning concerns, decided to trade him to the Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and just one first-round pick.
He returned to Dallas and watched as the organization honored him with a pregame video. And then he Kill Bill’d them for 48 minutes, scoring 45 points in front of fans cheering for the road team and for the home team’s general manager to be fired.
That night in Dallas closed the book, in some ways, on Dončić’’s time as a Maverick and cemented a new reality — he, like so many of the very best in the NBA’s history, would wind up wearing purple and gold. What makes this trade wilder than almost all others? He never asked for it. — Dan Woike
5. ‘I’m coming home’
If LeBron James’ “Decision” to sign with Miami in 2010 was the what-not-to-do of free agency announcements, his return to Cleveland four years later was the exact opposite.
Not only did he break his own story, dropping the news on Sports Illustrated’s web site on the morning of July 11, 2014, but he did it in his own words.
“I always believed that I’d return to Cleveland and finish my career there,” the Akron, Ohio native wrote in the 1,050-word essay titled “I’m Coming Home” that was told to then-SI writer Lee Jenkins. “I just didn’t know when.”
The choice was a surprise, as the Heat had been considered the frontrunner for much of those 11 days when the basketball world was eagerly waiting. And after all the anger and animosity that had been borne out of his Decision, this was a once-unthinkable reunion that would eventually culminate just as he’d hoped — with the franchise’s one and only title in 2016.
James would leave again four years later to sign with the Lakers, but he had done what he came to do. — Sam Amick
6. Warriors draft Stephen Curry
Warriors GM Larry Riley coveted Curry since the 2008 NCAA Tournament. He had the Davidson star as the No. 2 player on his 2009 draft board, behind Blake Griffin. Certain Curry wouldn’t fall to him at No. 7, Riley had an unofficial agreement to send his pick to Phoenix for Amar’e Stoudemire.
So when Curry wound up available at No. 7 — stunningly after Minnesota passed on him at No. 5 and No. 6, taking two guards who were not Curry — two draft rooms celebrated: one in Phoenix and one in Oakland. The latter’s joy lasted.
Riley and head coach Don Nelson nixed any deal and kept Curry, whose camp did everything it could to convince the Warriors not to draft him. Curry wanted to go to New York, which thirsted for him at No. 8. But Riley had his man and wasn’t letting go. — Marcus Thompson II
7. Nuggets draft Nikola Jokić
The best draft selection in NBA history wasn’t televised. In the midst of a Taco Bell commercial, Denver selected future three-time MVP Jokic with the 41st pick in 2014.
He was a doughy, floor-bound, Serbian big man who had scored five points in the Hoop Summit game that spring. What were the odds he’d turn into the best player of his generation? Even the Nuggets selected him as a stash pick, opting to keep him in Europe for another year after choosing another center from the same league (Jusuf Nurkić) 25 selections earlier.
All Jokić did was carry the Nuggets to their first NBA title, win those three MVPs and lead the league in PER five years in a row (and, potentially, counting). — Hollinger
8. Kawhi Leonard lands in LA … with the Clippers
In a word, chaos.
We had seen dramatic free agencies before with LeBron James and Kevin Durant. Kawhi Leonard’s free agency set off rows of dominoes that are still falling six years later. Accusations of secret demands by Kawhi’s “Uncle Dennis” ran rampant.
The Lakers, Raptors and Clippers were all heavily rumored to be securing his services. Then one fateful night in Las Vegas, I was at a restaurant when the reports hit social media. Kawhi was signing with the Clippers and the team was also trading an unreal bounty for Paul George to join Leonard.
I saw Clippers guard Pat Beverely skip around the restaurant while wearing an Allen Iverson jersey. He’d approach PJ Tucker and Jordan Clarkson as they spoke, and let out a primal scream in Tucker’s face in exultation. The Clippers, of all franchises, had been chosen over the Lakers. Toronto had been rejected.
And the OKC Thunder’s trade of PG had set them up for a potential dynasty years later. — Harper
9. Bucks draft Giannis Antetokounmpo
Former NBA commissioner David Stern, in his final time overseeing the NBA Draft, made sure to pronounce his name correctly when the Milwaukee Bucks selected him with the 15th pick in the 2013 NBA Draft. Stern was probably one of just a handful of people in the building that knew how to say “Giannis Antetokounmpo” correctly that evening.
At that point, Antetokounmpo was just a skinny 18-year-old from Greece. No one, not even Bucks general manager John Hammond, knew what he would become.
Upon entering the league, Antetokounmpo grew three inches and gained close to 50 pounds to become one of the most dominant finishers at the rim in NBA history. He would go on to become a perennial First Team All-NBA fixture, win two NBA MVPs and lead the Bucks to their first NBA championship in 50 seasons in 2021. Rather than just becoming a solid NBA player, Antetokounmpo became a franchise cornerstone and changed the trajectory of the Bucks, flipping the franchise from a middling team on the fringe of the playoff conversation to a bonafide Eastern Conference contender year in and year out. — Eric Nehm
10. Cavaliers draft LeBron
We had seen teams tank before — notably as the Spurs were suspected of doing shelving David Robinson after a broken foot during the 1996-97 season in the hopes of landing Tim Duncan — but this was completely different, as for years this high school phenom took over the basketball conversation. LeBron James was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and he had high school games televised on ESPN.
Chicago, Memphis, Miami, Denver, Toronto, and the Clippers all appeared to be especially bad during the 2002-03 season, at least in the back half of the year, with the hopes of winning that honor to draft the kid from Akron.
When his “hometown Cavs” won the lottery in 2003, it breathed new life into the franchise and the city. A losing sports town was destined for greatness and it almost seemed too perfect. It took a few twists and turns, but he eventually made them champions. And everybody, except Miami, felt they missed out on the ultimate golden ticket. – Harper
11. Thunder trade James Harden to Rockets
James Harden has been traded four times. Yet, only one of those instances is “The James Harden trade.” It’s the one that became a cautionary tale for the few young teams that hit it big early. It’s the one that created more “what ifs,” arguably, than any move in NBA history.
What if the Thunder hadn’t done this move in October 2012? Would OKC, just three wins away from a title in June 2012, have reeled off championships? Would Kevin Durant have stayed in 2016? Would Russell Westbrook have broken out into a triple-double king? Would the Houston Rockets have emerged as a challenger to the seemingly unbeatable Golden State Warriors? Would Thunder ownership and their general manager, Sam Presti, have learned from the mistake, becoming one of the highest-paying teams over the past decade and eventually rebuilding another young roster that this time made it to the promised land?
Harden won an MVP and built a Hall of Fame career in Houston. The Thunder won a title in June with a bunch of 20-somethings. And still, you wonder: What if? — Fred Katz
12. The Shaq and Kobe split
“Heat Culture” is a catchy phrase for those who believe the Miami way of doing things is special. But there is no Heat Culture without Shaquille O’Neal’s arrival in 2004.
By 2006, the Heat had won their first championship and O’Neal’s presence helped unlock a young guard, Dwyane Wade, who won Finals MVP in 2006. O’Neal finished second in MVP voting in 2005 after his desire was questioned in his last year with the Lakers.
He was a force for the Heat. It was O’Neal’s last championship and helped set the championship culture Pat Riley wanted in place. The trade also sent some key pieces to the Lakers, namely Lamar Odom, who became a Sixth Man of the Year and a two-time champion with the Lakers. — Jason Jones
13. The Raptors get The Claw
DeMar DeRozan lamented a lack of loyalty when the Toronto Raptors, the only NBA team he had played for, traded him without warning in the middle of a July night in 2018.
For Raptors president Masai Ujiri, niceties were not an option: His team had plateaued as an annual appetizer for LeBron James in springtime, and Toronto was still a league outpost. So he took a risk on an injury-riddled star who wanted to be in California, giving up DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a first-round pick.
From the outside, it looked like a bold move. To the Raptors, there was nothing to lose. As it turns out, there was everything to win. — Eric Koreen
14. Nets trade for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett
It was the trade that changed two franchises for the next decade.
For the Celtics, it was out with the old, in with the draft picks that became Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. For the Nets, it was one of the worst trades of all time, and likely second-worst of the last 25 years.
The Nets hoped that Pierce and Garnett would turn them into Eastern Conference contenders, instead it left them down bad. The Celtics, meanwhile, got the core of a title-winning team. — Mike Vorkunov
15. Kobe gets new running mate, Pau Gasol
It was February 2008 and the Lakers badly needed help in the middle. Center Andrew Bynum went down with a season-ending injury the previous month. Oh, and Kobe Bryant had asked for a trade the prior offseason.
Then, L.A. pulled off an unthinkable blockbuster trade that was heavily criticized as lopsided at the time. The Lakers acquired big man Pau Gasol from the Memphis Grizzlies, with the Grizzlies receiving Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenton, Aaron McKie, the draft rights to Marc Gasol (Pau’s brother) and two future first-round picks.
The Kobe-led Lakers immediately leveled up, reaching three consecutive NBA Finals, winning back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010. Gasol became one of the most consequential and beloved Hall of Famers in Lakers history. — Mirin Fader
16. LeBron becomes a Laker
Nearly all of the best players ever to compete in the NBA spent time either trying to beat the Los Angeles Lakers for championships or trying to win them for the West’s marquee franchise.
Until he signed with the team in 2018, James never had either chance. No showdown with Kobe Bryant ever materialized. The Warriors and Clippers surged while the late-era Bryant-led Lakers floundered. The worst years in Lakers’ history produced interesting young players, but no one was worthy of the keys to the franchise. James, ready for a new test that aligned with personal and business interests in Los Angeles, took it on.
And just two seasons later, the Lakers were back on top. — Woike
17. Warriors fire Mark Jackson, hire Steve Kerr
Mark Jackson dressed in black for his own funeral.
Despite helping the Golden State Warriors go from laughingstock to young and promising, the coach knew he was going to be fired as soon as his team lost in the 2014 playoffs. So Jackson came to Game 7 of Golden State’s first-round series with the Clippers looking like a mortician. Sure enough, just days after his team lost Game 7 to Los Angeles, Jackson was dismissed.
The season had featured clashes within the coaching staff, and between Jackson and the front office. The Warriors had discussions with multiple candidates, but Steve Kerr was always owner Joe Lacob’s top target. Kerr, the former ultimate role player for the Spurs and Bulls who had become a top analyst for TNT, had gotten to know Lacob and the team’s management.
But Golden State had to battle the Knicks, whose team president, Phil Jackson, was Kerr’s old Bulls coach. Jackson made Kerr a huge offer to coach in New York. In the end, being closer to his family in California won the day, and Kerr stunned many around the league by turning down the Knicks for the Dubs. It’s easy, now, with Stephen Curry’s Hall of Fame career near complete, to say it was an easy choice. It was not. — David Aldridge
18. Suns hire Mike D’Antoni, sign Steve Nash
Off to a slow start to the 2003-04 season, the Phoenix Suns made a decision. Chairman Jerry Colangelo and GM Bryan Colangelo fired Frank Johnson and promoted assistant Mike D’Antoni as head coach. In doing so, they altered the organization’s direction and ultimately changed the NBA.
Outside of NBA circles, not much was known about D’Antoni. A West Virginia native, he had starred as a player and coached in Europe. He had spent one season as head coach of the Denver Nuggets and worked in other NBA roles. Upon his Phoenix promotion, D’Antoni promised, “one thing we can do is make it exciting for fans.”
They had no idea.
Over the summer the Suns signed free agent Steve Nash. Perhaps in the history of the sport, no point guard better matched a coach’s vision.
With Nash directing D’Antoni’s free-flowing, up-tempo system, the Suns instantly became must-see basketball. They pushed. They spread the court. They moved the ball. Phoenix led the league in scoring three years in a row. Under D’Antoni, they twice advanced to the Western Conference finals. Nash won two MVP trophies.
They were good enough to win a title but could never quite get there. Frustration set in. After five years, D’Antoni left to coach the Knicks. Nash stuck around, and actually led the Suns back to the Western Conference Finals under coach Alvin Gentry. But it wasn’t the same. The D’Antoni-Nash years produced excitement in the Valley of the Sun that will never be forgotten. – Doug Haller
19. Celtics and Sixers swap places; Jayson Tatum heads to Boston
Leading up to the 2017 NBA Draft, Markelle Fultz was widely viewed as the best prospect. The Boston Celtics, fresh off a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals, were expected to select the point guard out of Washington with the top pick.
Danny Ainge had another idea. The Celtics president of basketball operations traded the No. 1 pick to the Philadelphia 76ers for the No. 3 pick and a future first-round selection, which Boston would later use to acquire Romeo Langford. Though Langford would only play 94 games for the Celtics, Ainge’s real prize came in the form of Jayson Tatum.
It took guts for Ainge to trade down to select the player he considered the draft’s top prospect — yes, better than Fultz. But the Lakers, picking second, did not hide that they wanted Lonzo Ball. Ainge had faith that he would get his preferred prospect, Tatum, while adding another pick in the process.
The Celtics’ move looks so obvious in retrospect but it was daring at the time. By pairing Tatum with Jaylen Brown, Ainge set the foundation of the Celtics’ next championship team. Don’t ask what happened to Boston’s Kyrie Irving era, but it’s remarkable to think that the franchise was so well positioned with assets that Ainge was able to trade for Irving and draft Tatum just months after Isaiah Thomas led the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals.
The trade left behind a crushing what-if for Philadelphia, too. Tatum and Joel Embiid would have been a heck of a duo.
20. Pistons trade for Rasheed Wallace
It was the final piece of the puzzle for one of the great defensive teams in history. In February 2004, two days after Atlanta had acquired a disgruntled Rasheed Wallae from Portland in a trade that was mainly about dropping Shareef Abdur-Rahim’s contract and rebuilding, the Hawks flipped Wallace to Detroit for a package that included Chucky Atkins, Bob Sura, Mike James, and two firsts.
Bumping along in the middle of the East playoff pack with a glaring hole at Wallace’s power forward spot, Detroit went on a 20-3 tear post-trade and then romped through the playoff field to the championship. In 48 total games after the trade, Detroit’s defense allowed more than 95 points in regulation just once. — Hollinger
21. The Seattle SuperSonics hire Sam Presti
Last year, when The Athletic polled a group of NBA executives last season, asking each participant to list his or her top-five best front offices, Sam Presti and the Oklahoma City Thunder won in a landslide. And that was before the Thunder won the title this past June.
Eighteen years ago, the future was not so clear.
The Seattle Supersonics, who moved to OKC a year later and became the Thunder, swiped a mostly unknown Presti away from the Spurs, where he had risen rapidly to become San Antonio’s assistant GM. The hiring made Presti the second-youngest lead executive in NBA history, behind only Jerry Colangelo. As his first big move, he drafted Kevin Durant, an obvious choice at the time but one that also spurred an impressive draft run.
A year later, he took Russell Westbrook and Serge Ibaka in the first round. The next summer, he grabbed James Harden. That’s three MVPs in three straight drafts.
He has become more refined with age. The Thunder operate almost like a tech firm with their emphasis on analytics and regimented, hyper-organized scouting processes.
The Serge Ibaka trade — the one from 2016 that sent Ibaka to the Orlando Magic for Domantas Sabonis, Victor Oladipo and Ersan Ilyasova — has sprouted possibly the greatest return of any swap ever. Ilyasova got them Jerami Grant. Then, a year later Presti flipped Oladipo and Sabonis for Paul George, who he then traded two years later for a haul that included franchise cornerstone Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and approximately 972 first-round picks, one of which became the other franchise cornerstone, Jalen Williams.
The Thunder have uncovered talent in the second round. They’ve succeeded with unconventional hires, such as when they surprised the league by naming the mostly unknown Mark Daigneault as head coach in 2021.
Of course, Presti knows something about talent rising from unconventional places. — Fred Katz
22. Phil Jackson returns to Lakers
This move happened because two men with big egos saw the greater good. One, Kobe Bryant, who Jackson had criticized and said he pushed to trade in a book he wrote at the end of his first stint with the Lakers.
Then there was Jackson, who had to make the relationship right for him to work with Bryant again. Jackson was replaced in 2004 and the season was chaotic and the Lakers missed the playoffs. The Bryant-Jackson reunion in 2005 reshaped both men’s legacies. Jackson won two more championships, giving him 11 as a coach. Bryant became a leader under Jackson, won an NBA MVP in 2008 and two Finals MVPs (2009, 2010).
For all the strife in their first stint from 1999-2004, they proved to be a winning combination in the end. — Jones
23. Pistons draft Darko Miličić
It’s an all-time what-if for the 21st century: What if the Pistons had selected one of the three Hall of Famers taken next instead of bust Darko Miličić with the second pick in 2003? Detroit was still good enough to win the title in 2004 and remained a contender through 2008, but with, say, Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, or Dwyane Wade, the Pistons could have won multiple titles.
Amazingly, a 50-win Pistons team ended up with the second pick in that loaded 2003 draft because of a previous trade that sent forward Otis Thorpe to the then-Vancouver Grizzlies, and sent back a draft pick only protected for the top pick. Miličić scored 152 points as a Piston across three seasons. — Hollinger
24. New Jersey Nets trade for Jason Kidd
It was one of the great unexpected turnarounds in league history. While you can credit some developments up and down the roster, it mostly came down to one trade — the Nets sending Stephon Marbury to Phoenix for Jason Kidd in the summer of 2001 in a “challenge trade” of star point guards.
Suffice to say the Nets won out: A moribund New Jersey franchise that won 26 games a year earlier and hadn’t won a playoff round in 18 years shockingly earned the East’s top seed. Behind Kidd, the Nets made it to consecutive NBA Finals in 2002 and 2003, with New Jersey leading the league in defensive efficiency both years. — Hollinger
25. Lakers trade for Anthony Davis
Months after requesting a trade from New Orleans, the Lakers and Pelicans finally got a trade across the finish line in 2019. Los Angeles got Davis; New Orleans got almost everything the Lakers could offer. Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball and Josh Hart — all got sent out, along with three first-round picks and one swap, to NOLA.
Davis promptly proved to be the perfect partner for LeBron James, leading the Lakers to a title in 2020 before eventually netting them Luka Dončić. — Woike
