Tim Bontemps
For the first time, a seven-team trade took place in the NBA, as a series of transactions going back to the Kevin Durant trade before the draft wound up being involved in one giant, complex transaction when the league’s annual moratorium on business officially concluded Sunday.
All told, the deal involved seven teams (the Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns), six players (Durant, Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Clint Capela, David Roddy and Daeqwon Plowden), 13 draft picks (one first round pick, the No. 10 selection in last month’s NBA draft, used by Phoenix via Houston as part of the Durant deal to select center Khaman Maluach, and a total of 12 second round picks) plus Houston sending to Atlanta a second round pick swap and some cash considerations.
The main component of the deal is the trade that saw Durant go from Phoenix to Houston on the day of Game 7 of the NBA Finals last month. The future Hall of Famer landed with last season’s second overall seed in the Western Conference in exchange for Green, Brooks, the 10th pick and five second round picks.
The Durant deal wasn’t eligible to be completed until Sunday, when the moratorium ended and deals were allowed to be consummated in the NBA’s 2025-26 league year, due to satisfying salary cap requirements. That allowed Phoenix to take those second-round picks from Houston and maneuver in the draft, making a series of deals that wound up spreading them around to a variety of teams.
Eventually, the Suns wound up with the first pick of the second round — the 31st overall selection — which they used to select Saint Joseph’s forward Rasheer Fleming, plus the 41st pick, which they used to take guard Koby Brea. Several other players wound up being drafted from picks involved in this deal last month, including the Lakers grabbing Adou Thiero with the 36th pick; the Timberwolves taking center Rocco Zikarsky with the 45th pick; and the Warriors drafting forward Alex Toohey with the 52nd overall selection.
The time between the deal being agreed to and made official also allowed the Rockets to add to it, as well, by bringing back Capela — who spent his first six seasons in the NBA with the Rockets after being selected by Houston with the 25th pick in the 2014 NBA draft — for some additional center depth behind Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams after he spent the past five seasons playing for the Hawks.
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