Though the NBA returned to action after the All-Star break with one game Wednesday and a nearly full slate of action Thursday, the league’s focus was elsewhere after the stunning news that
star big man
will
due to deep vein thrombosis in his right shoulder.
The announcement sent shockwaves through the league, given Wembanyama’s status after following a brilliant Rookie of the Year season with an even better sophomore campaign. He appeared in his first All-Star Game over the weekend and was the leading contender for Defensive Player of the Year honors, a shoo-in to make an All-NBA team and, potentially, garnering some Most Valuable Player consideration.
All of that, though, moves to the background, as the focus shifts to his immediate and long-term health. So, with The Association back in action, we’ll look at the leaguewide reaction to the Wembanyama news, plus examine several lessons from the pre-All-Star break portion of the schedule in our weekly trip around the NBA.
A moment that stuck with me during All-Star Weekend occurred during Saturday’s media availability inside Oakland’s Oracle Arena, where
guard
was asked about possibly becoming the next face of the NBA.
“No, not really,”
. “That’s what they got Wemby for.”
That’s the ascension Wembanyama has enjoyed over the past two years; less than two months after his 21st birthday, he’s seen as the heir apparent to
,
and
.
And that led to the universal shock from sources I spoke to around the NBA in the wake of Thursday’s news that Wembanyama will be out for the season due to the blood clotting issue in his right shoulder.
had virtually the same condition six years ago and has come back without issue, giving credence to the belief, per sources, that Wembanyama can come back without any problems. But for a league that has invested so much in Wembanyama, and for a Spurs team that just traded for
and is set up to be one of the biggest factors in the NBA for at least the next decade, it’s a shock unlike many I can remember.
Brian Windhorst tries to look at some of the positives after the news broke that Victor Wembanyama has been ruled out for the rest of the season.
The Spurs were jolted by the diagnosis, both concerned and relieved that doctors had caught such a scary issue. It has been an emotional season in San Antonio. Coach Gregg Popovich suffered a stroke while at Frost Bank Arena before a game Nov. 2. On the day of an important game in Austin, Texas, on Thursday, the team found out before shootaround that Wembanyama was out for the season, undercutting an annual Rodeo rodeo trip that was built around a push to make the play-in tournament.
The trade for Fox, though largely seen as a positive development, was destabilizing for a franchise not known for midseason moves. And there was the trip to Paris, which was thrilling for the large traveling party there to support Wembanyama, but also emotionally taxing. “This has been one, long crazy season,” one team source said.
There’s also the secondary fact that San Antonio wasn’t a title contender this season and will likely have a significantly better draft pick.
For scouts and executives I talked to, once the shock of the news passed, the thought shifted to whether this could be a repeat of what happened to San Antonio during the 1996-97 season, when David Robinson’s back injury created the pathway to the franchise landing No. 1 pick Tim Duncan.
Imagine if this leads to the Spurs getting another No. 1 pick and the right to pair Wembanyama with a prospect such as Cooper Flagg. That could be the basis of a team competing for championships well into the 2030s.
The
and their decade of huge spending — $690 million in luxury tax since 2015, including this year’s expected $12 million bill — were one of the teams targeted by the changes to the collective bargaining agreement. And they started the season within about $200,000 of the second apron, having been “hard-capped” and unable to spend more. In theory, this should’ve limited their ability to trade and use money to facilitate deals.
Instead, they made two significant trades, acquiring guard
in December and then landing former All-Star Jimmy Butler (sending Schroder back out) at the trade deadline while giving Butler a two-year, $114 million deal to entice him to “agree” to the trade. And earlier in deadline week, Golden State had the framework of a three-team trade that could have landed them
— before Durant said he didn’t want the deal.
That doesn’t sound like a rich team being limited by the new rules.
I didn’t expect a lot of activity at this year’s deadline, and I was wrong. I also didn’t anticipate
being traded, either, which certainly played a part in the fireworks before the deadline. There also was a lot of swapping of one big contract for another (Butler for
,
for
among them), which is one way to get around the CBA limitations.
The 2025 NBA trade deadline is in the books. Here’s what you need to know after a wild week, including the latest superstar deals, plus last-minute buzz and intel across the NBA.
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As one executive told me this week, “I think what we’ve seen is the real penal place to be is the second apron, and mostly because of the [rule against aggregating contracts]. If you’re in the first apron it’s harder, and you may need a third team, but it is manageable.”
There are three second-apron teams:
,
and
. Boston and Phoenix made salary-dumping trades, while Minnesota made no deals. Those teams were affected, as the Suns tried and failed for weeks to make a trade to add to their roster. Over the last 24 hours before the deadline, Minnesota and Phoenix tried to put together a long shot Durant deal, sources said. But it was complex, needed extreme measures to satisfy trade rules and ultimately didn’t happen.
There are four first-apron teams: the
,
,
and
. The Lakers and Bucks made significant trades — Doncic to L.A. and
to the Bucks — using third teams to facilitate the deals.
That echoes my discussions with league executives this week. We still saw a lot of deals that required a third team to take on money. The old paradigm that three-team deals are zero-team deals no longer applies under this new system.
There’s also a line that an executive has repeated to me the past few months: “Motivated teams will find a way to get things done.”
Typically, older rosters have championship mettle and expectations, and younger squads need seasoning to reach their goal. This season, that has not been the case. Some of that, according to an Eastern Conference executive, could be attributed to movement around the league.
“A lot of times, successful teams have been older ones,” the exec said. “I think it’s harder now to go out and create a team of older players without having chemistry and continuity. I don’t know if that model is going to work anymore.”
The youngest team in the league also has its best record. The
had an average age of 24.1 years on opening night. The Grizzlies, the No. 2 seed in the West, were right behind OKC with an average age of 24.3. The Cavaliers, the No. 1 team in the East, rank in the middle of the pack for average age but their starting lineup doesn’t have anyone over age 28.
The two oldest teams in the league going into the season were the Phoenix Suns and
. They are the only teams with average ages over 28 and also are among the league’s biggest underachievers.
Part of the reason for that, according to a couple of executives I spoke to, is the NBA Cup’s impact on the schedule. There is a more condensed slate on either side of the knockout rounds of the Cup, something that could benefit younger teams.
“It’s impacted the density of the schedule across the board,” the East executive said. “So, it makes sense some of these younger teams are fresher.”
Draymond Green explains why he thinks the league is not as exciting due to it being less physical.
The Warriors started the season as the fourth-oldest team in the league and got older when they traded for the 35-year-old Butler after they were out of the top 10 in the West at the season’s midpoint.
“They say in the NBA you win with men, not with boys, and there’s a lot of truth to that when you look over the history of the league,” one veteran coach said. “But it’s hard to win with a lot of old men because even if they’re great, they get hurt.”
The Cavs have 11 players who average at least 19 minutes and no one averages over 31. The Thunder have 12 players who average at least 15 minutes — though they’ve had various injuries that allow that number to be boosted — and only two players play over 30. The Grizzlies have nine players who have played at least 40 games and average 20 minutes and one of them isn’t
, who plays just 29 minutes but has played in only 32 games.
The Celtics have nine players averaging at least 17 minutes, though
and
‘s per-game-minute loads are up a bit this season. The
can play 11-deep when healthy, each averaging 17 minutes.
These are all teams in the top four of the conference standings. Young and deep. It helps teams win a lot of regular-season games.
“With the style of the games and the pace of play the league, has never been more physically demanding,” one general manager said. “It wears guys down and out.”
The question, though, is whether it will lead to playoff success. We have seen teams with good, but not great, talent have plenty of success in the regular season — the 2012-13 Denver Nuggets, in particular, come to mind, after the collection of good players remaining after the Carmelo Anthony trade won 57 games. That team, however, lost in the first round of the playoffs to a Warriors team led by
, whose individual star power was too much for Denver to overcome.
“I think there’s always been proof depth can win you a lot of games over the 82,” an East scout said. “I don’t think we can know if that will lead to wins in playoff games until the spring.”
Multiple scouts and executives pointed to Memphis — which, as Brian pointed out, has a uniquely egalitarian approach to minutes — as an example of whether this new paradigm could work.
It wasn’t long ago that it felt like there was one thinkpiece after another about the death of the traditional center, and whether teams would keep playing smaller.
But after the Nuggets and Celtics won titles the past two seasons playing with above-average positional size, and the Cavaliers and Thunder have the league’s two best records with rosters that feature two 7-footers among their five best players, we have seen that formula be turned on its head.
“It’s a copycat league,” one executive said. “You see Cleveland playing two bigs and having success, and other teams are going to try to copy that model.
“Things have shifted big-time.”
We also have seen a depression in offense across the league. Despite all of the noise about 3-pointers, the average offensive rating is down from last season, and several sources pointed to officiating changes enacted around this time last year having an impact.
It’s a good reminder that any time we think things are shifting, the league swings in another direction. The goal for teams is to figure out the next inefficiency before anyone else.
One of the themes of the trade deadline was teams choosing to do their business now rather than waiting for the offseason. Memphis moved
at the trade deadline to ensure it could re-sign
and extend
.’s deal if necessary.
The
could have waited until the summer to move on from Luka Doncic — and many would argue that might have gotten them a bigger haul — but instead prioritized getting
for a playoff run this season. Many around the league expected the De’Aaron Fox deal to happen this summer. “The Fox thing caught me off guard just because of the timing,” one executive said.
But now Fox, too, can get a bigger extension this summer by being on the Spurs.
Shams Charania joins “NBA Today” to detail Brandon Ingram’s new three-year, $120 million contract extension with the Toronto Raptors.
The biggest example of this, though, was Toronto landing
, and then inking him to a big-money extension less than a week later.
The Raptors went through a phase where they let several key members of their 2019 title team get to unrestricted free agency —
,
and
— and lost them all (though they did a sign-and-trade for Lowry). Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster, the team’s top decision-makers, have made it a mandate not to let that happen again. Now, they handle free agency at midseason, it seems.
They traded
and
last year before they hit free agency when they weren’t sure they wanted to pay the market rate (both got max contracts with their new teams). They acquired
(for Anunoby), knowing he was headed for free agency but they were ready to pay him starting point guard money. They wowed the league with a $175 million deal for the former Knicks sixth man last July.
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This year, the Raptors gave Ingram a three-year, $120 million deal — including a player option — after the deadline trade.
“I don’t think Ingram gets that deal if he’d have hit free agency, especially the player option, but it depends on how he would’ve finished the season in New Orleans [had he not been traded],” another league executive said. “They obviously really like him and think he’s a good fit, but they bid against themselves on that deal — and they bid against themselves on Quickley.”
The Raptors have stressed since they moved on from Siakam, Anunoby and VanVleet that this wouldn’t be a long rebuild. By adding Ingram and potentially another high draft pick this June, they are signaling the goal is to be good next season. But was Ingram the right move? And was that the right price? Those are divisive questions around the league.
“I thought Ingram was too expensive,” one executive said, “but it made sense with the restrictions.”
