NBA trade deadline live updates: Bucks swap Middleton for Kuzma, possible Durant landing spots and more

New York Times

05-02-2025

The Bucks have acquired Kyle Kuzma for Khris Middleton, ending the latter's decade-long run with the franchise. Meanwhile, multiple teams, including the Warriors, are gearing up for a Kevin Durant pursuit. Stacy Revere / Getty Images
Here's our first peek at De'Aaron Fox in Spurs colors. He's expected to make his San Antonio debut tonight against the Atlanta Hawks.
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I was asked on FanDuel's Run it Back show about the state of the Kevin Durant-Warriors situation. Here's my response:
Yeah, it's escalated quickly, as the kids say. We'll see what happens.
I think the Warriors thing is very real. Admittedly, I'm a West Coaster like you guys, so we're kind of getting rolling right now to figure out where the intel is today. There were moments last night where I thought this was actually going to happen.
Which is wild to say because, as of early yesterday, the information coming out of the Warriors was some frustration with the Suns in terms of, just, the talks and the back and forth. Mixed messaging where, as you guys know, there's a lot of times layers to these kind of talks where the formal indication is, 'We are not coming off Kevin Durant,' but behind the scenes, they're finding ways to make it clear, 'Well, if you gave us the entire package, maybe we do.'
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The Wizards have been intentional since Michael Winger and Will Dawkins took over their front office 21 months ago: They're going young, and they're going big.
Washington's roster tear down continued apace Wednesday, as the Wizards sent Kyle Kuzma with Patrick Baldwin, Jr., to the Bucks for veteran forward Khris Middleton and rookie guard A.J. Johnson.
With all due respect to Middleton, a three-time All-Star and a key part of the Bucks' 2021 NBA championship team, the key player for Washington in this trade is the 20-year-old Johnson, the Bucks' first-round pick in last year's draft.
Washington will sink or swim on the upside play of its emerging core of incredibly young players: Nineteen-year-olds (Alex Sarr, taken second overall in the 2024 draft, and Bub Carrington, taken 14th after Washington traded Deni Avdija to Portland for four draft picks, including the one used to take Carrington); 20-year-olds (Bilal Coulibaly, Washington's first-round pick last year, and Johnson) and 21-year-old Kyshawn George, Washington's third first-round pick from the '24 draft. And, of course, the Wizards (8-41) are doing their level best to ensure themselves a top-three pick in the 2025 draft.
Johnson was a Texas commit before opting to play in Australia's National Basketball League, one of the best leagues in the world outside of the NBA. Playing for Illawarra, Johnson showed flashes of the talent that intrigued NBA scouts. Though many pegged him to go later in the first round or early in the second, Milwaukee took him with the 23rd pick overall. He's mostly played for the Bucks' G-League team this season. The Wizards view him, essentially, as an 'early' 2025 first-round pick; they believe he'd have gone higher than 23rd in the 2025 draft had he gone to college this season.
That jibes with what an NBA executive said about Johnson before the draft: 'What does this kid look like in three years? If you do it the right way, he's on (G League) assignment, he's in the weight room, he's with your strength and conditioning (coaches), he's with your dietician. You may have the makings, at worst, of a reliable backup? That's not a bad swing. If this kid was in college, and he was a freshman, and he went back to school, he'd be one of the top returners in the country. And I doubt you could, in next year's draft, that you could get him where you can get him in this year's draft.'
At 6-5, Johnson fits the profile the Wizards have for their players across the board: positional size, and potential versatility. In D.C., he'll get a chance to crack the rotation, something not available to him in Milwaukee.
That doesn't mean the 33-year-old Middleton has no role for the Wizards. He is one of the highly regarded vets in the game, a pro's pro whom Washington believes can be as good a mentor to its young players as it could have in its locker room. He has a player option for the 2025-26 season at $34 million, but if he opts in, Washington would welcome his presence and influence on its young guys.
Jerome Miron / Imagn
You can think the Luka Dončić trade to be one of the worst in league history. (Personally, I think Red Auerbach's heist in 1980 was more impactful, but friends can disagree.) You can think that Dallas GM Nico Harrison was crazy to even bring up the idea of moving a transcendent talent like Dončić, who is one of the five or six best players in the world, to Lakers GM Rob Pelinka a month ago. You can think Harrison's bosses, the Adelson and Dumont families, which bought majority stakes in the franchise in 2023, are the ones who should ultimately answer why they green-lit such a controversial deal. (I think that, for example.)
But what you can't say is that Harrison doesn't have the biggest … guts … of any GM who's ever plied the trade.
'He's got some big ones,' an executive from another team — one not involved in the deal — said Monday.
Harrison has navigated his way through the NBA firmament for three decades, primarily as a Nike representative who had Kobe Bryant as one of his primary clients. But his ability to deal with and gauge people is part of why he rose so quickly through the ranks and became a ubiquitous presence for the shoe behemoth. And it's part of why the Mavericks picked him to replace their longtime GM Donnie Nelson in 2021. People who know Harrison point to his long relationship with Bryant and the Hall of Famer's 'Mamba Mentality' to explain why he didn't blink in making such a seismic move.
Read the rest of my column here.
GO FURTHER
Nico Harrison gambles everything that he's right about his Mavericks — and Luka Dončić
As part of the Kyle Kuzma-Khris Middleton trade, Washington will get 2028 swap rights with the Bucks' first-round pick that is already swapped with Portland, according to a league source. That means Washington can swap the lesser of the two selections. That pick is also protected 15-30 if the Blazers haven't yet conveyed their future pick to the Bulls by that time — i.e,, they can only execute the swap if they actually have the pick.
The Wizards will send back to Milwaukee the second-most favorable of its 2025 second-round picks originally belonging to Detroit, Phoenix or Golden State.
The 76ers have made two deals in 24 hours to swiftly jump under the luxury tax line in a season that has become a crapshoot. They re-signed KJ Martin for roughly $8 million this summer specifically to be used as a trade asset, as Philadelphia needed some bulkier salaries to aggregate. In the end, they were able to trade him into Detroit's cap room and duck below the tax line. That allows them to reset their repeater tax clock, which will be crucial if they can maintain or reconfigure their star core over the next few seasons.
It also has implications for this season. By getting out of the tax, this enables Philadelphia to sign players on the buyout market who made above the league average salary of $11.9 million. So if a player like Bojan Bogdanović (who is nearing a return from offseason foot and wrist surgeries) or Malcolm Brogdon gets bought out in the coming weeks, the Sixers can offer them a rotation spot at the minimum salary. The 76ers are tied for 20th in the league in 3-point shooting and already upgraded by swapping Caleb Martin for Quentin Grimes, so expect them to be active looking for more shooting help after the deadline unless they make another move in the next 24 hours.
Kyle Kuzma can leave Washington with his head held high — nobody did more to assure the Wizards will have the best lottery odds — but he started to behave more recently. He scored 31 and 22 points in a pair of Washington wins in the Wizards' last two games before the deadline.
Swapping Khris Middleton for him still appears to be a downgrade at present for the Bucks. Kuzma is four years younger, more durable and without nearly as much wear and tear on his lower extremities. He just doesn't offer the same shooting threat off the ball that Middleton did.
Nobody understood the AJ Johnson pick when it happened, even in a weak draft, and he did nothing in his half season with the Bucks to quell those doubts. It's another wasted Bucks draft pick, and Washington gets a shot at a reclamation project.
Patrick Baldwin Jr. played his college ball one block away from Fiserv Forum at Wisconsin-Milwaukee, but he was in this deal as cap ballast and seems likely to be waived when the Bucks find somebody they like better on the buyout market.
Milwaukee also will get two small trade exceptions out of this, worth 8.1 million and $2.8 million.
The Bucks get under the second apron and won't have their 2032 pick frozen as a result of the Kyle Kuzma-Khris Middleton trade, but the real benefit comes a year from now. Milwaukee is likely in position now to re-sign Brook Lopez, use its nontaxpayer midlevel exception on a roster upgrade and still stay below the first apron.
AJ Johnson, 20, is a rookie who was the 23rd pick in last June's draft. Although he has played sparingly for the Bucks this season, he has received extensive playing time for the Bucks' G League affiliate, the Wisconsin Herd.
A 6-foot-5 guard, he has the height and positional size that Wizards executives and coaches value, and would fit the Wizards' timeline for their still-achingly young core group, with 19-year-old rookie big Alex Sarr and 19-year-old guard Bub Carrington, both taken in the first round of the 2024 draft, 20-year-old wing Bilal Coulibaly, taken seventh in 2023, and 21-year-old forward Kyshawn George, the third first-round pick from Washington in last year's draft.
GO FURTHER
Bucks trading Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson to Wizards for Kyle Kuzma, Patrick Baldwin Jr.: Sources
Moving Khris Middleton and AJ Johnson in exchange for Kyle Kuzma and Patrick Baldwin Jr. cuts roughly $8.5 million off of the Bucks' salary table and takes them under the second apron, which opens greater roster flexibility this season.
If the Bucks want to make more moves this trade season, they will still be prohibited from taking back more money than they send out in any deal, but they now can aggregate contracts in 2-for-1 deals as long as they don't bring in a dollar more in salaries than they send out.
With Kuzma on the books for next season instead of Middleton, the Bucks have also created greater flexibility moving forward because Kuzma will earn roughly $12.5 million less than Middleton next season. Middleton holds a player option for the 2025-26 season worth $34.0 million, while Kuzma will receive $21.5 million guaranteed next season and $19.4 million guaranteed during the 2026-27 season.
Stacy Revere / Getty Images
By David Aldridge, Josh Robbins and Eric Nehm
Kyle Kuzma, 29, has high-level playoff experience. He was a key role player in the Los Angeles Lakers' run to the 2019-20 NBA championship. After his trade to Washington in 2021, he had been one of the Wizards' top options on offense and led the team in scoring last season with 22.2 points per game.
But this season, the rebuilding Wizards had diminished his role somewhat, emphasizing a system with multiple ballhandlers, including point guard Jordan Poole and second-year swingman Bilal Coulibaly. Injuries, including a rib-cartilage tear that kept him out almost one month, also limited Kuzma's effectiveness. Kuzma also struggled to stomach the Wizards' near-historic levels of losing this season.
The 6-9 Kuzma goes to a Bucks team with an established pecking order, with Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard in the key roles. A league source told The Athletic that the Bucks did extensive research on Kuzma in recent days, and team officials believe Kuzma can help them play fast on offense and be more effective in transition.
Read more about the Kuzma-Middleton trade here
Detroit could still take another player into its $14 million in cap room and then take newly acquired KJ Martin into its room exception afterward, although the Pistons would need to cut a player to do so. So it's possible Detroit isn't done yet.
Trading Khris Middleton, one of the most storied players in Bucks history, is a massive move for the franchise, even if the 6-foot-7 Middleton has been limited this season. Middleton, 33, has played only 23 games this season and averaged 12.6 points, 3.7 rebounds and 4.2 assists in 23.2 minutes per game as he continues to work his way back from offseason procedures on both ankles.
But Middleton's place in the Bucks' history books is undeniable. Middleton was the team's crunch-time operator and clutch-shot maker in the team's run to the 2020-21 NBA championship, the team's first title since 1970-71. He spent the last 12 seasons with the Bucks and ranks first in franchise history in 3-point makes, third in points, third in assists and seventh in rebounds.
Read more about the Middleton-Kyle Kuzma trade here.
As the league's only team with cap space, everything pointed towards Detroit using it's cap room and open roster spot to acquire draft equity by taking an unwanted contract. Dropping KJ Martin gets the Sixers under the luxury tax.
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By David Aldridge, Josh Robbins and Eric Nehm
The Milwaukee Bucks and Washington Wizards have agreed to a trade that will send three-time All-Star forward Khris Middleton and rookie guard AJ Johnson to the Wizards in exchange for forwards Kyle Kuzma and Patrick Baldwin Jr., league sources told The Athletic .
The teams are also discussing including second-round draft picks in the deal, the sources said.
Read more here.
Tim Nwachukwu / Getty Images
The Detroit Pistons have acquired KJ Martin and two second-round picks from the Philadelphia 76ers, league sources confirm to The Athletic.
The second-rounders will be a 2027 pick from the Bucks and a 2031 second-rounder from Dallas.
NBA reporter Marc Stein first reported the trade.
Michael McLoone / Imagn
The Wizards and Bucks have continued to discuss a potential trade centered around sending Kyle Kuzma and Patrick Baldwin Jr. to Milwaukee for Khris Middleton and rookie AJ Johnson, and including some exchange of a draft pick or picks, league sources tell David Aldridge and me.
If the Bucks and Wizards decide to go ahead with this potential trade, it would give the Bucks a player in Kuzma who is now fully healthy after a rib cartilage injury earlier this season and who would help the Bucks play faster and be even more effective in transition.
Middleton, 33, would add gravitas and a high-level veteran presence to the Wizards' locker room, which is loaded with young players, including rookies Bub Carrington, Kyshawn George and Alex Sarr and second-year wing Bilal Coulibaly.
All indications are that Johnson, 20, is a player Washington has been high on going back to last June's draft, when he was selected 23rd overall. Although he's played sparingly for the Bucks this season, he has looked promising in extensive time for the Bucks' G League affiliate. Johnson, a 6-foot-5 guard, has the positional size the Wizards have increasingly valued in recent years.
If the Bucks and Wizards complete the trade, adding Johnson would give the Wizards another bite of the apple in terms of young players — in other words, another chance to develop a young player.