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Tim Bontemps
A series of moves going back to Kevin Durant‘s trade to the Houston Rockets before the draft ultimately became the first seven-team trade in NBA history, a giant, complex transaction when the league’s annual moratorium on business officially concluded Sunday.
All told, the deal involved the Rockets, Atlanta Hawks, Brooklyn Nets, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Lakers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Phoenix Suns. Six players (Durant, Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, Clint Capela, David Roddy and Daeqwon Plowden), one first-round draft pick (the No. 10 selection last month, used by Phoenix via Houston as part of the Durant deal to select center Khaman Maluach) and 12 second-round picks were also moved. In addition, Houston made a second-round pick swap with the Hawks and sent them cash considerations.
The main component of the deal is the trade that saw Durant go from Phoenix to Houston on June 22, the day of Game 7 of the NBA Finals. 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 (31st overall), 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’ Adou Thiero (36th pick), the Timberwolves’ Rocco Zikarsky (45th) and the Warriors’ Alex Toohey (52nd).
The span in between the time the deal was agreed to and the time it was made official allowed the Rockets to add to it as well by bringing back Capela. The 31-year-old center was drafted by Houston in 2014 and spent his first six seasons there before playing his past five with the Hawks. The move provides the Rockets some additional center depth behind Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams.
