Trade deadline winners and losers: the Pacers, Kawhi Leonard and more

The trade deadline has passed. Some teams drastically improved their teams, but most who did are thinking about next season. Others made it clear that winning is not their priority and shed talent to get ready for what could be an epic tank race. The Spurs stood pat, showing trust in their core

Now that the dust has settled, it’s time to look at the winners and losers. But we’ll skip the anticlimactic Giannis drama (for the most part) and some other high-profile stories and focus on some that have probably received less attention.

Winner: The 2027 Indiana Pacers, title contenders

The Pacers completed one of the biggest trades of the day by acquiring former Clippers center Ivica Zubac for Isaiah Jackson, Ben Mathurin, their protected 2026 pick, and an unprotected 2019 pick. It would normally be a head-scratcher to see the worst team in the East go for what looks like a win-now move, but the Pacers are not a normal bottom-dweller. They reached the Finals last year, but lost Tyrese Haliburton in the process and parted ways with long-time starting center Myles Turner in the offseason.

Now they have filled the hole left by Turner with a better player and are ready to welcome back Haliburton next season with arguably a stronger roster than the one that won the East last year. The fact that they accomplished that while able to attach a top-4 protection to their pick is impressive. There’s a real possibility the 2027 Pacers will have their core plus Zubac and one of the top picks of the stacked 2026 draft. The deal might not look great in a few years if the team can’t stay competitive, but in the short term, it looks like a slam dunk.

Loser: Kawhi Leonard, with the Clippers’ season on his shoulders

While we are on the topic of the Clippers, they traded both James Harden and Zubac while Leonard was playing at an MVP level to fuel their climb up the standings. Now it seems like the Paper Bowl is the more exciting moment the franchise will enjoy all season.

It’s hard to feel sorry for Leonard for many well-reported reasons, but it is pretty brutal that in a season in which he was looking healthy and on his way to leading his team to the play-in at worst, the front office decided to go younger by landing the oft-injured Darius Garland and to trade the defensive anchor of the team, leaving them suceptible to even a short absence by Kawhi. Rough times for the former Spur, who might miss the playoffs for the first time while healthy.

Winner: people who were tired of hearing about Jonathan Kuminga

It finally happened. The Warriors traded Kuminga. They packaged the young forward alongside Buddy Hield and acquired Kristaps Porzingis from the Hawks. Now Kuminga will join a young, occasionally fun, mercifully irrelevant team in which he might still struggle to get the playing time and touches he craved, but will do so without getting the constant attention he got from some fans and media simply because he was on the Warriors.

Kuminga could turn out to be a good player, and it’s not his fault that he was stuck in a bad situation while playing for a team that gets so much coverage. But it was at first surprising and then often annoying to see so much discourse surrounding a player who averages 12 points, four rebounds, and two assists for his career. Hopefully, he’ll start to get attention for what he can do on the floor instead of the drama that characterized his Warriors tenure.

Loser: The Dallas Mavericks, still picking up the pieces of the Nico disaster

The Mavericks were put in a terrible position by a general manager who has been fired, and were facing a fork in the road: either continue to tread water this year, wait for Kyrie Irving to get healthy and hope that the frail Anthony Davis somehow becomes durable as he ages, or pivot away from the core Harrison built and focus on the superstar in the making they lucked into. They chose the latter, which seems like the smart option, but it’s still impossible to consider them a winner, for several reasons.

First, they arguably got less for Davis than the Clippers got for Zubac. Second, they still have an imbalanced roster with little guard play after the move, which means Jason Kidd will continue to play Cooper Flagg as the main initiator. Third, they will still have to deal with the talented but mercurial Irving, who will return from injury next season at age 34, armed with a player option for the season after that one, which he could use to force his way out in a market that is not paying much for small guards. There’s still a lot of work to be done in Dallas.

Winner: The Washington Wizards, risking it all for relevance

It might seem contradictory to faintly praise the Mavericks for trading Davis and then celebrating the team that traded for him, but context matters. The Wizards have been bad for a few years, but have not been rewarded by the basketball gods with a superstar in the draft for their suffering. They have a collection of interesting young players but no centerpiece, and Davis can be that when he’s healthy. Plus, they traded Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson, Malaki Branham, Marvin Bagley III, two middling first-rounders, and three second-rounders for him and not Luka freaking Doncic.

The move makes even more sense after the team acquired another high-profile star at a low price in Trae Young. Washington is so far down in the standings that they will likely get a high lottery pick even if their new additions play, so they could go into next season with a group of Young and Davis as their offensive and defensive fulcrums, respectively, alongside Alex Sarr, Bilal Coulibaly, Tre Johnson, Bub Carrington, Kyshawn George and a prized rookie. That’s not bad for a team that tried to build slowly, failed, and was hoping to return to relevance. The extensions that they’ll offer Young and Davis could come back to bite them, but they should at least be fun for a while, which is a major step up for them.

Loser: Shams Charania, getting clowned by an NBA team

This is funny but also savage from Doc Rivers and the Bucks.

Who are your trade deadline winners and losers? Let us know in the comments.