How does a seven-team trade come together? Much like that old saying about how to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.
Having been on the inside as many transactions have developed (I was vice president of basketball operations for the Memphis Grizzlies from 2012-19), I can tell you that an NBA blockbuster of this size is usually just an amalgamation of several smaller deals.
Let’s start with the basics that help explain why: Sometimes it’s a lot more advantageous for a team to construct a multi-team trade rather than doing the same deals sequentially. This is because the trade exception available in what the collective bargaining agreement terms a “simultaneous trade” is larger than the one available if deals are done sequentially, even if the second trade happens mere minutes after the first.
To give you an example, the Grizzlies had a deal set up at the 2016 trade deadline to send Courtney Lee to the Charlotte Hornets for Brian Roberts, P.J. Hairston and two second-round picks. However, the two incoming players made less than what Lee made, which meant we could legally stuff a lot more money into the trade, and we had enough room under the luxury tax to do so. So we were incentivized to try to get more money into the deal if somebody would pay us to do it.
If we did a straight Lee-for-Roberts trade, the trade exception we created would have only been for the difference between their salaries ($1.6 million at the time). But if we traded Lee for other salaries at the same time, we could take back up to 150 percent of what he made. (That was the rule at the time; it has since become more liberal regarding simultaneous trade exceptions, and the 2023 CBA allows the nontaxpayer midlevel exception to be converted to a trade exception.)
So … we found more salary. Enter the Miami Heat, who were over the luxury tax, facing the CBA’s repeater penalty and needed to reduce their payroll. We agreed to send Roberts to them and take back Chris Andersen, who made nearly twice as much, in return for a second-round pick and another protected second-rounder. We couldn’t have traded Roberts for Andersen any other way.
Voila, a three-team trade. Critically, the deal met the league’s “touching” requirements for three-team deals because each part of the Memphis-Charlotte-Miami triangle had consideration going their way.
That’s how three-team deals start, and from there, they can often mushroom into something larger. Take the seven-team deal featuring Kevin Durant that was completed Sunday, for example. It stemmed almost entirely from five different trades agreed to the week of the draft, with only the final addition of the Atlanta Hawks having any connection to free agency. Theoretically, the other four deals could have happened sequentially after the first; it was just a lot cleaner for everyone to do it as a multi-team trade.
But that’s not the only way a huge multi-team deal can happen. A year earlier, Golden State’s Klay Thompson was signed and traded to the Dallas Mavericks in a deal that ended up involving six teams, as each step in the chain made another deal to take advantage of the trade exception from the first one. At the trade deadline in 2024, a four-team deal between Golden State, Portland, Detroit and Atlanta nearly blew up over a failed physical by Gary Payton II.
July 6 (when teams can begin officially signing free agents to contracts) and the trade deadline are usually the only times we see deals mushroom beyond three teams … and for opposite reasons. On July 6, it’s because teams have all the time in the world between the draft and the end of the free-agency moratorium to improve upon deals that were already negotiated, potentially combining completely separate transactions in ways that maximize trade exceptions. At the trade deadline, however, it’s because there’s no time left; you couldn’t do a sequential trade even if you wanted, because it will never get approved by the league in time for the next one to beat the deadline buzzer.
This offseason, Houston negotiated a straightforward deal with Phoenix to send the 10th pick, five second-round picks, Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green to Phoenix for Durant. However, the Rockets had two weeks — and the entire draft — before they needed to officially execute the deal. They realized they could stuff more money into the trade if they added another contract when free agency started and recruited Atlanta to join a sign-and-trade involving big man Clint Capela. The teams completed the “touching” requirement, as well as the requirement that each team both give and receive something in a trade, by having Atlanta send two-way player Daeqwon Plowden to Phoenix and Houston send two-way player David Roddy to Atlanta. (Both players were immediately waived after the trade was official. Fun times!)
Conditions for a seven-team trade ensued when the Suns began spraying those second-round picks from Houston all over the league on draft night, using four of them on subsequent trades. The 59th pick in the draft that originated with Houston went to Phoenix, then Golden State, then Memphis. (The Grizzlies weren’t part of the seven-team deal and completed their portion with the Warriors afterward.)
Meanwhile, the Suns’ own second-round pick, at No. 52, was also sent to Golden State to give the Suns the 41st pick. So now the Warriors were team No. 4 for our trade, meeting “touching” requirements with one pick from Houston and one pick from Phoenix. The rights to pick No. 41 (Koby Brea), pick No. 52 (Alex Toohey) and pick No. 59 (Jahmai Mashack) were in the deal.
But wait, there’s more! The Suns put two other future second-round picks from Houston in play to acquire the 36th pick from the Brooklyn Nets. And then they traded that pick and another to the Minnesota Timberwolves to move up to No. 31 and draft Rasheer Fleming. And then Minnesota traded that 36th pick to the Los Angeles Lakers for cash and the 45th pick (Rocco Zikarsky).
So now, we had Brooklyn, Minnesota and the Lakers involved, and they all had triangles that allowed a multi-team trade. The Lakers were sending cash and the 45th pick to the Wolves but getting pick No. 36 from Brooklyn. (L.A. had previously obtained the pick in a straight two-team draft-night transaction with the Bulls.) The Wolves were getting the 45th pick from L.A. but sending pick No. 31 to Phoenix and also receiving two future seconds from the Suns. Finally, the Nets were sending out the 35th pick to the Lakers but receiving two future seconds that originated in Houston.
The real mystery here is why Memphis didn’t join the fray and make it an eight-team trade. The Grizzlies sent out their own pick (56th) to Golden State and received the 59th pick that originated in Houston, as well as consideration from the Warriors. Based on my admittedly brief and not exhaustive investigation into this crucial topic, it seems at least one of the two teams might have wanted to keep this trade on the side in case they needed it as a starting point for their own multi-team trade.
We saw a similar dynamic at work a year earlier in the 2024 Thompson deal, except it was perhaps even more complicated and fun because it wasn’t the result of a playing 52-pickup from draft night. Those trades were glued together because of valuable trade exceptions, similar to my Memphis example above, and show why we’ll probably see this more in the future.
The Warriors’ deal with Buddy Hield was converted to a sign-and-trade that benefited the Philadelphia 76ers by generating a trade exception for them. At the same time, the more permissive rules for trade exceptions meant the Warriors could put Hield into the Thompson trade and still stuff in another contract, so they piled in a sign-and-trade with Minnesota for Kyle Anderson.
Right away, we had a four-team banger, but then we had Dallas’ side of the Thompson deal. The Hornets sent two second-round picks to Dallas for Josh Green, which enabled Dallas to do the Thompson deal as a three-team sign-and-trade if one of those picks ended up in Golden State. Via creative rerouting of other second-round picks in the deal, it was easy to loop in Minnesota and Philly.
The final leg was Denver, which had its own side deal with Charlotte to send two seconds to the Hornets to salary-dump Reggie Jackson. But one of those picks was destined for Dallas and then points beyond, so Denver was in the deal, too; it just required a third team to send a small trinket (in this case, cash) back to the Nuggets.
So that, my friends, is how you end up with a six- or seven-team trade. Most executives don’t wake up in the morning and say, “Hey, I have this great idea for a seven-team deal!” (I can think of two or three exceptions whom I will not name, but they know who they are.)
As I alluded to above, I expect deals like this to happen much more often. And unlike this most recent seven-team deal, I think they’re more likely to follow the example of the 2024 Thompson trade and involve a lot of active NBA players too.
We’ve had our multi-team fun for 2025, but get your popcorn ready for next summer.
(Illustration: Kelsea Petersen / The Athletic; Alex Slitz, Tim Warner, Barry Gossage / Getty Images)
