NBA free agency winners and losers: Celtics, LeBron-less Lakers raise eyebrows

So … that’s it?

After hearing for most of the last two weeks that Jaylen Brown could either A) return Giannis Antetokounmpo in a trade or B) bring back something on the order of four first-round picks, the Boston Celtics traded Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers on Wednesday for one of the worst contracts in the NBA (Paul George’s) and a draft-pick package of just two firsts and two seconds. (More details here.)

It was a bizarre record scratch of a U-turn after it seemed, just days earlier, that a package of “Brown and not that much else” could land the Celtics Antetokounmpo. Somehow, it seems, Boston pivoted from clutching pearls over Hugo González and its own future first-rounders to deciding that maybe $55 million a year for George wasn’t so bad.

By all accounts, the Celtics seemed to launch earnestly into trading Brown very quickly after the Giannis chase ended, even when it seemed like biding their time might have been the better play.

One of the big questions: What was the rush? Did they think the George deal would go away and that they had nothing else even close? Did Brown kinda sorta demand a trade without demanding one? Did he have an undisclosed career-altering hip injury? (Sorry.)

Regardless, it was shocking to see Brown’s departure generate a return that matched what you’d imagine it would have taken just to dump George’s contract into another team’s cap space. That’s especially true when juxtaposed against Brown’s perception around the league this past season, as a fringe MVP candidate who narrowly missed making first-team All-NBA.

To say Brown is wildly overrated, or that the analytics say he sucks, is just grossly incorrect. To say Brown is mildly overrated, on the other hand, is probably accurate.

Memorable moments from Jaylen Brown’s 10 seasons in Boston

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The on-off data is unfavorable but not enough to convict on its own. It’s noisy due to shooting variance and heavily dependent on lineup choices like, “Let’s send Jaylen out there with our four worst rotation players and see if we can break even for six minutes.”

Big picture, however, kernels of truth in those numbers are clear. Brown is a very good two-way wing whose offensive value is somewhat capped because he isn’t notably efficient (even while on a relative jump-shooting heater last season), nor particularly adept at setting up others. My BORD$ valuation tool puts his value for the coming season at $40 million, which doesn’t make him the seventh-best player on this or any other team but also doesn’t make him the sixth-best player in the league like MVP voters had it. (If you’re curious, he ranked 21st; coincidentally, the player ranked 20th, LaMelo Ball, was just traded for a not dissimilar package.)

Given the cognitive dissonance between Brown’s public perception and his valuation in most analytical tools, the idea of selling high on a career year entering his age-30 season had to be compelling for Boston, especially with three expensive years left on Brown’s deal. (Brown also was extension-eligible this summer, but the Celtics were under no obligation to pay him yet.)

On the other hand, George has two years left on his own deal that is just as expensive as Brown’s … except George is 36 years old, has played more than 56 games only once in the last seven years and served a 25-game suspension last season for violating the league’s anti-drug policy. His key differences from Brown — more ballhandling, more 3-point shooting — lean into the way the Celtics like to play, but this is an unquestioned talent downgrade for a team that, on paper, looked to be one of the two best in the Eastern Conference before the trade. Whatever the opposite of all-in looks like, this is it.

The most shocking part is that this was the best Boston could do in July 2026. I guarantee you, having done this myself, that there wasn’t some better offer just sitting out there that the Celtics decided to ignore. When you’re trying to move a player and have only 29 potential trade partners, you canvas the entire league, take note of the slightest scintilla of interest and follow every lead. Two high-quality first-round picks, two quality second-rounders likely to land in the 30s and a quasi-similar replacement on an awful contract were the best they found.

About the best thing I can say is that “George plus picks” operates as a store of value until the next big fish comes along, and the rest of the roster is good enough to still win a bunch of regular-season games while the Celtics bide their time. Boston can put five first-round picks into a deal, including the two from Philly, and has an obvious matching salary.

On the other hand, they had the Giannis fish right on their hook and threw it back in the water. Who are they waiting for that’s better?

Why did the Celtics trade Jaylen Brown?

Jay King and Jeshua Kidd

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As a result, the Celtics have to be the biggest losers from the first few days of free agency. Boston has already struggled to carry regular-season efficiency over to the postseason in the Joe Mazzulla era. The one time they pulled it off, Brown won NBA Finals MVP. Now they’ve downgraded his spot, and likely their championship equity.

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Some of my other winners and losers:

Winner: Toronto Raptors

Look, you’re either trying to win or you’re not. The Raptors traded their not-very-durable, not-very-efficient second-best player (Brandon Ingram) for a chance to win the East, and it cost them two future first-round picks and a likely move down to the end of the first round in a terrible draft. That’s just barely an acceptable price.

Kawhi Leonard is 35 and has a recent history of breaking down late in the season, including in the LA Clippers’ two most important games of the year against the Portland Trail Blazers this April. But when he’s on, he’s amazing. Leonard was one of the five best players in the league last season and among the few capable of winning a second-round playoff game more or less by himself. With Scottie Barnes’ continued emergence and other solid young players, Toronto has enough weapons to give Leonard help in-season and not make every possession a Kawhi pound-a-thon into a midrange jumper.

Work, however, remains. The Raptors are thin on the wing, need more shooting and have only one significant tradeable asset (a 2029 first-round pick) plus some swaps to make further upgrades. There’s a good chance they don’t win the East, and they may go one-and-done again in the playoffs. But they had a zero percent chance of winning the East before this trade. Now, they’re in the mix.

How the Kawhi Leonard trade makes the Raptors a contender

Esfandiar Baraheni

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Winner: Indiana Pacers

The price Indiana paid to acquire Ivica Zubac at February’s trade deadline isn’t looking so bad given what the Lakers needed to do to get Walker Kessler. The Pacers surrendered two first-round picks, including the fifth pick in the 2026 draft, to land a top-10 center on a very favorable contract ($42 million over the next two years).

I also think Kelly Oubre Jr. is an amazing fit at a reasonable price, and I am relatively shocked that the signing has momentarily put the Pacers several million dollars into the luxury tax. I assume Jarace Walker will be traded to get Indiana back under the $200.428 million tax line at some point — a fair critique of this Pacers era is that they’ve been great at scouting pro talent and not so great at scouting college talent.

But if Tyrese Haliburton is right physically, the Pacers can get right back to where they were two seasons ago.

Can Ivica Zubac help get Indiana back into contention next season? (Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)

Winner: Philadelphia 76ers

It goes without saying that the Sixers did well to move off one of the worst contracts in the league and replace it with an All-Star. The aforementioned Brown also fills two important functions.

First, he’s been extremely durable, which is an important counterweight when your team employs Joel Embiid and has next to no bench. Brown being able to soak up a ton of minutes and possessions in the regular season is massive given his value over replacement on this roster, even if he doesn’t operate at elite efficiency.

Second, Brown’s contract runs the exact same length as those of Embiid, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, the other three key Sixers. In 2029, those deals will expire, and the employment of Brown and Embiid with the team might as well. But by that point, Philly can ride a Maxey-Edgecombe pairing with whatever comes next.

The Sixers, alas, remain committed to a “triple-max” salary model that isn’t particularly easy to optimize with ownership that doesn’t want to pay the luxury tax. The Sixers haven’t done so since 2022 and have had to pay to wriggle out of it the last few years.

However, if Philly will at least spend to the first apron (about $9 million above the tax line this season), it can make something of this era. Adding Dean Wade checked a necessary box at power forward, and Anfernee Simons was a tremendous value signing to add another ballhandler. Asset-wise, the Sixers still have enough in the cupboard to do some in-season work. This is a nice start for newly hired GM Mike Gansey.

Loser: cap space

Welcome to our new “cap-room” era. News flash: Cap room requires free agents worth paying, and we rarely get those anymore.

The Brooklyn Nets and Chicago Bulls came into the summer with oodles of cap room and walked away with two of the worst rosters in the league. Chicago at least got an All-Star, technically, in Norman Powell, while the Nets got … Keon Ellis and Moe Wagner? (The Julius Randle acquisition did not require cap space.)

The most interesting part, to me, is how unwilling these teams (and the Lakers, for that matter) were to play chicken with other teams in restricted free agency.

Any of these three teams could have signed Kessler to a big offer sheet and challenged Utah to match it, then come back and do the same with Jalen Duren, and then, if that failed, hit up Peyton Watson. Given the extremely mild returns they foreclosed upon, I don’t see what the harm was in waiting until July 9 for an answer.

At least Brooklyn contributed a piece of salary-cap-rules arcana by reintroducing the “mutual option,” the first contract in 25 years to include such language. (Jerome Williams in Toronto in 2001 inked a similar pact, although the mutual option was on the fifth year of a seven-year deal for the role-playing forward. What a time to be alive.)

Brooklyn still has cap room left and could theoretically get in on some salary dumps that bring in draft capital, although the Nets have earned a reputation for overplaying their hand in these situations.

The Bulls, meanwhile, threw up their hands and extended Zach Collins just before free agency started, a move that basically turned their leftover cap space into a trade exception.

Collins wasn’t worth $8 million, but because he signed an extension that wasn’t more than a 5 percent raise, he is trade-eligible immediately. The contract has a second-year team option, so an acquiring team can make it an expiring deal if it wishes. Remember, $8 million in cap space can only return $8 million in salary, but an $8 million player can return double that amount. Whatever else you think of the Bulls’ summer, this part was low-key brilliant.

Why the Bulls signed Norman Powell

Joel Lorenzi and Jeshua Kidd

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Loser: Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers played their cap-room hand by going all in on Kessler, using all their draft capital to acquire the one player whose rim protection might offset the fact that the team employs Austin Reaves and Luka Dončić on the perimeter. The Lakers paid a pretty penny, both in terms of contract and assets, and basically left themselves with no means of following up with added moves to improve a roster that seems badly wanting for some in-season work.

I would have liked the Kessler sign-and-trade much more if they had put Jarred Vanderbilt into the deal and left themselves some real flexibility to build out a roster. Utah’s cap situation shouldn’t have made that a deal-breaker.

That said, that’s not why I’m calling the Lakers losers. The real reason is a much simpler one: the uncompensated loss of LeBron James.

The next stop for LeBron should be…

David Aldridge, Joe Vardon and more

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Reminder: He’s still really good. And pretty durable, too. You’re not offsetting that by getting a 3-and-D guy and a backup point guard in free agency. It’s easy to see how the Lakers might have made themselves a juggernaut if they kept James at a salary in the mid-20 millions and added Kessler at the same time, but that’s not what happened.

L.A.’s other moves are less important in the grand scheme. Sandro Mamukelashvili isn’t a starting power forward and is another bad defender, but his shooting and handle would be very useful as a third big. Quentin Grimes checked a 3-and-D box that wasn’t plentiful in this year’s market, and that was the one the Lakers had to get. Collin Sexton is probably the most questionable signing fit-wise, as he’s an energetic but hugely mistake-prone and undersized defender, and an on-ball scorer who won’t have the ball much on this team.

The Lakers likely should have chased John Collins or Tobias Harris to get a real starting four, even if that cost them Mamukelashvili or forced them to get funky on the edges (stretching Vanderbilt or Dalton Knecht). They could have brought back Rui Hachimura or chased Oubre with the room exception instead of signing Sexton.

But again, the Lakers were limited by what was available in this market and their own multitude of needs. What I suggested still would have left glaring holes on the roster.

There was just too much to fix on this roster in one free-agency cycle, and the Lakers tried to checkmate in one move. I get that they’re on the clock with Dončić, and they’ll win a bunch of regular-season games as long as he, Kessler and Reaves can play 65-70 of them. But the overarching takeaway was that it all felt a bit like Phoenix West.

Loser: Dallas Mavericks

I have no idea what these guys are doing, unless their endgame is to make Cooper Flagg’s development trajectory as difficult as possible.

I had presumed one of the main goals of the Mavericks’ offseason would be to remove power forwards, so Flagg could play his natural position with real wing players around him rather than having to masquerade as a shooting guard.

Instead, the Mavs reached for Morez Johnson Jr. on draft night, traded for Santi Aldama with their Anthony Davis trade exception and haven’t gotten around to trading P.J. Washington. Their theoretical backup small forward (Naji Marshall) is also best as a four, and their theoretical backup shooting guard (Klay Thompson) can no longer guard wings. Overall, six of their 13 players under contract are best used as power forwards.

There’s still time for Dallas to pivot. Perhaps it has a Washington trade teed up that we’ll learn about at summer league. Maybe the Mavs can still use their exception money to bring in some wing talent. (Dallas has its entire $15 million non-taxpayer midlevel exception available and $24 million in float beneath the luxury-tax line.) Perhaps the Mavs are waiting to see Kyrie Irving’s value midseason before they relaunch the backcourt.

Thus far, however, I’m scratching my head. Their one move post-draft has been to give up assets for a player they didn’t need and who plays the same position as their last two lottery picks. Make it make sense, Mavs.