Does Trae Young trade mean Anthony Davis is next, and more NBA trade deadline buzz

Welcome to this week’s edition of What We’re Hearing, NBA Trade Deadline edition. Each week leading up to the Feb. 5 deadline, we will give you the latest trade intel and insight from our league insiders and beat writers.

The hottest question in the league this week

Are teams done building around one-way stars?

Trae Young is still an elite offensive player. Full stop, as the kids say.

But as the Atlanta Hawks’ humble return in Wednesday’s trade with the Washington Wizards proved, that wasn’t nearly enough to inspire suitors for the 27-year-old who was their franchise centerpiece not too long ago. The league-wide concerns about his lack of size and defensive shortcomings cooled the market, as any team that employs him must customize its roster around his offensive strengths and defensive weaknesses.

The fact that Young is on max money ($45.9 million this season; $48.9 million player option next season) and looking for an extension clearly served as a major deterrent as well. As such, the list of known suitors was the Wizards, and … the Wizards.

No wonder they were Trae’s preferred destination.

Yet this move, which landed the Hawks CJ McCollum, Corey Kispert and no draft capital, was the reflection of a larger trend in today’s NBA. The days of general managers looking the other way when their star player struggles on defense aren’t completely over, but they’re certainly dwindling.

Superstars like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Victor Wembanyama, Cade Cunningham, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum (when healthy) and others are playing the kind of two-way basketball that makes it much easier for teams to build around them. It’s a requirement for contention, really, considering the number of elite defenses among the league’s best teams (the reigning champion Oklahoma City Thunder lead the league in defensive rating, while the East-leading Detroit Pistons are second).

Even the Los Angeles Lakers’ Luka Dončić, who is on track to go down as one of the greatest offensive talents of all time, has been roundly ridiculed for his poor defensive form (again) of late. In a related note, the Lakers are desperately searching for 3-and-D wings to cover up all of his defensive warts (along with those of Austin Reaves and LeBron James, who gets a pass at this stage because, well, he’s 41).

Unless you go the way of Nikola Jokić and Steph Curry — stars who faced early criticism for their ability on that end, only to grow into capable defenders — you face serious scrutiny. And, in Young’s case, a lack of leverage when it’s time to relocate.

He’s not alone, though. As one scout told me recently, that’s a quiet subplot to this trade deadline season when it comes to some of the high-profile stars who might be available. If you don’t guard, then trading you might be hard.

“(Memphis’) Ja (Morant), Trae and (Charlotte’s’) LaMelo (Ball) don’t have that much value because the game has changed around them,” he said.

More on the Trae Young deal:

The team I’m watching closely

Milwaukee Bucks

Right about the time Giannis Antetokounmpo was trying to convince me he wasn’t in charge of his Milwaukee Bucks future late Wednesday night at Chase Center, he flexed his organizational power in the kind of way that undercut his argument.

The entire team was waiting on the nearby bus at the Chase Center loading dock, but Antetokounmpo — who had rebuffed two requests to cut our interview short during the course of the 11 minutes — wasn’t about to leave until his message had been fully heard.

Yet beyond his insistence that he’ll never ask for a trade, and the strong signals that he’s not going anywhere before the trade deadline, Antetokounmpo’s view of this current team was an underrated highlight from our chat.

Q: Can this team figure it out?

A: Well, that’s a different conversation.

After falling to the Warriors, the 16-21 Bucks, who have won five of their last eight games, are in 11th place in the East. But to hear Antetokounmpo’s view was a reminder that longtime general manager Jon Horst is in desperate need (again) of a trade that can improve the Bucks’ odds of returning to contention.

They’ve been tied to several players, with the Sacramento Kings’ Zach LaVine and Malik Monk among them. As of early this week, league sources say there were no active talks on that front. The Bucks registered interest in the Dallas Mavericks’ Anthony Davis as well, though it appears there’s no realistic pathway to a deal there. They’re also believed to be among the many teams with interest in the Brooklyn Nets’ Michael Porter Jr.

Whatever comes next, Antetokounmpo made it clear that he has no plans to pull the sort of power play required to force his way out of Milwaukee before the deadline. And no matter how he tries to spin it, the undeniable reality is that it’s his voice — and the choices the Bucks make in response to it — that matters most.

To that end, I didn’t find anyone in the Bucks’ circle who questioned Antetokounmpo’s current dedication to their cause. Regardless of how he might see his long-term future this offseason, he has clearly convinced his co-workers that he’s truly focused on turning this team around.

“This is a crazy industry, and sometimes it’s not always up to him,” Bucks center Myles Turner told me this week. “I think that’s the biggest thing. He’s a very loyal guy, and I think someone who’s really committed to where his feet are. But I can only go off of conversations that I’ve had with the front office and that I’ve had with him.

“I think he’s pretty committed to where we’re at, and I think he’s committed to winning. That’s his biggest thing in his career right now, that he wants to win. He doesn’t want to waste his prime years. But in the conversations we’ve had, I think he’s committed to where he’s at. … At the end of the day, it’s a performance-based business. So whatever happens, happens.”

Does the Young trade mean a Davis deal is next?

In a word, maybe. (His status after apparently injuring his hand on Tuesday could play a role.) More specifically, it’s worth noting that there was an immediate uptick in optimism from Davis’ camp about a possible Hawks deal after Young was sent to the Wizards. Young’s presence on the Atlanta roster was seen as a Davis deal-killer because of their exorbitant salaries (more than $100 million combined for this season). With that obstacle out of the way, the potential pathway widens a great deal.

Here’s what I reported Wednesday with our Mavericks beat writer Christian Clark:

[The Mavericks’] pricy payroll and lack of draft capital to build around Cooper Flagg make them obvious candidates to be sellers ahead of the Feb. 5 trade deadline. No player on their roster is a greater source of intrigue throughout the NBA than Davis. The 10-time All-Star remains one of the league’s most impactful two-way big men, but he’s owed $58.5 million next season and is seeking a massive contract extension this summer.

The Mavericks are expected to continue to listen to offers on Davis in the coming weeks, but according to team sources, their front office doesn’t feel like it must deal Davis before the deadline. The team is interested in seeing Davis and Flagg play alongside Kyrie Irving and hasn’t closed the door on the idea of Davis remaining in Dallas long-term.

However, league sources say Davis’ representatives do not believe there’s an extension agreement to be had with the Mavericks in the upcoming offseason. As such, the sources say, there is a strong desire from Davis’ camp to get him traded to a destination where they feel an extension would be more likely.

Considering the track record of his longtime agent, Klutch Sports founder Rich Paul, who has never been shy about applying pressure when one of his clients prefers to be elsewhere, it’s worth watching where this situation goes from here. League sources say Paul has already encouraged the Mavericks to be more aggressive in assessing Davis’ current market.

And what about Jonathan Kuminga?

No trade roundup is complete without an obligatory mention of the Golden State Warriors’ forward, who has played a grand total of 10 minutes since Dec. 6, with 13 goose eggs in the “minutes played” department in between.

Yet after all these months of anticipation about how this dysfunctional relationship would finally end, after Jonathan Kuminga signed a two-year, $48.5 million deal with the Warriors in the summer, we’re less than a week away from the official start of Kuminga trade season.

So does that mean a deal will go down as soon as he becomes trade-eligible on Jan. 15? Not necessarily.

The Kings are widely seen as the leader in the Kuminga clubhouse, with league sources revealing that they talked with the Warriors last week and are expected to circle back soon. Yet because the Warriors have shown no interest in the Kings’ many available veterans, a third team likely will be required to get something done.

There’s this key development, too: While the Kings offered a protected 2030 first-round pick and Monk when they tried to land Kuminga via sign-and-trade in the summer, league sources say the first-round pick is no longer in play. With Kuminga’s Warriors role disappearing this season, and his frayed relationship with coach Steve Kerr an open secret, this is (potentially) the price Golden State will pay for that crucial loss in leverage with other teams.

The Warriors, meanwhile, insist they’ll hold onto Kuminga past the Feb. 5 deadline if nothing materializes that meets their needs. Even if that would be met with extreme dissatisfaction in so many Warriors circles, both inside their building and among their fans.

NBA contracts guarantee

By John Hollinger

We had a fun deadline for cap nerds this week. NBA contracts become guaranteed for the season on Jan. 10, in theory, but in practice, that guarantee date was Wednesday afternoon. Players had to clear waivers in time for Jan. 10, and that process takes 48 hours.

When I say “guarantee,” however, I’m only referring to a small handful of deals. The vast majority of NBA contracts are fully guaranteed, and many of those that aren’t have earlier trigger dates for the guarantee to hit. (For example, the contract for Boston’s Neemias Queta became fully guaranteed when he made the opening night roster.)

That said, we were left with a few players who had little or no salary protection if they were waived by Wednesday at 5 p.m. Eastern. There were 30 of them, as Spotrac’s Keith Smith recently tallied, and of those, 28 are deals for the minimum. The two exceptions were partially guaranteed deals for Cleveland’s Dean Wade and Miami’s Terry Rozier, neither of whom was waived this week. (Rozier is away from the team but already has $24.9 million of his $26.6 million salary guaranteed and is much more useful as matching salary in a trade than as a dead money cap hit.)

A few of these situations seemed rife for a “cut-plus-10” move, where the team waives the player but immediately signs them to a 10-day contract (as a reminder, 10-days can only be signed on or after Jan. 5 unless it’s an injury hardship contract), thus keeping the guy around but also preserving cap and roster flexibility until the trade deadline.

In particular, I thought seven players would be possible candidates for this maneuver: Indiana’s Micah Potter, Toronto’s Mo Bamba, Milwaukee’s Amir Coffey, Detroit’s Isaac Jones, San Antonio’s Bismack Biyombo and Lindy Waters III and New York’s Ariel Hukporti. Of that group, only Bamba was waived. A recent arrival, he, in particular, probably would have been on a 10-day if he had signed his initial non-guaranteed contract just a few days later.

Read the rest of my weekly Tuesday column below.

Two more items to read

• With the NBA trade deadline approaching, Buddy Hield could surface as salary-filler in a potential deal for the Warriors, who are hard-capped and limited with flexibility. But if he were to be moved, the Warriors would lose more than a contract. They’d lose one of their most popular teammates, an easy-going presence in the locker room and someone who isn’t afraid to be the center of a joke if it lightens the mood. (Read more from Nick Friedell on the art of being a great teammate)

• Expectations are sky-high in New York, especially after owner James Dolan made his internal expectation of an NBA Finals appearance (and victory) public earlier this week. While Dolan said he doesn’t expect any major trade deadline moves, the Knicks’ recent four-game losing streak (snapped Wednesday against the LA Clippers) underscored two troubling trends: Karl-Anthony Towns’ struggles and the team’s poor defense. (Read more from James L. Edwards III on the latter).