NBA trade deadline 2025: The 5 most fascinating teams to watch

[ad_1]

The 2025 NBA trade deadline is just over a week away, and just about every team in the league is looking to play some kind of angle.

For a handful of upper-crust squads, it’s about trying to find the last piece of the championship puzzle. For plenty more, it’s about attempting to separate yourself from the pack and make a postseason push in a congested conference where a handful of wins separates home-court advantage from a lottery spot. For the rest, it’s about continuing a rebuilding project by trying to snag a second-round pick or two on the fringes of bigger deals … or, if nothing else, looking to duck the luxury tax and save your owner a few million bucks.

Whatever game they’re playing, front offices across the NBA are working overtime trying to find the help they want at the price they need. Let’s take a look at the five most interesting teams — to me! — in the NBA as we approach the deadline, starting with the broiling beef on the shores of Biscayne Bay:

Miami Heat

I mean, duh.

Jimmy Butler is the best actually-gettable player on the market right now. Jimmy Butler has also spent most of the last two months gleefully lighting Roman candles inside Kaseya Center — I’m speaking strictly in metaphor, unless there’s been a new development since I started writing this sentence — in hopes of forcing his way out of town and landing in a new home where he can rediscover his joy for playing basketball … and, hey, also, just while we’re at it, maybe discover a new max contract to carry him through his late 30s. They bury treasure in the desert, don’t they?

“I think I’m still in my prime, if I’m being brutally honest,” Butler told Ben Golliver of The Washington Post last month.

Everything’s come to a head in recent weeks: reports of longstanding issues surrounding Butler’s star treatment — skipping shootarounds, traveling privately rather than with the team charter, staying on his own in separate hotels, etc. — boiling over; suggestions that Butler’s felt burned by the front office parting ways with multiple partners (Max Strus, Gabe Vincent, Caleb Martin, Kyle Lowry) from…

[ad_2]
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba-trade-deadline-2025-the-5-most-fascinating-teams-to-watch-224453461.html

Author : Yahoo Sports

Publish date : 2025-01-28 22:44:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.