Last month, ESPN’s Shams Charania went on the Pat McAfee Show and made a bold prediction: “I think this offseason might be the most craziest ever,” he said. When we think of the craziest offseasons in NBA history, we tend to think of years like 2010, 2016 and 2019, but those offseasons didn’t function like 2025 will. They were dominated by free agency, which LeBron James and Kevin Durant used liberally to move around in the 2010s.
Free agency is still a tool teams can use to improve, but a far less powerful one in the 2020s. Only one team is projected to have significant cap space in 2025, the Brooklyn Nets. A handful of other teams have plausible but highly unlikely paths to space. But teams generally don’t go out of their way to preserve it in quite the same way anymore. The best players usually sign extensions and figure out their futures later.
Well, “later” has arrived for a handful of the NBA’s best players. Giannis Antetokounmpo may get traded. Kevin Durant may get traded. A whole bunch of other big-name players, if you believe Charania’s prediction, are going to get traded. With so little money floating around free agency, so many teams trying to save money because of the aprons and so many more desperately pushing to improve under the looming shadow of a possible Oklahoma City Thunder dynasty, we are heading for what might be the wildest trading offseason in NBA history.
So, with the trade market set to heat up in the coming weeks, let’s take a look at who might actually move here. Below are the 100 likeliest players to be dealt this season. They have been arranged into 11 categories and are sorted within those categories by their 2025-26 salaries (via Spotrac). Note that free agents are not included on this list. There will be players who garner sign-and-trade interest, but for now we are keeping them separate. We will, however, cover players with 2025 player options on a case-by-case basis. If such a player is listed, it is because I expect him to pick up that option and avoid free agency this summer.
Remember, while these might be the likeliest players to move, we live in a world in which Luka Dončić can be traded in the dead of night with no warning. Almost anyone is on the table, and considering how good some of the players we’ll cover are, other unexpected pieces may need to be traded just to get them. So don’t expect this list to cover every single player that gets moved this summer. These are just the names to watch as crazy season begins.