During the week leading up to the NBA’s trade deadline the league just dives as deeply as possible into transactional chaos. It can be a bit funny in the moment, sure. Seeing the Suns players react to the Luka trade, for example, doesn’t seem like a particularly meaningful or harmful moment.

The 3 p.m. ET deadline was a moment in time, but this 2025 version qualified as a “trade week” at least, almost as a “trade season” if we look back to Dec. 15 when Thomas Bryant moved from Miami to Indiana and Dennis Schröder went from Brooklyn to Golden State.

And so on -- a nonstop flurry of trades, rumors, and recalibrations and oh-my-God-really moments that made this NBA trade deadline the most interesting in league history. "That," one executive wrote to CBS Sports after the deadline finally slammed shut Thursday,