Bucks get: Jrue Holiday, 2020 second-round pick (No. 60, Sam Merrill)
Pelicans get: Steven Adams, Eric Bledsoe, 2024 first-round swap rights from Bucks, 2025 first-round pick (unprotected) from Bucks, 2026 first-round swap rights from Bucks, 2027 first-round pick (unprotected) from Bucks
Thunder get: George Hill, Darius Miller, Zylan Cheatham, Josh Gray, Darius Miller, Kenrich Williams, two future second-round picks from Nuggets
Nuggets get: 2020 first-round pick (No. 24, RJ Hampton)
Milwaukee Bucks: B-
Hey, remember way back to Monday night, when trading three first-round picks and two swaps for a two-time former All-Star looked like the Bucks' biggest splash of the week? Since then, Milwaukee's failed sign-and-trade for Bogdan Bogdanovic -- and more importantly its impact on Giannis Antetokounmpo's willingness to sign a supermax extension between now and Dec. 21 -- has taken center stage.
The Holiday deal made a lot more sense for the Bucks if they thought they had Giannis ready to sign up for five more seasons, in which case most of the first-round picks they would send to New Orleans in this trade would probably be in the 20s and the swaps would be unlikely to convey. It's a much riskier deal if both Antetokounmpo and Holiday (2021-22 player option) can be free agents next summer.
Milwaukee can relieve some of that risk with an extension for Holiday. He can extend now for a 5% raise off his 2020-21 salary, which increases to 20% in February when extend-and-trade restrictions sunset. Either way, the Bucks must feel good about their chances to keep Holiday because this is way too much to pay for a one-year rental.
It's possible adding Holiday complicated Milwaukee's efforts to land Bogdanovic once free agency opened. Holiday's current salary is almost identical to that of Bledsoe and Hill combined, but in addition to creating one more roster spot for the Bucks to fill, unlikely incentives in Holiday's contract would also have been an issue if Milwaukee had become subject to a hard cap.
Typically, unlikely incentives (for $3.3 million in this case, per my ESPN colleague Bobby Marks, including a $1 million bonus for MVP that Holiday's new teammate might have a say in preventing) don't count for cap purposes. However, because hard-capped teams cannot exceed the luxury-tax apron for any reason, they reduced the amount the Bucks could spend on Bogdanovic in a sign-and-trade and still field a legal roster.
Let's get to how Holiday helps Milwaukee on the court. (You know, in basketball games, the reason why we track all these transactions.) From a fit standpoint, Holiday is close to ideal for the Bucks. He gives them another creator on the perimeter, helping solve the issues the Miami Heat's defense created for Milwaukee in the playoffs.
Unlike some options to fill that void, Holiday isn't a liability playing off the ball, as his 37% accuracy on catch-and-shoot 3-point attempts in the tracking data era (since 2013-14) is right at league average per Second Spectrum. That's a huge upgrade from Bledsoe, who's hit 33% of such attempts in the regular season and a horrific 29% in the playoffs.
Oh yes, Holiday also happens to be one of the league's very best perimeter defenders. Bledsoe is a very good one in his own right, but the bigger Holiday offers more flexibility for Mike Budenholzer to cross-match and use him against wings.
Even without Bogdanovic (or perhaps especially without him given the hard-cap issues), adding Holiday to a core of Giannis and Khris Middleton makes Milwaukee my favorites to win the Eastern Conference because of the way he addresses their past playoff shortcomings.
It's worth remembering that while we haven't seen much of Holiday in the playoffs on also-ran teams in New Orleans, the results we have seen have been great. During the 2019 postseason, my analysis ranked Holiday ninth among active players in terms of playoff overachievement relative to the regular season.
New Orleans Pelicans: B+
Starting with a draft-night deal to send the 2020 first-round pick acquired from Milwaukee (No. 24 overall) to the Denver Nuggets, the Pelicans expanded this trade to also land Steven Adams as a replacement for the departed Derrick Favors at center.
I'm not sure what to think of how Adams fits with the Pelicans. They certainly needed a more reliable center option than 2019 lottery pick Jaxson Hayes, who predictably struggled defensively as a rookie. And as obsessed as everyone is with the idea of putting shooting next to Zion Williamson, lineups with Zion at power forward and Favors at center were quite good in 2019-20: a plus-12.1 net rating per 100 possessions, according to NBA Advanced Stats, which was a better offensive rating (112.4) than other lineups with Zion (110.6).
Still, there's a modest difference in perimeter shooting between Favors (who shot 11-of-35 outside the paint, per NBA Advanced Stats) and Adams (4-of-17, with one of the makes coming on a buzzer-beater from beyond half court). If Zion's down on the block, where does Adams go offensively?
On the plus side, Adams and Williamson crashing the offensive glass together could be trouble for undersized opponents. They were both among 35 players leaguewide to grab at least 10% of available offensive rebounds last season, with Adams ranking eighth overall.
Defensively, Adams' size could make him an upgrade on Favors. Opponents made just 54% of their shots from within five feet with Adams is a primary defender in 2019-20, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats, as compared to 62% for Favors.
But Adams might not prove the right fit for New Orleans. In that case, the Pelicans aren't making a long-term commitment. Adams is in the final season of his contract, making $27.5 million. Given the current market for centers, either he'll return at a lower annual rate or New Orleans will have the flexibility to replace him next summer.
Given Adams is making so much, I don't think I would have given up a future first-round pick for him (the 2023 protected first-round pick originally belonging to Denver from the Hampton part of the trade) without getting off some salary beyond this season. However, New Orleans isn't making a long-term commitment to him. Adams will be a free agent next summer, giving the Pelicans the opportunity to move on if he doesn't prove the right fit. If it works, New Orleans can re-sign him at a lower annual rate.
To make the deal work, the Pelicans gave up Miller, whose $7 million expiring 2020-21 salary will be guaranteed to complete the trade -- a nice bonus for a player coming off an Achilles rupture last summer -- and Hill, who has just $1.3 million in 2021-22 salary guaranteed.
For the time being, New Orleans is keeping Bledsoe, giving the team a crowd at point guard with Lonzo Ball and No. 13 pick Kira Lewis Jr. also in the mix. That's not the worst thing since Bledsoe and Ball can comfortably play together because of the latter's spot-up ability, and Lewis is unlikely to contribute right away. It does complicate the Pelicans' cap next summer, when they'll have somewhere in the ballpark of $50-60 million to try to re-sign or replace four key free agents: Ball and Josh Hart, both restricted, and unrestricted veterans Adams and J.J. Redick.
As for the draft picks New Orleans added, those diversify the team's portfolio. The Pelicans already had two extra picks and a swap coming from the Los Angeles Lakers thanks to the Anthony Davis trade, and now control a second team's picks for several years running.
As compared to the Lakers' picks, the ones from the Bucks offer far more upside if Giannis does leave. Even if not, picks in the 20s will provide the Pelicans a steady stream of cheap contributors as their own young players start to get more expensive, starting right away with All-Star Brandon Ingram now a restricted free agent.
If I were running the Pelicans, I think I'd have preferred a package built around quality young talent. It seems like that might not have been available; the idea the Brooklyn Nets might need to save such players for a potential James Harden trade -- instead of a Holiday trade -- surely couldn't have helped New Orleans in that regard. In that case, New Orleans did well to extract so many draft picks from Milwaukee.
Oklahoma City Thunder: A
Understandably a little concerned that the Pelicans might overtake them in their unofficial race to stockpile the NBA's biggest cache of first-round picks, the Thunder managed to jump into this trade to add another -- the lottery-protected pick from the Denver Nuggets starting in 2023 that New Orleans had added on draft night.
Adams was the last Thunder holdover from the glory days, and the last high-priced starter from their 2020 playoff team to be traded this week. (Oklahoma City could still execute a sign-and-trade involving forward Danilo Gallinari to create a trade exception, but we already know he's headed to Atlanta as an unrestricted free agent.)
As noted, the Thunder did well here to get a first-rounder and future seconds without taking on long-term salary in return.
Hill should have trade value to a contender at a reasonable $9.6 million this season. Ordinarily, I'd suggest that might happen before the deadline. Given how quickly Oklahoma City has been moving this week, Hill might be traded by the time you read this sentence.
Denver Nuggets: A
The Nuggets jumped into this trade to grab Hampton, who slid to the 24th pick after being mock drafted somewhere in the teens. At that point, I like the value for Denver, which has been aggressive about collecting talented prospects that slide in the draft such as Michael Porter Jr. and Bol Bol.
Based on his limited sample of NBL statistics, Hampton rated eighth in my stats-based draft projections. That's a little optimistic given that Hampton struggled against weaker competition than he'll face in the NBA, but the Nuggets can afford to wait on his long-term development because they're well covered at point guard with Jamal Murray, Monte Morris and newcomer Facundo Campazzo.