The 2024 NBA midseason was unusually drama-free

A year ago next week, a long-running NBA saga finally came to an end. The Trail Blazers traded Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks, ending a months-long process to pry the franchise’s leading scorer from Portland. In exchange for a new partner for Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bucks sent the Blazers a massive package of picks and players, most notably Jrue Holiday, who immediately sparked a bidding war of his own.

Meanwhile, the drama surrounding another point guard on the NBA 75th Anniversary Team continued to mount, as James Harden awaited his ride out of Philadelphia. Lillard and Harden dominated the 2023 offseason as just the latest examples of the NBA’s transformation into a 12-month, transaction-driven league.

But this summer hasn’t followed that pattern. While the Olympics provided a pleasing array of stakes and storylines between the Celtics’ championship run and the impending start of training camp, the biggest NBA news since the U.S. won gold has been a media story — Adrian Wojnarowski’s retirement from reporting — rather than anything to do with a player or team.

That’s a stark departure from recent trends and expectations following a relatively lackluster 2023-24 trade deadline. “There’s going to be a lot of moving around this offseason,” an Eastern Conference executive told our Howard Beck at the time. “There’s going to be some options, some high-caliber players that want to move.”

But not all that many pieces were ultimately moved, and no high-caliber players requested a trade. To be fair, there were a number of high-caliber players traded in June, before free agency began: Mikal Bridges, Dejounte Murray, Alex Caruso and Deni Avdija. But none of them are No. 1 options with the potential to dominate an NBA news cycle; that quartet has combined for just one All-Star appearance, courtesy of Murray in 2021-22.

The list of players transferred since the start of July largely consists of unremarkable role players and former stars who have just passed their prime:

• Klay Thompson (as sign-and-trade)
• Josh Green
• Kyle Anderson (as sign-and-trade)
• Friend Loved
• Devonte’Graham
• DeMar DeRozan (as sign-and-trade)
• Harrison-Barnes
• Chris Duarte
• Russell Westbrook (after buyout)
• Kris Dunn
• Ziaire Williams
• Mamadi Diakite
• EJ Liddell
• David Roddy

DeRozan, who went from Chicago to Sacramento as part of a three-team sign-and-trade, is the only one of those players to be ranked The Bell‘s list of the top 100 players in the NBA. No future first-round pick changed hands in any of those moves. (The Kings sent a future trade to the Spurs as part of the DeRozan deal.)

That level of activity is far below that of recent offseasons. In 2023, between the Finals and the draft, the Suns traded Bradley Beal, the Warriors Chris Paul and the Celtics made the bold swap of Marcus Smart for Kristaps Porzingis. The summer then continued with regular rumors about Lillard and Harden.

A year earlier, in the summer of 2022, the blockbusters had come in a flash. The Hawks started the action by acquiring Dejounte Murray in exchange for three future first-rounders plus a future trade (far more than they received when they re-traded Murray this summer). Then, Brian Windhorst predicted his path to meme infamy when the Jazz traded Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell for a double dose of draft delights.

At the same time, Kevin Durant had a standing request to leave the Nets and Kyrie Irving’s extension talks weren’t going as planned. Those storylines paved the way for further constant speculation and, ultimately, a pair of midseason trades that shook up the league’s competitive landscape.

But what star is producing that level of transactional drama at this point in 2024? Based on our top 100 player rankings, there is currently no top 30 player in any rumors – so by definition, in a 30-team league, there is no No. 1 option on the market.

The closest is Brandon Ingram (No. 35 on our end-of-season list), who appears to be the odd man out in New Orleans as the Pelicans move Zion Williamson, integrate Murray and give Trey Murphy III a bigger role. But Ingram, whose 2023-24 season was marred by a knee injury and a brutal postseason performance, isn’t in the same league as Lillard, Harden, Durant, Mitchell, etc. He’s a prolific scorer but has just one All-Star appearance to his name; he’s never made an All-NBA team; he’s not beloved by advanced stats.

Other teams are reluctant to trade Ingram, and for good reason. As a fairly one-dimensional player, albeit a very important dimension, he’s a tough guy to draft. And since he’s eligible for a new contract after the 2024-25 season, any team that wanted him now would have to feel comfortable offering him a max or near-max extension. That’s a tough ask for a B-level star in the league’s modern salary cap environment.

Extension concerns also play a role in a potential trade for Julius Randle, who—at No. 45—is the only other player in our top 70 rankings who currently appears remotely available. But Randle isn’t generating outside speculation so much as uncertainty about his fit alongside the Knicks’ Villanova crew.

But players with more juice and a better pedigree than Ingram and Randle simply aren’t on the market or aren’t asking for it. All other potential dramas were resolved peacefully over the summer.

Mitchell signed an extension with Cleveland. Lauri Markkanen did the same with Utah, following a fair amount of Warriors-focused trade speculation — and he specifically scheduled his deal so that he cannot be traded during the 2024-25 season. Jimmy Butler did not sign an extension, but he did reach a détente with the Heat, who reportedly have “no interest in trading” their veteran star. The Timberwolves are content to keep both Gobert and Karl-Anthony Towns for now, following a run to the conference finals.

The three most volatile star situations are likely Milwaukee, Phoenix and Cleveland, but all three teams have — at least temporarily — alleviated internal concerns by hiring new coaches in Doc Rivers, Mike Budenholzer and Kenny Atkinson, respectively. (Rivers coached the Bucks for about half of the 2023-24 season, but Giannis was injured before the playoffs and now Rivers will have his first full training camp with the team.) Joel Embiid may have been frustrated in Philadelphia, but the 76ers made the biggest splash of the offseason by signing Paul George.

The best players now are not The inner-circle championship contenders are likely Steph Curry, Anthony Davis and LeBron James, but the Warriors and Lakers certainly aren’t doing their superstars any favors. A hypothetical “Get me out of Golden State; I want a better situation to win a fifth title” demand from Curry would make the Lillard saga look small by comparison, but it’s exceedingly difficult to imagine the Warriors ever making such a request. Both Curry and LeBron signed extensions this summer.

It’s possible that this summer represents the beginning of a new reality and the end of the most frenetic era of star player movement. More likely, though, it’s just an odd blip, the product of relative parity among the league’s best teams (behind the reigning champion Celtics, perhaps) and an unusual level of harmony among the league’s best players.

This lull may not last long; recent history suggests that a top-tier star almost always generates buzz, even if only as a theoretical trade candidate. If Phoenix gets off to a slow start under Budenholzer, potential destinations for Durant could begin to swirl again. Or if Milwaukee can’t figure out the Giannis-Dame partnership in Year Two, every big-market team will once again salivate at the prospect of adding a two-time MVP. Then the trade-machine industrial complex will kick into gear, bringing rumors—though no longer Woj bombs—back to the forefront of the NBA’s daily discourse.