NBA trade predictions for 10 biggest names: AD, Trae Young and more on the move, will Giannis stay put?

The NBA trade deadline is one month away -- so where do we think Giannis, AD, Trae Young and others will be on Feb. 5?

We're inching closer and closer to the NBA trade deadline. As it is now, on Monday, Jan. 5, we are officially one month away from the buzzer, and in just 10 days, the last batch of 2025 free agents still technically ineligible to be traded (a group that includes Jonathan Kuminga) will hit the market. Teams are nearing the halfway point in their schedules. In other words, trade talk is no longer hypothetical. It's about to get very real, with deals potentially coming in the next few days and talks heating up in the coming weeks.

We may not know where the biggest names are headed when the bell rings on Feb. 5, but we have enough information at this point to make reasonable predictions. So that's what we're going to do. Below, we'll cover 10 of the biggest names on the rumor mill so far this season and predict their fates. If we're predicting no trade, well, that's simple. If we're predicting a trade, we'll provide not only a rationale for a deal, but try to guess which team specifically will land the player in question. So with all of that in mind, let's make some deadline predictions.

1. Giannis Antetokounmpo: Not traded

We're in a standstill. Giannis Antetokounmpo seems to be hoping that the Bucks will either magically turn a sub-.500 team into a contender with minimal available matching salary and tradable assets, or that they recognize the impossibility of that task and come to the decision to trade him on their own so that he doesn't have to be the bad guy and make an official request. The Bucks have seemingly taken the stance that they will do nothing until Antetokounmpo directly asks them to.

Is this staring contest serving anyone? No. Antetokounmpo is going to lose yet another precious year of his prime on a team incapable of competing at his level. The Bucks are going to get far less than in the inevitable eventual trade than they would have if they'd acted sooner, and it's been clear since May that this was where we were headed. 

But with players of this caliber, logic often takes a back seat to emotion. Milwaukee doesn't want to admit that it's over, that the Bucks failed to adequately support the best player in franchise history. Antetokounmpo doesn't want to admit that it's over either, that for his competitive goals to be accomplishable, he'll have to pursue them outside of the only NBA city he's ever known. These aren't easy realizations to come to. So Antetokounmpo and the Bucks will take one more run at this thing. They'll probably make a token win-now trade at the deadline, likely taking in a bad contract they'll regret soon enough. And then, this thing will get settled once and for all over the summer.

2. Anthony Davis: Traded to Hawks

The Mavericks don't have the same attachment to Davis that the Bucks have to Antetokounmpo. The one person in their organization who did, Nico Harrison, is now gone, and based on recent reporting, cooler heads seem to have prevailed and the Mavericks are leaning toward a Davis trade that will help reorient the team toward Cooper Flagg's timeline. Getting Davis off the roster now will help the Mavericks secure a valuable lottery slot this season, before their next four first-round picks go out in trades. After that? They can bring Kyrie Irving back in peace next season with their youth movement assured and try to start winning again.

Golden State is probably the best basketball situation for Davis, but making the money work would be extraordinarily difficult without Jimmy Butler involved. Butler obviously doesn't fit into a youth movement, so let's turn toward Atlanta, which has a huge expiring contract in Kristaps Porziņģis to build a deal around. It's not quite clear how available former No. 1 pick Zaccharie Risacher would be in a deal, but even if he's off the table, the Hawks have enough draft picks to work with that get a deal done. Atlanta has reportedly been the most aggressive team in pursuit of Davis thus far. It's a strange fit given how young most of the core here is, but the Hawks seem to want to lean into defense and athleticism, and with Davis, they'd have plenty of it.

3. Ja Morant: Not traded

As of this writing, the Grizzlies are 6-12 with Ja Morant on the floor this season and 9-7 without him. Couple that with declining stats, a bloated contract and endless off-court controversies and you'd think they'd be ready to move on. But just as is the case with Milwaukee and Antetokounmpo, the Grizzlies seemingly want to exhaust every possible excuse and alternative before accepting that their homegrown star is ready for a change of scenery.

What the Grizzlies can and likely will fall back on here is the reality that Morant has only played a single game with Zach Edey thus far this season. They'll want more time to evaluate how their old franchise player fits alongside their emerging, young centerpiece. Maybe the two of them will shine when Edey returns. More likely, the Grizzlies will miss the playoffs and find trade interest in Morant somewhat tepid this offseason.

4. Trae Young: Traded to Kings

The Hawks seem to be the one team among the many with overpriced, small point guards that appear ready to move on. Fitting both Davis and Young onto their cap sheet for next season would be tricky, so the idea here seems to be using the max slot on their anticipated balance sheet for Davis while replacing Young with a cheaper point guard somewhere. In a perfect world, they'd move Young for expiring contracts. There just isn't an ideal fit there unless the Clippers decide they want to bring Young in as a bridge star to keep them afloat after James Harden and Kawhi Leonard move on, but they're playing so well right now that such a move appears unlikely.

One of the benefits of first-mover advantage, though, is that it gives you access to the widest possible market. All of these teams with expensive guards, whether it's the Grizzlies or the Hornets or whomever, have been linked to the Kings. They're one of the few teams that doesn't seem to have gotten the memo that the league is moving away from this sort of player, at least at a max price point. They've seemingly been searching for a point guard since they gave away De'Aaron Fox last deadline. They unfortunately lack expiring contracts, but if the Hawks could coax some draft capital out of Sacramento for their bad deals, they could at least try to do what Dallas did with Porziņģis a few years ago and break him up into smaller deals they can offload later. 

Young's value is at an all-time low right now. Much like Morant in Memphis, the Hawks have played better without him this year. Reports indicate they're open-minded, and the Kings could view Young as a rare shot at a star-level talent who might actually want to play for them. After all, who else would be eager to pay him?

5. LaMelo Ball: Not traded

Ball is the youngest of the three max-contract point guards who seem to be falling out of favor with their original teams. That means his trade value is probably the highest, but it also means his team would have the easiest time talking itself into keeping him. Ball is still only 24, and the Hornets are playing reasonably well right now. If a few teams in the middle of the Eastern Conference Play-In race deal with injuries, they might even be able to sneak into the postseason.

If someone wants to bowl Charlotte over, the Hornets would probably listen. But they're not in the position Atlanta is in. They don't need financial savings to pursue some other roster-building agenda. They're not where Memphis is either. Ball may have injury concerns, but there's little reason to believe he's meaningfully declining like Morant may be. The Hornets will probably just play out the year with Ball and reevaluate later. In truth, it might take a few more seasons before there's any meaningful motion here.

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6. Michael Porter Jr.: Traded to Warriors

Porter is one of the more interesting trade candidates of the season. His injury history and relatively newfound stardom make him a high-risk addition. But shooting and size are prized traits, and Porter has both. He's gettable at a lower price than some of the other players on this list, but if he keeps playing this well into the deadline, that price is only going to get higher.

Ultimately, the winning bidder is going to be the most desperate one. Could Detroit, with an obvious need for a shooting power forward, bowl Brooklyn over? Absolutely. But the Pistons are at the beginning of what should be a very long and sustainable run atop the Eastern Conference. They're unlikely to offer more than a team like Golden State, desperate to cling onto whatever scraps of contention it can in Stephen Curry's golden years. 

The true max salary players on the market are too expensive for the Warriors to land without gutting their team just by matching salary, but Porter is a bit more manageable. The Warriors could get him while keeping Curry, Butler and Draymond Green, giving them a pretty interesting four-man core that pairs Butler and Green's defense and grit with elite shooting from Curry and Porter. The Warriors gave up draft capital for Butler last winter. We're betting they'll do the same for Porter this year.

7. Lauri Markkanen: Not traded

Frankly, we've been doing this dance for three years. If there was an offer out there that Utah was prepared to accept, a deal would have happened by now. Is there a clear incentive to get worse with their top-eight protected first-round pick owed to Oklahoma City? Sure. But Utah has shown no qualms resting players down the stretch and accepting fines in the process. They Jazz will find a way to keep their pick.

And after that? Their obligation to the Thunder extinguishes. Keyonte George is ascending. Walker Kessler will be back. The Jazz will have cap space this summer. Utah is ready to take a big leap, and doing so would be far easier with Markkanen actually on the team. You could argue they should have simply traded Markkanen at the peak of his value years ago, but that ship has sailed. There's just not likely to be an offer out there that would move Utah if all of the previous ones haven't.

8. Jonathan Kuminga: Traded to Nets

Well, we pitched a Porter to Golden State trade that involved Green and Butler staying with the Warriors. Someone expensive needs to move here, so we'll say it's Kuminga. Could the Nets reroute him to one of the teams that pursued him in the offseason like Sacramento or Phoenix? Sure. But the Nets have no great incentive to do so. Those teams aren't going anywhere and Kuminga is on a very team-friendly deal. Why not see what a former lottery talent can do in a more typical ecosystem rather than Golden State's passing- and movement-heavy offense?

For what it's worth, Kuminga would fit a trend in Brooklyn. A lot of forwards lately have landed with the Nets as, for lack of a better way of putting this, collateral damage. Mikal Bridges and Cam Johnson were casualties of Kevin Durant's trade request. Both came to Brooklyn, thrived, and were traded for significant hauls. Porter was just the salary Denver needed to dump in the Johnson trade. Now he might make an All-Star Game. Maybe there's room for Kuminga to take a similar leap with the Nets. He wants to go to a team that will let him shoot and explore his offensive skill set. The Nets have a real track record of doing so.

9. Trey Murphy: Not traded

There's a lot of wishful thinking where the Pelicans are concerned this deadline. All of the older, more expensive contenders are hoping Herb Jones becomes available so they can try to trade for a high-end 3-and-D wing on an affordable, long-term deal. All of the younger, ascending contenders are hoping that Trey Murphy becomes available so they can grab his rare combination of shooting and athleticism, also on a team-friendly deal, and mold it into a star with better surrounding talent.

But both players are in the early stages of their primes and fit around the rookies New Orleans drafted last June. The Pelicans have no reason to rush. If someone wants to overpay, they'll listen, but to this point, no obvious suitors at that price point have emerged. Teams are frankly hoping that the Pelicans will repeat the irresponsibility of last offseason, when they infamously gave away their unprotected 2026 first-round pick to get Derik Queen. But a team making one bizarre and poorly thought out move doesn't mean it's ripe for another one. The Pelicans seem to want to keep and build around Murphy and Jones.

10. Zion Williamson: Traded to Bulls

Zion Williamson? He's another story. The Pelicans must be enjoying this well-timed resurgence. Williamson has been great since returning from his latest injury, potentially reinvigorating his market ahead of the deadline. As nice as it's been to get this version of him, the Pelicans know he's not a viable fit next to Queen long-term. They need a rim-protecting big man to pair with their offensively gifted rookie. That isn't Williamson. He's defending better than ever this season, but he's not a rim-protector.

The Bulls have reportedly been searching for their version of Pascal Siakam to pair with Josh Giddey, whom they consider a Tyrese Haliburton-esque figure. Is Williamson a Siakam-esque player? No. Siakam is a far more versatile offensive player and a steadier defender with far fewer injuries to his name. But Williamson is a reasonable buy-low move for a Bulls team that just badly needs talent. If he works out? Great. You've found a star off the scrap heap. If he doesn't? His contract isn't even fully guaranteed, and he's likely gettable for expiring contracts and one reasonable asset like a first-round pick.

There just aren't that many teams willing to part with real value to take a risk on Williamson. The Bulls theoretically combine positional need, upside need and movable contracts. It's hard to imagine New Orleans doing much better as it fully transitions into the Queen-Murphy-Jones-Jeremiah Fears era.