NBA trade deadline: Winners and losers, from the Sixers to the Lakers

The NBA trade deadline has officially come and gone, with a flurry of moves large and small hitting the transaction wire before the buzzer on Thursday.

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Here's who came out on top and who still needs to take a long look in the mirror, starting with the biggest deal of them all.

Winners

Pretty much everyone involved in the Harden trade

It is truly wild how all four major players in the biggest trade of the deadline — James Harden, Ben Simmons, the Philadelphia 76ers and Brooklyn Nets — all seemed to get what they want, but that might just be what happens when two disgruntled stars perfectly fit each other's teams.

OK, that may be an exaggeration. The Nets' preference was probably to keep Harden and see what a Big 3 that was one 3-pointer away from the NBA Finals could do with another season together, but the situation clearly wasn't working, for Harden at least. The Nets would also have liked one of Tyrese Maxey and Matisse Thybulle in the deal or their starting point guard to play home games, but that's life.

But if you look at the trade from each party's perspective, this all lines up quite nicely.

James Harden gets a chance to escape the drama of a super-team he created but clearly wasn't ready for. Rather than shoulder the load while Kevin Durant recovers from another injury and Kyrie Irving gives part-time work a shot, he lands on a team run by the architect of his greatest season, Daryl Morey, with an MVP candidate to feed down low.

The Sixers get a point guard who should work a hell of a lot better for them than Simmons did. Maybe the biggest surprise of the whole Simmons saga is that he's the one who broke up with the Sixers (at great expense) not the other way around. Finally, the Sixers get a guard who can take some of the scoring load off Joel Embiid. How Harden and Embiid mesh may be the biggest question mark here, but Embiid is so good in so many ways it's hard to see that not working well.

Ben Simmons gets the chance to escape one of the most toxic player-team-city relationships in recent memory. Now, he joins a team that doesn't need him to be more than what he already is. Every year, Philadelphia hoped the season had arrived when Simmons would give scoring outside the paint a shot and every year, he stayed in his well-lineated comfort zone, to the very public frustration of his own team. You can blame Simmons all you want for pulling the rip cord, but he was unhappy for a reason.

The Nets get a player who fixes their biggest weaknesses. For all the talk of Simmons' limits, it's worth remembering he is legitimately incredible on defense and remains a great facilitator on offense. On a team with Durant, Irving, Joe Harris and Seth Curry, the Nets are not going to mind adding a Defensive Player of the Year candidate who can guard 1-5 and would rather pass than shoot in exchange for a player who didn't want to be there.

Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown

Yeah, the Boston Celtics are still figuring out the best way to activate Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown in Year 5 of their partnership, but bringing in Derrick White is a worthwhile attempt.

White, who is in the first season of a four-year, $70 million contract, is a strong facilitator who should give the team another strong presence on defense. He should do a lot more for Tatum and Brown than Dennis Schroder ever did.

The Celtics also added old friend Daniel Theis, who wasn't having the best season with the Houston Rockets, though he's performed plenty well in Boston in the past.

The Clippers' dream of an all-wing team

The Los Angeles Clippers are doing their best to make the whole plane out of wings.

Already one of the most wing-heavy teams in the NBA, the Clippers pulled off two trades that sent one of their lone remaining primary ballhandlers (Eric Bledsoe) and big men (Serge Ibaka) for ... more wings in Norman Powell, Rodney Hood, Semi Ojeleye and Robert Covington (who could be a small-ball center).

As currently constructed, the only non-wings on the Clippers' active roster are Reggie Jackson, Ivica Zubac and Isaiah Hartenstein. I don't exactly know how that's going to work, but tell me that's not beautiful.

The Suns

The Phoenix Suns are really good. Adding Torrey Craig and Aaron Holiday aren't huge moves, but it makes them better.

Moving on ...

The Pacers' long-term plan

Indiana didn't trade the big man everyone assumed they would, but it's hard not to like what they got back. Tyrese Haliburton has some mouthwatering potential and gives them something to build around, while Buddy Hield is a historically good sharpshooter under contract through 2024 and could get something back in a trade this offseason if Indiana goes that route.

Meanwhile, trading Caris LeVert for Ricky Rubio's expiring deal will give Indiana plenty of cap space going into the offseason, not to mention some draft picks.

Steering into a full rebuild is never easy, but the Pacers still have plenty of talent and are in a much better position to take advantage of that than they were a week ago.

The Cavaliers and alchemy

Speaking of that LeVert trade, the Pacers may have had their reasons, but turning Rubio, an expensive player who is out for the season, into a player with legitimate upside in LeVert is basically sorcery, even if it required some extra sweeteners.

The Cavaliers are arguably the biggest surprise in basketball right now, and adding LeVert strengthens their biggest weakness, wing depth.

The Mavericks, if you value Magic Johnson's opinion

No one was higher on the Spencer Dinwiddie and Davis Bertans, two players who were much more valuable three years ago, than Magic Johnson, the guy who would have been in position to trade for them three years ago.

Hey, speaking of where Magic Johnson was working three years ago ...

Losers

The Lakers

Good lord, where to start?

The Lakers needed help. The team is 26-30 and looking more and more dysfunctional. The hope was they could finally give up on Russell Westbrook, but Westbrook's contract is so toxic there was basically only one team that could have taken him: the Houston Rockets.

That didn't happen. So the Lakers were left looking on the margins for roster improvements, which also didn't happen. The team's next available first-rounder is in 2027 and teams apparently weren't as interested in Talen Horton-Tucker as some hoped.

So this is the Lakers' team, barring a significant move on the buyout market. But even that may be a long shot because the Lakers are in ninth place in the West and the whole "take a cheap deal to play with LeBron James" thing tends to only be attractive when James' team has a clear path to the NBA Finals. Instead, this team has the hardest remaining schedule in the NBA.

It was already clear that bringing in Westbrook was a mistake, but now he's a sunk cost. This season might be as well.

John Wall's contract

Simmons got what he wanted, John Wall not so much. It's not hard to figure out why.

Start with a player who is undeniably talented, but getting older with legitimate injury concerns. Give him arguably the most untradeable contract in the NBA. Have him demand a trade anyway, and agree to stop playing until that materializes. Put him on a team that is actively incentivized to lose games, which is helped when its $44 million player declines to play.

It shouldn't surprise anyone that Wall is still a Rocket. Now, he's looking at another lost season, and we don't know how many seasons he realistically has left.

The Blazers' dignity

Things are understandably dire in Portland right now. Damian Lillard is still out for a while, and doesn't have much reason to return to the court even when healthy. That was all the reason interim general manager Joe Cronin needed to dismantle the core that took the team to the Western Conference finals in 2020.

Trading away good players like Norman Powell and C.J. McCollum isn't bad in itself, but the team's return was uninspiring.

Powell, for whom the team gave up Gary Trent Jr. and Rodney Hood, and Robert Covington, for whom the team gave up two first-round picks returned ... a past-his-prime Eric Bledsoe, minor role player Justise Winslow, project Keon Johnson and a second-round pick. McCollum and Larry Nance Jr. returned Josh Hart, Nickeil Alexander-Walker (who was then flipped to the Utah Jazz), some other players and draft picks.

The Blazers' priority at this point seems to be to make the team as cheap as possible, but you have to wonder if that was at the cost of a better supporting cast for Lillard in the future.

Kristaps Porzingis

So it's come to this for Kristaps Porzingis. The Washington Wizards.

The Dallas Mavericks pulled the plug on the idea of Porzingis ever becoming the Dirk Nowitzki to Luka Doncic's Steve Nash, and now the Latvian is just another lottery ticket for a team that just lost Bradley Beal for the season.

Porzingis still has two years worth more than $30 million each on his contract. Expectations won't be as high for him as they were in Dallas, but Washington is hardly a stable place to build your value back up, especially with the omnipresent specter of a Beal trade.

Any sense of the Kings having a plan

Domantas Sabonis is really, really good.

So it should tell you just how bad the Kings are that this was their fan base's reaction when they traded for him.

There are teams in this article that had to rebuild: the Blazers, the Pacers, the Wizards. Those three teams' winning percentages average out to a win and a half better than where the 21-36 Kings are right now. And yet, the team decided to go for it, trading away a legitimately valuable young player in the process.

It should have been a shock, but it really wasn't. It's the Kings.