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,

Ben Simmons has played in 33 of the Nets 51 games so far this season, averaging 6.2 points, 6.9 assists and 5.2 rebounds.

It looked like Ben Simmons’ days as an NBA player were numbered. After missing the entire 2021-2022 season with a back injury following his trade from the Philadelphia 76ers to the Brooklyn Nets, Simmons returned to play only 43 games during the 2022-23 season and just 15 games during the 2023-24 campaign last year.