While the NBA rumor mill has been focused on Kevin Durant trade destinations and the Knicks’ coaching search, the Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies just pulled off a massive trade, sending Desmond Bane to Florida.
It’s a trade that could see Orlando in the Eastern Conference Finals next season, but did they overpay for Desmond Bane? Four firsts are a lot. However, whether they overpaid will depend on how Bane fits. Is this a first-year Mikal Bridges with the Knicks fit, where the big haul feels like an overpay now? Or, is it more of a Pascal Siakam with the Pacers fit? Time will tell.
We’re going to break down the winners and losers from this trade, but let’s start by breaking down the trade itself:
Orlando receives: Desmond Bane
Memphis receives: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Cole Anthony, the No. 16 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, a 2026 pick swap (the highest spot of the Magic, Suns, and Wizards), two more unprotected first round picks (2028 and 2030), and a 2029 first-round pick with Orlando.
Winner: Orlando’s offense
Everything you need to know about Orlando was on display in its first-round playoff loss to Boston: Its elite defense kept the Magic in games, Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner averaged 29.4 and 25.8 points per game, respectively, but did so inefficiently, with true shooting percentages well below the league average. As a team, they shot just 26.3% from 3 for the series. They couldn’t score enough to keep up (Boston having a quality defense was part of that).
Desmond Bane is an underrated player and a perfect fit for what the Magic need. First and foremost, he is a knock-down shooter, converting 39.2% of his 3-point shots on 6.1 attempts per game last season. That volume was his fewest attempts per game in four years. He will give the Magic some spacing that Caldwell-Pope did not. Bane also evolved into the secondary playmaker in Memphis behind Ja Morant (and when Morant missed time, Bane was the guy at the top of the scouting report).
He checks all of Orlando’s boxes. The idea of a Bane/Banchero pick-and-roll is devastating.
If the Magic can maintain a top-five defense (Bane is a solid defender) and improve their offense from 27th to just league average, this team will quickly become a top-10 net rating team, potentially securing a top-four spot in the East.
Given that we are expecting a down Eastern Conference following Jayson Tatum’s injury, Orlando picked the right time to go all-in. The Magic making the Eastern Conference Finals (at least) next season does not seem crazy at all, and adding Bane could be the missing piece to making that leap.
Winner: Desmond Bane
Bane is an underrated player, a guy who, over the last three seasons combined, has averaged more than 20 points and five assists per game. The Orlando Magic are a team on the rise that lacked the shooting and guard play that Bane brings to the table.
Bane is a winner because this is a better situation for him — he is now going to get that recognition. He’s plug-and-play in Orlando, he doesn’t have to change who he is, and who he is could well make him an All-Star and more. It doesn’t hurt that this trade raised his profile.
Loser: NBA Finals
Adam Silver does not like trades during the NBA Finals and Sunday was a good example of why: On a day the league would like the focus on a pivotal Game 5 between the Pacers and Thunder, in an exciting series tied 2-2, the talk instead was whether Orlando overpaid to get Bane. Focused moved away from the game on the court to the transaction market.
There was already a lot of that with the Kevin Durant saga and the Knicks coaching search, but this trade ramped it up. The Finals took a back seat for the day, not the narrative the league wants to see.
Winner: Memphis’ optionality
This feels like the first of a few bold moves by Memphis this summer. Memphis realized that the plan and roster they had weren’t good enough, they had hit a ceiling with the core of Ja Morant, Jaren Jackson Jr. and Bane. Now, largely thanks to those four first-round picks, the Grizzlies can go a lot of different directions in the future.
For example, in the wake of the trade, there was considerable speculation online that the Grizzlies might use this as an opportunity to tear down and rebuild: Trade Ja Morant and Jaren Jackson Jr., pick up more young players and picks, and start the rebuild process from the ground up. Theoretically Memphis could go that route, and other teams are watching to see what happens next, but the expectation around the league is more that this is a retooling in Memphis, not a teardown. They fired Taylor Jenkins as coach because he wasn’t winning enough and the team had 48 wins, that’s not the mentality of a rebuilding team.
Memphis has plenty of other options. They can use those picks — particularly the 2026 pick swap that gives them the best of the Suns and Wizards next season — to add talent through the draft. Or, they can trade some of those picks to go after another star they think would be a better fit than Bane.
This trade, on the face of it, makes a Jaren Jackson Jr. extension less likely because the Grizzlies reduced their cap space in the short term. Now, with those picks, they could make another trade to offload salary, giving them the space to raise JJJ’s salary now and then extend him off that number. (Jackson, for his part, may want to play out the year on his $23.4 million contract and then hit free agency, hope he can make All-NBA — he was 17th in the voting this past season — and be in line for a supermax.)
Winner: Phoenix Suns
The Phoenix Suns are seeking a massive haul to trade 37-year-old, future Hall of Famer Kevin Durant. The belief around the league was that they would not get near the return they sought.
Now, if Desmond Bane is worth four first-round picks, what is Kevin Durant worth? It’s unlikely to be enough to get the Suns what they’re asking — different market, different teams, different situation — but it gives them a little leverage.
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