Dissecting the Value of the Miles Bridges Trade + Expanding the Giannis Trade
On the Miles Bridges trade, how the Suns can get a point guard, and potentially get under the tax. Also, how the Heat could expand the Giannis trade to potentially keep Norman Powell.
2026 free agency hasn’t begun yet, but we’ve already seen a ton of movement on the trade market. So far, there have been five significant veteran trades. Two of them were dissected last week on Third Apron. None of these deals is official yet and likely won’t be until July 6 at the earliest. That gives each team more time to expand the deals and move more pieces around.
Earlier this week, the Hornets surprised everyone by trading LaMelo Ball and Josh Green to the Wolves for Naz Reid, an unprotected 2033 first-round pick, and other minor draft equity. Today, they followed that up by trading Miles Bridges and a 2029 first-round pick to the Suns for Royce O’Neale, Grayson Allen, and an unprotected 2033 first-round pick. That pick is easily one of the most valuable traded draft picks in the league given Phoenix’s outlook, and the Hornets got it for a player who has never made an All-Star team.
The Suns understand that the value of their 2033 first-round pick is worth more than Bridges. So to balance the trade, they are also acquiring a lesser first-round pick in 2027, the least favorable of Utah, Cleveland, and Minnesota. Funnily enough, they originally traded that pick to the Hornets last year in exchange for Mark Williams. They are now left with a maximum of two tradeable first-round picks, in 2027 and 2029, and both are the least favorable of those same three teams’ selections.
The other value Phoenix is receiving comes from getting off the negative-value contracts of Grayson Allen and Royce O’Neale. Both players have two years remaining on their deals and likely were going to see marginalized roles on the Suns next season. The way to look at this trade from Phoenix’s perspective is that it traded a 2033 first-round pick for Miles Bridges, a 2029 first-round pick that will likely land in the early-to-mid 20s, a 2027 second-round pick, the ability to move off Allen and O’Neale, and significant immediate savings.
The Suns were about $4.3 million below the second apron hard cap after re-signing Mark Williams. Since they are still in the repeater tax, their 15-man roster, which was $16.4 million above the tax line, resulted in a $61 million tax penalty. This trade reduces their payroll by $6.2 million, which lowers that tax penalty by roughly $30 million. They are still slightly above the first apron, but they are close enough that they could effectively operate as if they are below it.
They can structure this as two trades.
Trade 1: Grayson Allen ($18.1 million) for Miles Bridges ($22.8 million).
They can use the $9,098,000 expanded trade exception to take back up to $27.2 million for Green.
Trade 2: Royce O’Neale ($10.9 million) for nothing.
This would allow them to create a trade exception worth up to that amount. It would require them to operate within the first apron hard cap, which they are now in a position to do. This would also open up access to the $15 million non-taxpayer mid-level exception, but the Suns would still need to shed significantly more salary to use any additional exceptions.
When the Suns waived and stretched Bradley Beal, they put themselves in a position with limited roster-building flexibility in free agency. They were left to choose between using the mid-level exception and re-signing Collin Gillespie, Jordan Goodwin, and Mark Williams with their Bird rights. The latter was the better decision because it gave them more depth, but it also left them with few other options outside of trades that reduce payroll.
The Suns are now roughly $10.3 million above the luxury tax line. It seemed unlikely they would pay a $60 million penalty after mainly retaining role players, let alone finish the season as a taxpayer. They are probably not done and will likely look not only to get under the tax entirely, but also to make an additional upgrade to their starting lineup with their remaining tradeable draft picks.
As co-host Sam Quinn notes, Bridges has benefited from playing next to an elite playmaker like Ball. The Suns have been without an above-average starting point guard since trading Chris Paul three years ago. They might as well go even further in on this group with an upgrade at guard to try to put it all together offensively. In fact, that could also be their avenue to getting under the luxury tax line.
The Suns could look to trade Jalen Green in a move that lands them such a guard while further reducing payroll. As one example, trading him to the Bulls for Josh Giddey would give them a new starting point guard and get them under the tax. He has now shown he can be more of a viable off-ball player after two straight seasons of shooting well from three-point range on decent volume.
Other names they could target include Dejounte Murray, Immanuel Quickley, Jrue Holiday, and Tyler Herro, but those moves would not get them fully under the tax line. They would have to make additional cost-saving maneuvers around the trade deadline to finish the season under the tax. Alternatively, they could remain a tax team and see if they can package Green with Khaman Maluach and their two tradeable first-round picks for a more expensive guard like Darius Garland.
The Suns are mostly done with their offseason and will next focus on extensions for their starting frontcourt. Bridges will become extension-eligible starting on July 6 for a maximum of four years and $143 million. Third Apron projects him to receive a contract around his current annual salary. Dillon Brooks will also be extension-eligible for a similar amount, but he is projected to receive something in the $25 million annual range.
Meanwhile, the Hornets continue to sell high off their successful season and now possess two of the most valuable traded draft picks in the league after moving Ball and Bridges. They correctly identified the Wolves and Suns as desperate teams willing to go further in and trade their respective 2033 first-round picks as soon as those selections became available. It was strong work by Charlotte to move the players those teams desired and come away with those picks.
The Hornets still have 11 future first-round picks, but they significantly improved the quality of them by swapping that 2029 first-round pick for the Suns’ 2033 first. Both the Wolves and Suns are already heavily leveraged, with no control of their draft picks through 2033. Edwards is not yet under contract through then, though that will likely change with a supermax next offseason. Booker also is not under contract that far out and will likely be out of his prime by then.
The trade is simple from Charlotte’s perspective:
Trade 1: Miles Bridges ($22.8 million) for Grayson Allen ($18.1 million) and Royce O’Neale ($10.9 million).
They can use the $9,098,000 expanded trade exception to take back up to $31.9 million for Bridges. This would hard cap them to the first apron, but they are already set to be hard capped there by using an expanded trade exception in the Ball trade.
The Hornets increase their payroll slightly, but they are still $41.8 million below the tax line, a threshold they will not exceed this season. They retain their $40.8 million trade exception and could still use all of it without crossing the tax. Expect them to remain active in deals where they take on more bad money with draft equity attached.
They also have even more future flexibility now by moving off Ball’s remaining three years and no longer needing to re-sign or extend Bridges. That creates even more room to focus on extending Brandon Miller. He will be extension-eligible for a rookie-scale extension until the start of the regular season.
With plenty of time remaining before this trade can be executed on July 6, don’t be surprised if it gets looped into the pending four-team deal between the Wolves, Hornets, Bulls, and Nets. That could allow the Hornets to take back fewer salaries if they reroute either Allen or O’Neale, or to take on more bad money with additional draft picks attached. O’Neale would make some sense for the Wolves, who need a forward.
Speaking of pending trades, the Antetokounmpo trade cannot happen until January 6. This is a deal the Heat would probably love to expand so they can potentially keep Norman Powell.
Last week, the Bucks agreed to trade Giannis Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis to the Heat in a deal that included Tyler Herro, several players on rookie contracts, and draft equity. The trade was structured so the Heat could send the minimum salary needed to acquire Antetokounmpo. Because of that, they would absorb Portis into an old trade exception. Both of those mechanisms hard cap the Heat to the first apron.
If the trade is executed as currently constructed, the Heat cannot exceed $209.1 million in team salary for the rest of the season. They are effectively $19 million below that figure after declining Jahmir Young’s team option, even when factoring in a likely rookie minimum contract for Ryan Conwell. That could be a sensible starting salary for Powell. However, they would not be able to pay him that amount because they still need to fill four additional roster spots.
This apron predicament is why many around the league do not expect the Heat to retain Powell. They would need to reduce payroll significantly to make that work. For example, offloading Nikola Jovic would open up the flexibility needed to re-sign Powell and even use a portion of their mid-level exception to add another player. Still, that seems unlikely since they have all but one first-round pick available to trade, and even moving that selection is complicated because it only conveys if Miami’s lottery-protected 2027 first-round pick conveys.
There is another pathway to re-signing Powell: expanding the trade to create a 100 percent salary match. They could include Davion Mitchell in the deal and send him to a third team, which they reportedly tried to do in the Antetokounmpo trade. But moving him would open another hole on a roster that already lacks playmaking.
The other way to create a 100 percent salary match would be by signing and trading several of their free agents. For example, they could sign and trade Simone Fontecchio, for whom they have Bird rights, to a three-year deal with only the first year guaranteed. They could push his starting salary as high as $9.97 million, which is the most they can give him before Base Year Compensation reduces his outgoing amount for trade purposes to his previous $8.3 million salary. Then they could throw in a minimum-salary player like Myron Gardner, and they would be sending out 100 percent of Antetokounmpo’s salary.
They would also need to expand the trade in a way that does not bring back Portis, since absorbing him into an old trade exception also creates a first apron hard cap. If they can include Fontecchio and Gardner as described, and reroute Portis to a different team without taking any salary back, the Heat would have nearly $50 million in room below the $221.7 million second apron. That assumes Andrew Wiggins picks up his $30.2 million player option and that Conwell signs.
If the Heat could somehow pull all of this off, then they could comfortably re-sign Powell at any reasonable number, such as a starting salary in the low $20 million range. Not only that, they could use the $6 million taxpayer mid-level exception on a veteran, ideally a backup big man, since they would no longer be getting Portis. Andre Drummond and Mo Wagner would make sense here.
While discussing crazy sign-and-trade scenarios, they could also attempt to sign and trade their remaining free agents for a veteran in the $8-10 million range. Two years ago, the Knicks signed and traded their two-way free agents to make up that much money to satisfy salary-matching requirements for Karl-Anthony Towns. The Heat could try something similar for a player earning around that amount.
For example, they could attempt to sign and trade a combination of Keshad Johnson, Jahmir Young, Trevor Keels, and Vlad Goldin for a player like Caleb Martin, a former Heat player. The idea would be for those players to earn $1 above their respective minimum salaries to get around the one-minimum-player aggregation rule, then create a 100 percent match that way. The Mavericks’ incentive to do such a deal would be getting off Martin’s contract a year early, while all of the players the Heat sends out would only need to be guaranteed for one season.
To be clear, all of these scenarios are wishful thinking at best. The Heat do not have enough draft equity to satisfy every team that would be taking on their free agents in sign-and-trades, even if all of those players are guaranteed for only one season. But at the very least, they may need to find a taker for Portis or Jovic because the dropoff between Powell and whoever they could get in free agency is significant.
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