July 6: The trade is official, per an announcement from the Spurs (Twitter link). The draft rights to No. 38 pick Kam Jones have been sent to Indiana in exchange for Sacramento’s 2030 second-round pick and cash.
June 25: The Spurs have agreed to trade the No. 38 overall pick in this year’s draft to the Pacers in exchange for a future second-round pick and cash, reports Shams Charania of ESPN (Twitter link).
The pick headed to San Antonio is the Kings’ 2030 second-rounder, according to Jake Fischer of The Stein Line (Twitter link).
While the deal is the first reported first draft-night trade, it technically won’t even affect Wednesday’s results, since the Pacers won’t make their newly acquired No. 38 pick until Thursday.
San Antonio still holds a pair of lottery picks at No. 2 and No. 14, but Indiana previously traded away its own first-rounder and only controlled the No. 54 overall pick, so this will give them a second 2025 selection.
The fact that the Pacers are agreeing to this trade now instead of waiting to see who’s on the board suggests they’re not necessarily targeting a specific prospect at that spot.
For a team flirting with the luxury tax line, the ability to select a player at No. 38 and sign him to a rookie-minimum contract could be valuable, since that player’s cap hit (projected to be $1.27MM) would be $1MM+ less than the cap charge for a player on a veteran-minimum deal ($2.3MM). It’s also worth noting, as Bobby Marks of ESPN tweets, that the No. 23 pick Indiana traded away last week would’ve carried a cap hit of roughly $3.2MM.
As Keith Smith of Spotrac notes (via Twitter), sending out cash will hard-cap the Pacers at the second tax apron for the 2025/26 league year.
Championship
First draft pick traded of many that will tonight.
Good value for Spurs. Kaaangs!!!