As expected, the Wizards have rolled a pair of trade agreements with the Pelicans and Rockets into the same deal, officially completing the two deals as a single three-team transaction, per a press release from New Orleans.
The terms of the trade are as follows:
Wizards acquire CJ McCollum, Kelly Olynyk, Cam Whitmore, and the Bulls’ 2027 second-round pick (from Pelicans).- Pelicans acquire Jordan Poole, Saddiq Bey, and the draft rights to Micah Peavy (No. 40 pick).
- Rockets acquire the draft rights to Mojave King, the Bulls’ 2026 second-round pick (from Wizards) and the Kings’ 2029 second-round pick (from Wizards).
The original trade agreement between Washington and New Orleans was reached on June 24, a day before the first round of the draft, with the Whitmore deal between Houston and Washington just agreed upon yesterday.
It was beneficial for the Wizards to combine the two deals into a single trade because they were sending out any matching salary to the Rockets for Whitmore. While they could have used one of several cap exceptions they had on hand to take on Whitmore’s $3.54MM salary for 2025/26, including him in this deal allows them to use their 125% allowance for Poole’s and Bey’s outgoing salary to acquire him, McCollum, and Olynyk.
The only new part of this deal is the Rockets acquiring the draft rights to King from New Orleans, which was necessary to ensure that Houston and New Orleans were “touching” as part of the three-team deal.
You can read our original story on the Wizards/Pelicans deal headlined by McCollum and Poole here, while our report on the Wizards’ deal for Whitmore is here.
As long as the “touching” was consentual…
C’mon y’all. This needs more love
Expecting another trade from Washington. Currently, they need 1 extra spot to sign rookie Riley, and if Gill is to return, they need 2 spots. Add 2 more if they plan to sign Vukcevic or rookie Watkins to a standard contract, instead of a 2-way.
Kispert is likely to leave. He was drafted by the previous FO, and as we’ve seen with Avdija, the current GM is unlikely to hold on to them. Kispert has a nice long contract at 13m and has value. Olynyk has a movable 13m salary and is not useless as a big body and a shooter for a competing team. CJ is a bigger salary, idk if someone will want him. 41st pick Watkins and Dillon Jones from OKC may be added to a trade too.
Holmes can play effective minutes, but he’s likely to stay as they’re thin at the C.
Some of those might be combined to take on one player on a big salary to make roster room, and possibly get draft capital in return.
But there aren’t that many bad contracts out there over 35m. MPJ was traded already.
Is Beal to return to DC? Jalen Green is getting a lot of criticism, and the fit is weird in Houston, but IMO it would be rash of the Suns to dump him. He still has upside. And they’ve put themselves in a better situation with recent moves.
PG I don’t think is moving, Philly will at least try to see how they all look together this year. And 3 years on his deal are scary.
Lillard got waived already.
Jalen Green’s fit in Phoenix*
Booker and Green too similar in their offense?
Well, we haven’t seen Booker and Beal together, so we don’t know. On paper, they are both ball-dominant scorers, which makes people say they won’t fit. But we’ll see.
Some teams play 2 non-shooting bigs with low mobility, and it works.
A lot will depend on their new coach.
In any case, Phoenix are in a better situation now than they were when KD was there moping around. And being in a better situation, they are less likely to make a bad decision, like waive and stretch Beal, or Dump Green and give up picks. Both of those moves would be bad, imo. Teams make bad decisions when they are cornered.
Gil was waived fyi
He was waived, but it was reported that they plan to resign him. Waiving and resigning him to a minimum doesn’t hurt the player, but that way his salary will have a smaller cap hit.
MPJ contract is good not bad fyi!!!
Well, Denver probably would not have traded him had he been on less money. That was the part of the move – they gave up an unprotected pick, but freed up some cap.
MPJ has got that back injury, it will forever stay as a question mark over him. We see how that injury affected Simmons. It almost seems like these days it’s better to have an ACL or Achilles tear, we’ve seen players return from those and continue to be basically as good as before, especially if they are young. In many sports, not just basketball. Guys with seriously bad lower back, who had multiple surgeries to remove pieces of disks and stuff, they never look like they did before before.