To understand the state of the 2025 NBA trade deadline, with one week to go and one Jimmy Butler still in a standoff with his own team, you have to go back to 2022. With the 3 p.m. ET deadline on Feb.

Bradley Beal’s name has been in NBA trade rumors for almost the entire season as the Phoenix Suns have slipped down the Western Conference standings. There’s a catch: Beal is one of two players in the league with a no-trade clause,

This presupposes that the trade for Beal is the original roster construction problem in Phoenix that must be solved -- that under the new collective bargaining agreement, building a team around three max salary players, one of whom is performing far below a max level, is untenable.