Three standout NBA guards––LaMelo Ball, Ja Morant and Trae Young––have had their names floated in trade rumors early into the 2025-26 season. What remains to be seen, however, is what teams, if any, are willing to try to trade for them.
The trio of former top-five picks are still with the organizations that drafted them, though success on the court has been fairly hard to come by. With their futures uncertain, there remains a strong possibility that they could be traded ahead of February’s deadline.
The market for Ball, Morant and Young appears almost nonexistent. In fact, ESPN NBA insiders Tim MacMahon and Bobby Marks spoke to various front office members across the league, and the general sentiment was that trading for one of the aforementioned guards isn’t a move they would make.
“I wouldn’t want any of them,” a GM of a Western Conference team told ESPN.
“They all might have negative value,” said an executive for a team in the East.
For various reasons, acquiring one of the All-Star guards in a trade isn’t seen as a wise move for many teams. For one, all three are playing under max contracts. They’re also rather inefficient players who require the basketball to be in their hands in order to make plays. The trio are also lackluster defenders, which brings up questions about whether it’s possible to build a championship team around them. While Morant and Young have led their teams on deep playoff runs in the past, they’ve failed to do so in recent years. Ball, on the other hand, has never reached the playoffs in his six years in the league.
Trading any one of those three would be difficult to navigate given their large contracts, and the return for such a standout player likely wouldn’t satisfy the teams. Some executives ESPN spoke with suggested it’d be possible that they get traded for one another, considering the financials would be easier to line up.
“When there are these sort of unwanted superstars, sometimes they end up getting traded for each other. I wouldn’t be surprised if that happens in this case,” said the anonymous GM.
With more than two months remaining until the trade deadline, it’s still possible that the star guards get traded, but with their big contracts and inefficient play styles, navigating a deal that satisfies both parties could be incredibly difficult.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Anonymous NBA GM Says Ja Morant, Trae Young, LaMelo Ball Have 'Negative Trade Value'.
