The NBA trade market never fully comes to a standstill and Monday brought another blockbuster that sees significant talent on the move. On the heels of the holiday weekend the Los Angeles Clippers, Utah Jazz, and Miami Heat engaged in a three-team trade involving four players and a draft pick.
The final tally: the Clippers land John Collins, the Heat land Norman Powell, and the Jazz land Kyle Anderson, Kevin Love, and a second-round pick from L.A. for the 2027 draft.
It is a fascinating transaction for a number of reasons. Powell is coming off a career season and now heads to South Beach. Collins has long been considered a player with potential to help teams win games but that hasn't always translated; he fills a need for the Clippers now. And the Jazz finally move one of their top assets in Collins after trade rumors persisted throughout his tenure in Utah.
Let's grade how each team made out in the aftermath of the big news.
Miami Heat
Grade: A-
As far as the on-paper transaction goes, this was a great deal for the Heat. Powell averaged a career-high 21.8 points per game for the 50-32 Clippers. His scoring was largely powered by his excellent three-point accuracy, as Powell averaged three makes per game from beyond the arc and shot 41.8% from that area of the floor overall. Entering his age-32 season the scoring guard isn't quite a long-term piece but for his $20 million salary the output is a bargain.
More importantly, the Heat gave up very little to land Powell's talents. Anderson is a useful rotation player but nothing more and the days of Love making an on-court impact are way in the rearview. Miami has to be thrilled to land a 20-ppg scorer for two players who both averaged fewer than 20 minutes on the floor last season.
In context of the Heat's quest to become a contender again, it's a largely lateral move. Powell has a lot of overlapping skills with Tyler Herro and, problematically, overlapping weaknesses too. Bam Adebayo is going to be a busy man cleaning up the back end of the Heat's defense with those two at the point of attack. His addition feels more like the difference between losing in the first round instead of losing in the play-in tournament rather than leading to a playoff series win.
Powell is also due an extension this offseason and coming off his best year ever he may be looking for a bigger payday than the Heat should give out. The acquisition makes the team slightly better but doesn't do much to separate them from the pack of middling teams in the East who are hoping for a lucky run with the conference wide-open.
Still, it's great business from Pat Riley, Powell is a good player and didn't cost very much at all. They're the big winners here.
Los Angeles Clippers
Trade grade: B-
This was an unexpected move from the Clips. Powell was instrumental in keeping the team steady throughout Kawhi Leonard's inconsistent appearances. They don't win 50 games without him. Yes, they already have an expensive roster and probably would've had to give Powell an extension if he stuck around. That seems like it would have been a worthwhile move, especially since it's hard to imagine Powell getting a contract so onerous they couldn't trade it eventually anyway.
L.A. did not agree, apparently, and instead effectively swapped Powell for Collins. The veteran power forward averaged 19.0 points per game in Utah last year while pulling down 8.2 rebounds in 30.2 minutes a night; he appeared in only 40 games last year, though. He hit 39.9% of his threes on 3.7 attempts per game, so there's a bit of a stretch big aspect to his game, but Collins's draw has long been his danger as a lob threat. He averaged 1.10 points per possession as the roll man in pick-and-roll action last season and 1.47 PPP the year before. That's an element the Clippers haven't enjoyed offensively in a while and the springy forward should serve as a solid complement to Ivica Zubac, coming off a career year defensively.
Collins also comes at a reasonable cost. He's owed $26.5 million next year and will hit free agency next summer. The thinking appears to be that the diversity Collins will bring to the offense will offset the loss of Powell's scoring and result in a cleaner cap sheet going forward. Which is fine thinking. The CBA demands every competitive team must torture themselves over each dollar spent. But through that lens Collins makes more than Powell. Why did the Clippers send out a core contributor to a 50-win team for a slightly worse and more expensive player? The roster is slightly more balanced, sure, but it doesn't seem like an entirely necessary shake-up.
All in all, though, the Clippers brought in a talented player and sent out a talented player. They could've done worse.
Utah Jazz
Grade: C
This move is a lot worse in context with the Jazz's other puzzling decisions this offseason regarding their veterans. Utah waived Jordan Clarkson and dumped Collin Sexton on the Charlotte Hornets for Jusuf Nurkic, getting essentially nothing for two veterans who could have been offloaded to a contender for actual value at any point during their Jazz tenures. Collins is now part of that group, too. A 2027 second-rounder is incredibly unlikely to pay any dividends, Love is a good locker room presence but is a strong buyout candidate at this point in his career, and Anderson is a perfectly adequate NBA player who gives nothing to a tanking team. They did open up a big trade exception but that's useful only in theory.
So... Why did the Jazz do this? It's hard to say. Moving Collins clears up more touches for the various young players Utah is relying on to lead the franchise into the future. But Collins wasn't exactly going to steal possessions from, say, incoming lottery pick Ace Bailey given their very different skillsets. As previously mentioned Collins's salary wasn't onerous. Thinking more about it, a pretty decent case could be made that his ability to stretch the floor and challenge defenses vertically would prove quite helpful to the stable of young ballhandlers the Jazz now possess.
Taking a step back it really just feels like this was an unnecessary talent dump by a team suddenly in a rush to tank even harder after several years of strong efforts in that department. They could have kept Collins to make life a little easier for the young guys. They could have held onto him until next season and wielded his expiring contract as a genuine asset at the trade deadline. Even keeping Collins on the roster through next year could have opened up sign-and-trade opportunities when he hits free agency. All of those options seem like they would have bore more fruit than this.
An odd move from the Jazz, who once again sell wildly and unnecessarily low on a player with useful, NBA-caliber skills.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as John Collins-Norman Powell Trade Grades: How Did Heat, Clippers, Jazz Fare?.
