NBA free agency: Why blockbuster trades have taken over the East

The New York Knicks' custom leather jackets and Game 5-worn jerseys were still doused in champagne and cigar smoke, with all-night celebrations and a memorable parade yet to come. For the newly crowned 2026 NBA champs, it would be days before reality could even begin to hit.

But for the rest of the Eastern Conference, the afterglow of the Knicks securing their first championship in 53 years seemed to provide a wake-up call.

New York's run was proof of two things that seemed to inspire the shifting conference:

Parity in the NBA seems here to stay, as the Knicks were the eighth team in as many years to hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy.

The Knicks' improbable run, on the heels of an effective but not overly impressive regular season, emboldened their rivals to take massive swings in hopes of a similar result.

And a third appears to be developing: In this conference, standing still means there's a likelihood of getting left behind.

Consider the two weeks following the Knicks' championship parade on June 18:

The Giannis Antetokounmpo saga ended with the two-time MVP joining Bam Adebayo to prop the Miami Heat back into true title contention. The Toronto Raptors traded for Kawhi Leonard eight years after his one-season detour delivered the franchise's breakthrough championship. The Boston Celtics, in the most surprising move of this young offseason, moved All-NBA wing Jaylen Brown to the Philadelphia 76ers -- the team that two months ago rallied from a 3-1 series deficit to oust the Celtics in the first round -- following weeks of chatter surrounding his value to Boston and across the league.

The only remaining foreseeable move on the conference chess board is Pistons restricted free agent center Jalen Duren either coming to an agreement with Detroit or having another team sign him to an offer sheet. (The Pistons have said they'll match.)

But Detroit has been quiet this offseason, signing John Collins and letting veteran forward Tobias Harris join the San Antonio Spurs in free agency. Following a 60-win season and second-round loss to theCleveland Cavaliers, the easiest path was to acquire a top-flight scoring running mate next to Cade Cunningham. So far, no move has materialized.

Where does all that leave the revamped, reshuffled East?

Ask a dozen executives and you'll get a dozen different answers. One part they all seem to agree on: The Knicks sit atop the conference until proven otherwise, with Toronto and Philadelphia earning a fair amount of praise behind their summer moves. And with Tyrese Haliburton returning from an Achilles injury sustained in the 2025 NBA Finals, the Indiana Pacers garnered confidence for a return to prominence.

One team's top decision-maker's reasoning for picking the Knicks is the way he files players: those who drive winning and those who influence winning.

"Jalen Brunson drives winning," he told ESPN recently. "Now, Karl-Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby and Josh Hart, they influence winning. Mitchell Robinson, in his role, influenced winning."

Robinson is the one defection from the Knicks' top rotation players, being replaced by Andre Drummond in free agency. Otherwise, the Knicks return 95.7% of their playoff scoring production from their top nine players and 87.2% of their playoff rebounding. Currently, New York presents the conference's most complete roster -- especially after Miami depleted its roster in the pursuit of Antetokounmpo, lacking dynamism on the perimeter and probably in need of a transaction cycle to identify the best fit around Antetokounmpo and Adebayo.

The Heat are widely respected, so the questions about their personnel aren't rooted from a place of distrust. The questions about the Heat, though, are similar to questions about every other team nipping at the Knicks' heels. Philadelphia, embarrassed at the hands of the Knicks in the second round, responded by trading for Brown after the Celtics, initially, couldn't get a deal done for Antetokounmpo and, later, didn't find much traction around the league the past couple of weeks.

Celtics president Brad Stevens on Monday said something very revealing about the way he views team building in the wake of the second apron era, explaining the trade of a popular if statistically polarizing player.

"When I looked at our team and where the league was heading ... the path looked a little more challenging to me with 70% of our cap and such a high percentage our usage tied up in two players," Stevens said, referencing Brown and Celtics forward Jayson Tatum. "The reality in this era ... you could see it the last couple of champions, when it was all said and done, you have to do a great job and optionality to do a great job of building out depth."

The 76ers, even with promising second-year player VJ Edgecombe on a rookie-scale contract, have 88.7% of their salary now tied up in Brown, guard Tyrese Maxey and oft-injured big man Joel Embiid.

Embiid played 38 games in 2025-26, and he has averaged just 32 across the past three seasons. Among the executives who placed Philadelphia in the top four, all acknowledged the risk in betting on a top-heavy group and one so reliant on a player who needs to be managed delicately to make it to the postseason.

"I don't trust Embiid. On paper, they should be top four. On paper," an executive said. "Jaylen Brown brings them a level of toughness Boston's going to miss. He brings them an edge."

Another top decision-maker believes the acquisition of Brown lessens Philadelphia's dependency on Embiid, saying, "He only has to play 40 games because of JB and their great backcourt."

The Raptors profile similarly to the Knicks after swapping out Brandon Ingram and bringing back Leonard, who had a career year with future earnings on the line and with the Aspiration investigation looming. An executive who didn't have the Raptors in the top four explained his reasoning, stating, "Toronto is all dependent on Kawhi's health," before asking the question on everyone's mind across the league: "When's LeBron making his decision?"

The Eastern Conference hierarchy could easily shift again, should LeBron James choose a third tour with Cleveland -- which would wipe away some of the stink from the Cavaliers' largely noncompetitive conference finals -- or pick another East team such as Philadelphia.

"LeBron can influence the balance of power in the conference," the executive said. "He's not a driver, not on a night-to-night basis. [But] having him around, he picks and chooses his spots.

"I wonder how he would fit with Kenny Atkinson?" (The executive wasn't the first to wonder how James would react to Atkinson, who bizarrely claimed, "Analytically, we've won two of the three [games]" as his Cavaliers trailed 3-0 to the Knicks.)

The next question for the Cavaliers, Raptors, 76ers, Heat and other East challengers: Do you build to beat the Knicks or build the best team possible?

Every step in New York's process seemed to have the Celtics in mind: two-way wings in Mikal Bridgesand Anunoby to defend Tatum and Brown, and a stretch 5 in Towns who could drag Boston's bigs to the perimeter. It worked in the 2025 semifinals, as the Knicks took out the then-defending champs; but New York only had so much in the emotional tank, as the Pacers advanced to the Finals in a six-game series.

The Knicks were on the right side of it this year, watching the Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder battle in the Western Conference finals. Hart recalled the emotion Victor Wembanyama showed in the aftermath of Game 7's elimination of the champions.

"Everyone's talking about how [the Spurs] got to beat OKC. Like, 'OKC's gonna repeat. OKC's gonna repeat.' And then they beat OKC, and that was like, for a young team, a mountaintop for them. ... You see that reaction because they think they gonna win it. They think it's over," Hart said during his live "Roommates" podcast show inside Madison Square Garden.

"And then you look at our reaction after we beat Cleveland, and it was tough to celebrate. We were like, 'We got four more [wins]."

It's a dangerous path to specifically go after the Knicks, but it doesn't feel as if they're going anywhere. That is, of course, a similar thought to the way the league felt about the 2025 Thunder, the 2024 Celtics and the 2023 Denver Nuggets.

"In the old days, you knew [Larry Bird's] Celtics were at the top and you had to chase them. Then it was Isiah [Thomas] and Detroit. Then Michael [Jordan] and the Bulls," the executive said. "It's not like that anymore. You have to build a sustainable winner that's deep and can play multiple styles of basketball."

Or as another president of basketball operations told ESPN, "It's never been easy, and the top has never been static. People don't know. No one does."br/]