The 2026 NBA offseason has been one of the most chaotic in recent memory. Giannis Antetokounmpo finally got moved to the Heat after months of speculation, the Celtics followed by shipping Jaylen Brown for Paul George, the Clippers sent Kawhi Leonard back to Toronto, and LeBron James remains unsigned heading into late July, among the biggest deals.
Those are just the headline moves we saw recently. Behind them, sit a group of players whose situations got messier or simply stopped making sense. Some lost their co-stars overnight. Others stayed put while the roster around them changed direction. A few are still on the same team but clearly no longer fit the new timeline.
A change of scenery won’t fix everything. But for at least these seven guys, staying put feels like the worst option available. Here is the list of players who, after this wild summer, need a fresh start more than most.
7. Myles Turner
Not exactly the debut the Bucks had in mind. Myles Turner put up 11.9 points, 5.3 rebounds, 1.5 assists, and 1.6 blocks in 26.9 minutes across 71 games, shooting 44.0% from the field, 38.3% from three, and 74.0% from the line. The three-ball still holds up fine for a starting five, but the field-goal percentage sank well below his career 49.4% mark, his scoring dipped from the 15.6 he was putting up in his last Indiana season, and 5.3 boards is thin for a 6-foot-11 center logging almost 27 minutes a night.
The whole point of bringing him in was obvious at the time: pull the other center away from the rim so Giannis could operate downhill, then have Turner clean up behind him defensively. That entire plan evaporated the second Milwaukee flipped Giannis to Miami. Now Turner’s sitting on $26.6 million for 2026-27 with two more years on the deal after that, while the Bucks are clearly building around Kel’el Ware, Herro, Jaquez and Brayden Burries instead. A 30-year-old center on a long-term deal can absolutely still help those young guys develop, but he’s probably not part of whatever the next real Bucks contender looks like.
Marc Stein and Jake Fischer both reported Milwaukee’s gotten calls on Turner but hasn’t been aggressively shopping him, with Toronto among the teams sniffing around. Makes sense since a center knocking down 2.1 threes a game at 38.3% still has value, and Milwaukee shouldn’t just give him away for salary filler. But Turner’s best fit is still next to an elite downhill scorer on a team trying to win now, not stuck inside a rebuild where his age and contract matter more than his floor spacing. Doesn’t crack the top of this list, but the fit that got him to leave Indiana in the first place just doesn’t exist anymore.
6. Domantas Sabonis
Nineteen games tell you almost nothing and everything at once for Domantas Sabonis’ season, as he put up 15.8 points, 11.4 rebounds, 4.1 assists, and 0.9 steals in 29.7 minutes, shooting 54.3% from the field but a rough 18.5% from three and 72.7% from the line. Still elite on the glass, still efficient inside, but his scoring dropped from 19.0 the year before, his assists fell from 6.0, and the three-point shot basically vanished.
Injuries obviously wrecked the sample size, but that’s not really the story here. The bigger issue is Sacramento’s been chasing the same unsolvable equation for years now around a center who scores through handoffs, screening and passing, but doesn’t protect the rim or stretch the floor at a playoff level.
Sacramento went 22-60, 14th in the West, dead last but two in scoring at 111.0 points a game, minus-10.0 net rating, numbers bad enough that last year’s 40-42 season suddenly looks respectable. None of that is really on Sabonis; the roster construction and the injuries did most of the damage. But $45.5 million in 2026-27 sets a rough ceiling, because the Kings basically need elite point-of-attack defense, weak-side rim protection, and four legit shooters around him just to make the fit work, and that’s an expensive ask, especially after moving on from De’Aaron Fox without replacing him as a primary creator.
Sam Amick reported Sacramento and Charlotte have talked Sabonis, and Michael Scotto later laid out a framework involving Miles Bridges, Josh Green and a first-rounder, though the two sides weren’t close, mostly over draft compensation. That tells you the Kings have at least tested the water, and I think they should keep testing it.
Sabonis can still raise a team’s regular-season floor if you surround him with shooting and athletic defenders, but Sacramento needs to stop forcing this exact roster shape, which has produced exactly one playoff trip since they traded for him. He doesn’t need a fresh start because he got worse. He needs one because his skill set is too specific for a rebuild that’s paying him like a franchise cornerstone.
5. Jordan Poole
Rough doesn’t quite cover Jordan Poole’s first year in New Orleans. 13.4 points, 2.0 rebounds, 3.1 assists in 23.9 minutes across 39 games, only eight starts, shooting 37.2% from the field, 33.3% from three and 86.0% from the line. His effective field-goal percentage sat at 48.0%, true shooting at 53.0%, both weak numbers for a guy whose whole value proposition is shot creation.
And with 69 turnovers against just 119 assists, his assist-to-turnover ratio landed at a shaky 1.72. Poole can survive bad shooting nights when he’s warping a defense with pull-up shots off the bounce. He can’t survive it when he’s going 5-for-15 a night with none of the elite playmaking to make up for it.
New Orleans finished 26-56 and pulled Poole from the regular rotation as the season went on, with his minutes eaten up by Dejounte Murray and rookie Jeremiah Fears. That decision wasn’t a hard one once the shots stopped falling: Poole’s not a defensive stopper, not a rebounder, not a connector, so there’s no backup way for him to help a team when the ball isn’t in his hands.
He’s also owed $34.0 million next season, but the expiring nature of that deal probably makes him more valuable as trade salary filler than as a real long-term piece on a roster already committed to Zion Williamson, Murray, and Trey Murphy.
This is already Poole’s second fresh start that didn’t work, going back to the Warriors trade, so another change of scenery isn’t going to fix everything on its own. He has to accept that his real ceiling now looks a lot more like sixth man than lead guard.
The 20.5 points a night he put up for Washington in 2024-25 proves the scoring’s still in there, but high usage on a bad team never actually proved he can run a winning offense. Somewhere with a strong defense and an established primary creator could get real value out of him in 20-25 bench minutes, letting him hunt shots against second units without needing to control the whole possession.
4. Dalton Knecht
Dalton Knecht went from a promising rookie shooter to nearly invisible in the Lakers’ rotation (4.2 points, 1.4 rebounds, 0.4 assists in just 10.2 minutes) across 54 games, one start, shooting 45.5%/34.2%/72.7%. The efficiency itself wasn’t the problem, but 3.4 shots and 1.8 threes a game just isn’t anything, and his scoring fell off a cliff from the 9.1 he averaged as a rookie. He’s already 25, so another year stuck at 10 minutes a night burns real developmental time he doesn’t have to spare, especially with defense and playmaking never really being his calling card.
Look at his G League numbers and the gap gets even more obvious. 18.3 points, 6.3 rebounds, 3.3 assists down there in 2025-26, proof he can still create against lesser competition. But the Lakers needed guys who could defend, decide fast, and hold up next to Luka in real playoff possessions. They went 53-29, made the second round, then went out and added Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Ziaire Williams and Matisse Thybulle over the summer, which just piles even more bodies into that guard-wing logjam.
A team trying to win now around Doncic can’t spend meaningful minutes developing Knecht’s defense, and Knecht can’t develop from the end of the bench as the team is going to either cut one player or move a couple of contracts to make the 15-man roster work for next season.
Jovan Buha reported back in April that L.A. planned to shop him, and he’s since resurfaced as one of the more likely names to move as the roster hit 16 guaranteed deals. His $4.2 million salary is cheap enough to slot into a bigger trade easily, and that same number should draw interest from rebuilding teams, since the downside risk is basically nothing.
Somewhere that can promise him 22-26 real minutes, build actions around his movement shooting, and live with the defensive mistakes is the answer here. Another year as the 11th or 12th man risks turning a genuinely useful shooting prospect into nothing more than a trade chip before his rookie deal’s even up.
3. Kyle Kuzma
Weird season, honestly, for a Kyle Kuzma that got more efficient while his actual value kept sliding the other way. 13.0 points, 4.5 rebounds, 2.7 assists in 26.2 minutes across 69 games, shooting 49.2%/34.7%/72.6%, with a career-best 58.1% true shooting.
The shooting numbers look great on paper, but Milwaukee got outscored by 283 points with him on the floor, and 13.0 points a night was his lowest scoring average since 2019-20. He shot it better and took smarter looks, sure, but he wasn’t a real second scorer, a strong defender, or much of a playmaker for a team that won 32 games.
Milwaukee brought Kuzma in to play a support role next to Giannis, not to help steer a team without him. Turning 31 this season, he doesn’t line up with the development timeline of the new young core, and his $19.4 million base salary is high enough to work as real trade matching without being some bad deal nobody wants.
The descending structure of the deal helps, but handing him a bigger offensive role would just eat into the reps the young guys actually need, without turning Milwaukee into a playoff team in the process.
Before the Giannis trade even happened, Fischer had already reported Milwaukee wanted Kuzma included as part of a larger deal, and he’s continued to pop up on Milwaukee’s list of possible veteran outs since. Not surprising since Kuzma’s most useful form is still as a third or fourth option who rebounds, hunts mismatches, and handles some secondary creation next to real stars, which is basically the role he played on that 2020 title.
I don’t think another rebuild does much for him, since high-usage Kuzma’s already been tried and it didn’t really work. But a contender that needs a 6-foot-8 forward could get real value back out of him by cutting down the dribbles, keeping his usage in check, and pointing him at bigger wings defensively instead of asking him to carry bench offense.
2. Scoot Henderson
There was real progress in there; the problem is where he’s standing now. Scoot Henderson averaged 14.2 points, 2.7 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 0.9 steals in 24.9 minutes over just 30 games after a preseason hamstring injury, shooting 41.8%/35.2%/84.0%. His 55.3% true shooting still isn’t where you want it, but the free-throw jump and the lighter playmaking load helped him become a more stable scorer, and his five-game playoff sample (15.0 points on 47.5%/46.4%) hinted at real growth.
Here’s the actual problem: Portland’s now running Ja Morant, Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday, Shaedon Sharpe, and Henderson all through the same backcourt minutes. Morant needs the ball. Lillard needs the ball. Henderson was the No. 3 pick specifically to develop with the ball in his hands. Sharpe needs shots too, and Holiday’s still too good defensively to bench for a real playoff push.
Portland reportedly has no plans to trade Holiday and thinks all these guards can just coexist, except there are only 96 total guard minutes in a game. Give Morant 30, Lillard 25, Holiday 25 and Sharpe 22, and you’re already past 100 before Henderson sees the floor at all, and going that small permanently creates its own defensive issues.
Henderson’s already leaning more off-ball than he’d probably like, as nearly half his attempts are threes now, but turning him into a spot-up guy wastes exactly the downhill speed and pick-and-roll instincts that made him a top-three pick in the first place.
He’s set to make $13.6 million in the last year of his rookie deal and becomes extension-eligible, so Portland needs an actual answer now, not another season of vague, shifting roles. Of every young player on this list, this is the clearest basketball case for a trade. Scoot needs 30 minutes, 15-plus real pick-and-roll reps, and room to make mistakes, and Portland’s currently built to win with four veteran-level ball-handlers instead.
1. Zion Williamson
Here’s the thing with Zion Williamson for the first time in a long run: The availability finally showed up. 62 games, 21.0 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.2 assists on 60.0% shooting, 25.0% from three and 71.6% from the line. Still elite finishing at the rim, and 62 games is his second-highest total across seven seasons. And the Pelicans still went 26-56 and missed the playoffs for a second straight year.
Williamson’s played only 276 total regular-season games across seven seasons, and the Pelicans have never won a single playoff series with him as the guy. At some point, showing up more without the team actually improving stops counting as real progress.
The money makes this even messier, with a $42.2 million deal in 2026-27, featuring unusual guarantee triggers tied to games played and weight checkpoints. New Orleans is also paying big money to Poole, Murray and Murphy, and their last two seasons add up to a combined 47-117.
That’s a genuinely broken competitive cycle, made harder by the fact that Zion’s non-shooting frontcourt game narrows the team’s lineup decisions. Building around him means multiple high-volume shooters and a rim-protecting center who won’t crowd his space, which sounds simple until you actually try to pay for all of it at once.
Joe Dumars said back in April New Orleans wasn’t planning to move Williamson even after fielding calls, and Zion himself told Yahoo Sports he wants to stay but understands the business side could eventually take him elsewhere. Both of those can be true at the same time. But seven seasons is enough of a sample for me. New Orleans keeps cycling through coaches and teammates without ever building anything durable, and Zion still carries real questions about availability, conditioning, defense, and whether any of this scales in the playoffs.
A fresh start would let some other franchise build a simpler offense around his rim pressure, transition scoring and interior efficiency, while New Orleans could finally reset around its younger pieces and draft capital instead of waiting around for the perfect, fully-healthy Zion season.
The return likely won’t look like what a healthy 25-point scorer normally commands, since the contract and the injury history both cut into the leverage here, but keeping him only makes sense if the front office genuinely believes this exact group can jump from 26 wins to real playoff relevance. I don’t see that path, even if the Pelicans think they can return with the same group next season, as they did zero moves in free agency.
