Seven teams involving Durant set record-breaking deals, or changing NBA rules?

According to TA reporter Fred Katz, the seven teams that set an NBA record have reached an agreement.

The Rockets and Suns will expand the deal involving Kevin Durant, and now include five other teams: the Hawks, Nets, Warriors, Lakers and Timberwolves.

This operation integrates multiple previously reached transactions into a large transaction to facilitate unified processing and accelerate official execution.

According to league sources, the main players in this deal are as follows:

Kevin Durant, Clint Capela → Rockets

Jaylen Green, Dillon Brooks, Dae Quinn Plaudon → Suns

David Roddy → Hawks

Other parts involved are mainly draft pick deals on draft night, which have not been finalized yet.

The key to breaking the record: rule-driven innovation

‌1. Avoiding "Poison Pill Terms "‌: Jaylen Green's 105 million new contract will trigger the salary matching problem before July 7 (the salary after leaving the team is calculated based on the old contract, and the recipient is calculated based on the salary cap based on the new contract), and the official announcement will be delayed to July 7 to normalize the rules.

2. Salary matching magic: The seven-team structure allows each team to use transaction special cases and cash compensation to diversify salary pressure. For example, the Rockets used this to create a trading exception of 9.8 million, and the Suns pushed their total salary to a hard cap.

3. Historic scale: surpassing the 2024 Klay Thompson six-team trading record and becoming the first seven-party transaction in the NBA in 1978. This transaction is not only a technical breakthrough created by salary rules (the seven-team structure solves the matching problem that a single team cannot complete), but also reflects the polarized team strategy - the Rockets bet on the Rockets, and the Suns are completely turning to the future. Its historical significance lies not only in scale innovation, but also in revealing how modern NBA management can use the gaps in rules to reconstruct the competitive landscape.