{"id":774730,"date":"2026-07-02T17:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774730\/"},"modified":"2026-07-02T17:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-02T17:31:08","slug":"trade-rumors-derozan-finney-smith-sasser-lakers-bucks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/774730\/","title":{"rendered":"Trade Rumors: DeRozan, Finney-Smith, Sasser, Lakers, Bucks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kings forward DeMar DeRozan<\/a> hopes to \u201caccelerate his exit\u201d from Sacramento, according to Kelly Iko of Yahoo Sports<\/a>. Reporting in June indicated<\/a> that the team expects to either trade or waive DeRozan, and the 17-year veteran would like for that to happen sooner rather than later, Iko explains.<\/p>\n

While a trade that clears DeRozan\u2019s full $25.7MM from their books without any incoming salary coming back would presumably be the preferred route for the cap-strapped Kings, very few teams are in position to accommodate that kind of deal. The more likely outcome is that Sacramento will eventually opt to waive DeRozan and use the stretch provision<\/a> to spread his partial guarantee of $10MM across three seasons ($3.33MM per year).<\/p>\n

If the Kings were to waive and stretch him immediately, it would allow DeRozan to reach the open market while a number of playoff teams still have some spending flexibility, potentially resulting in a more favorable deal. However, it appears Sacramento\u2019s front office wants to exhaust its trade options before resorting to that fall-back option. The deadline to waive a player and stretch his 2026\/27 cap hit is August 29.<\/p>\n

Here are a few more trade rumors and notes from around the NBA:<\/p>\n

Sources who spoke to Iko described the Rockets\u2018 trade talks involving forward Dorian Finney-Smith<\/a> as \u201cfluid,\u201d noting that Houston has explored scenarios in which Finney-Smith would be sent out to create cap flexibility and others in which a player would come back in the deal. However, none of those options has been appealing enough to pull the trigger, and Iko notes that the team\u2019s urgency to make a move has lessened due to how free agency has played out \u2014 Houston was able to secure<\/a> commitments<\/a> from Marcus Smart<\/a> and Bogdan Bogdanovic<\/a> without using more than the taxpayer portion of the mid-level exception.
\nAfter reporting earlier in the week that the Mavericks are a \u201cleading suitor\u201d to acquire guard Marcus Sasser<\/a> from the Pistons, Marc Stein of The Stein Line (Twitter link<\/a>) is talking as if that deal is expected to happen. As Yossi Gozlan of The Third Apron points out (via Twitter<\/a>) there\u2019s a plausible scenario in which the Grizzlies, Pistons, and Mavericks combine their trade agreements involving Isaiah Stewart<\/a> and Santi Aldama<\/a> into a single transaction and include Sasser \u2014 Detroit\u2019s acquisitions of Isaiah Joe<\/a> (from the Thunder) and John Collins<\/a> (via sign-and-trade from the Clippers) would also likely be folded in to make it a five-team trade.
\nA number of league sources are wondering if the Lakers are planning to make a trade \u2013 or a waive-and-stretch move \u2013 involving a player like Jarred Vanderbilt<\/a> or Deandre Ayton<\/a> to open up a little more cap room to try to re-sign free agent forward Rui Hachimura<\/a>, writes Dave McMenamin of ESPN<\/a>. At this point, that sounds like speculation rather than anything concrete.
\nThe Bucks touched base with the Grizzlies about Ja Morant<\/a> during the 2025\/26 season and periodically circled back to discuss him all the way up until this Monday (well after agreeing to move Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/a>) before ultimately deciding not to pursue a trade, reports Joe Vardon of The Athletic<\/a>. Memphis agreed to send Morant<\/a> to Portland instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kings forward DeMar DeRozan hopes to \u201caccelerate his exit\u201d from Sacramento, according to Kelly Iko of Yahoo Sports.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":774731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,12839,7900,19706,149502,174375,12988,96080,1174,207811,53897,70743,85],"class_list":["post-774730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-deandre-ayton","tag-demar-derozan","tag-dorian-finney-smith","tag-isaiah-joe","tag-isaiah-stewart","tag-ja-morant","tag-jarred-vanderbilt","tag-john-collins","tag-marcus-sasser","tag-rui-hachimura","tag-santi-aldama","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=774730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/774730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/774731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=774730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=774730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=774730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}