The most likely NBA player to be traded this season? He's on the Toronto Raptors

The 2024-25 NBA season is almost upon us, and all 30 teams are firmly in preparation mode to get off to a fast start. Training camps are underway, preseason games have started tipping off, and the season is just two-and-a-half weeks away.

That hardly means teams cannot pull off last-minute trades, however. Last year Damian Lillard (and subsequently Jrue Holiday) moved teams after the start of training camp. Mere days into the season James Harden was on the move, the second-such time he was traded in a season's opening weeks. Just a week ago Karl-Anthony Towns and Julius Randle changed teams.

With that in mind, the insightful Chris Herring of ESPN wrote about the seven veteran players most likely to be traded this season. Many of the names are exactly who you would expect, from Zach LaVine to Brandon Ingram.

Interestingly enough, one Toronto Raptors player showed up on the list -- and what's more, he was picked by Herring as the player most likely to be traded this season. Breathe easy Toronto fans, it wasn't Scottie Barnes. The player who should expect to be on the move? Bruce Brown Jr.

Bruce Brown is most likely to be traded

This is largely not a massive surprise to those who follow the team closely, but it does go against much of the conversation around Bruce Brown and the Raptors. Much of the national media is labeling him a starter when he is healthy (not necessarily wrong) and discussing how re-signing Brown will affect the Raptors' cap flexibility next summer.

The plan for the Raptors is almost certainly not to have to work out a contract next summer, but rather to trade him to another team well before then. In fact, reporting in June when the Raptors were deciding whether or not to pick up Brown's $23 million team option was that if they picked it up they were doing so to trade him.

That trade has not materialized yet, which is in and of itself a small failure for the franchise, but that doesn't mean it won't in the future -- as early as this month, or anytime before the Trade Deadline. Brown is attractive to other teams for all of the reasons he doesn't make sense for Toronto to keep around, which is why he is very likely to be traded.

Brown is a proven championship player on an expiring contract and any number of contenders would likely be interested in his services. He is not an elite shooter, however, nor a forward, the two things that Toronto desperately needs instead of Brown. He is also a win-now player, which is attractive to contenders but a negative for the Raptors' purposes of building a new, young core.

Which teams might be interested in Brown on the trade market?

Where could he end up?

Chris Herring answered that question in his article, picking the Denver Nuggets as a potential trade partner. They just let Kentavious Caldwell-Pope walk because of the long-term costs, but the fact that Brown is on an expiring contract and could be re-signed at a much lower number is likely attractive to his former team. The Nuggets are a logical trade partner.

There are plenty of other options out there, however. Essentially any team in contention for the playoffs could use him, and his large expiring salary becomes a mechanism for other teams to move off of long-term money. Could the Warriors swap him for Andrew Wiggins to reduce their salary after this season? What about the Los Angeles Lakers? New Orleans Pelicans? Memphis Grizzlies?

Where Bruce Brown ends up depends largely on when the Raptors pull the trigger and what kind of a trade they are looking for. Is the plan to maximize their ability to win this season? That means a more narrow pool of trade partners to swap positions. Are the Raptors willing to add assets in a deal to go after a star? Or on the other end of the spectrum, would they take on long-term salary and receive back the draft assets to make it worth their while?

Bruce Brown hasn't been traded yet, and he likely needs to get healthy before a win-now team is ready to pull the trigger. Yet any time now, he could be on the move, and in fact may be the most likely player among all 510 in the league to be traded.