Giannis Antetokounmpo is officially headed to the Miami Heat. For their part, the New York Knicks should be ecstatic.
Not only do the Heat still fall short of legit title contention with Giannis, but the Boston Celtics’ very public attempt to trade Jaylen Brown for him may wind up torpedoing their immediate future.
One of these benefits is debatable. It isn’t the Heat’s end of the deal.
The Heat are nowhere near title contention with Giannis
Miami is giving up the farm for Giannis and Bobby Portis Jr., according to ESPN’s Shams Charania: Tyler Herro, Kel’el Ware, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kasparas Jakucionis, three first-round picks, one first-round swap, and a second-rounder.
People may not place much stock in the assets going out. That’s fair. But the sheer breadth of players and picks expended leaves the Heat with very little depth.
A roster built around Giannis, Portis, Bam Adebayo, Andrew Wiggins (player option), Davion Mitchell, and Nikola Jovic isn’t winning any titles. They might have the flexibility to re-sign Norman Powell and Simone Fontecchio, but lack enough ball-handling and shooting even if they do so.
Though other moves can still be made, Miami isn’t working with much. It’s basically out of first-round picks to trade, and will be toeing extremely fine financial lines as it fills out the rest of the roster.
Put another way: The Knicks have nothing to fear here. The Heat were not among their foremost threats next season in the first place. Nothing’s changed now.
New York may have forced Boston to take a step back
The Celtics’ willingness to trade Brown left them as one of the two finalists to acquire Giannis’ services. Fallout from their failure may be massive.
Brown is clearly aware his name popped up in the rumor mill. It’s tough to come back from that under normal circumstances. It is even harder when this has happened before—Boston flirted with Kevin Durant in 2023—and also when Brown just spent all of 2025-26 shouldering a bulk of the offensive workload in Jayson Tatum’s absence.
What’s more, the Celtics are clearly intimidated by the Knicks. Even though the two didn’t face off in the playoffs this year, the Knicks ousted them in 2025. And given how the Celtics’ 2026 postseason ultimately ended—by blowing a 3-1 lead to the Philadelphia 76ers—ESPN’s Brian Windhorst says they “took a hard look in the mirror, and decided ‘We weren’t going to beat the Knicks.’”
This feeling isn’t suddenly going to change now that Boston missed out on Giannis. If anything, it increases the chances the Celtics trade Brown in another deal. Who knows what that will look like.
Trading Brown-plus-picks for Giannis was risky in its own right. Without any other superstars available (for now), Boston would be looking at packages built around second- and third-tier names, and overall depth. That is just as likely to hurt the Celtics’ 2027 title chances as it is to help them.
Either way, the Knicks emerge from this Giannis soap opera as big-time winners. The Heat still aren’t a threat, and with or without Brown, the Celtics have never seemed like less of an issue, either.
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