The Exchange
Atlanta's official July 6, 2024 release confirms the package: Dejounte Murray went to New Orleans for Dyson Daniels, E.J. Liddell, Larry Nance Jr., Cody Zeller, the Lakers' 2025 first-round pick and a conditional 2027 first-round choice that is the least favorable of Milwaukee and New Orleans, protected in the top four. The legacy archive record gets the core exchange right, but the source-backed version has to distinguish Atlanta's actual value from downstream draft outcomes. The 2025 Lakers pick became the No. 22 slot, where Drake Powell was drafted, but Atlanta routed those draft rights to Brooklyn in the 2025 three-team Kristaps Porzingis transaction. Powell should not be credited as a Hawks player from this deal.
Atlanta Return
Daniels has already made the trade valuable on his own. In 2024-25 he played 76 games and averaged 14.1 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.4 assists and an NBA-leading 3.01 steals. He won Most Improved Player, finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting and made the All-Defensive First Team. Atlanta then signed him to a multi-year extension. In 2025-26 he again played 76 games, averaging 11.9 points, 6.8 rebounds and 5.9 assists, reinforcing that the first season was not a one-year availability spike. Nance supplied 24 games of useful frontcourt depth in 2024-25, averaging 8.5 points and 4.3 rebounds, before leaving in the 2025 offseason. Liddell and Zeller did not become comparable long-term pieces. The Lakers first was still meaningful transaction capital: the No. 22 draft rights were later moved to Brooklyn during the three-team deal that brought Kristaps Porzingis to Atlanta. That later transaction should be judged separately, but the pick clearly retained market value. Atlanta also still owns the conditional 2027 first from the original Murray trade, so part of the return remains unresolved.
New Orleans Return
Murray's Pelicans tenure has been productive when available but heavily interrupted. He broke his left hand in his New Orleans debut, later returned, and finished 2024-25 with 31 starts while averaging 17.5 points, 6.5 rebounds, 7.4 assists and 2.0 steals. His season then ended with a ruptured right Achilles tendon, requiring surgery in February 2025. He returned in 2025-26 but appeared in only 14 games, averaging 16.7 points, 5.4 rebounds and 6.4 assists. Through two seasons New Orleans has therefore realized 45 regular-season games from a player acquired to organize a veteran core. The production is real enough to keep the Pelicans out of the bottom grade range, but the availability and team-level impact have fallen far short of what the two-first-plus-Daniels price required.
Final Verdict
Atlanta wins clearly on realized value while still holding future upside. Daniels became one of the league's premier perimeter defenders, an award winner and a durable starter, and the Hawks also extracted useful Nance minutes, preserved the 2025 first as transaction capital and still have the 2027 first pending. New Orleans received only 45 Murray games across the first two seasons because of major injuries. Those injuries were not foreseeable as certainties on trade day, so the verdict is about realized hindsight value rather than process blame. An A for Atlanta recognizes the Daniels breakthrough plus the two first-round assets without pretending the pending 2027 choice has already produced a player. A C for New Orleans recognizes Murray's solid per-game production but reflects the limited availability and lack of a postseason payoff. Final verdict: Atlanta Hawks Win.