Four addresses in nineteen months
AJ Johnson is on the move again. The New Orleans Pelicans acquired the 21-year-old guard and veteran big man Taj Gibson from the Memphis Grizzlies a few hours ago, ESPN reported, sending Jordan Hawkins, Micah Peavy, a future second-round pick and a future second-round swap the other way.
Johnson has now belonged to four franchises since the Milwaukee Bucks took him 23rd overall in the 2024 draft. Milwaukee sent him to Washington. Washington folded him into the Anthony Davis blockbuster with Dallas last February. Dallas shipped him to Memphis in July. Nineteen months, four addresses, and a stat line that still reads 3.3 points and 1.1 rebounds across 48 bench appearances last season, split between the Wizards and the Mavericks.
New Orleans is buying the raw material rather than the production. Johnson was one of the youngest players in the 2024 class and has barely been given a defined role anywhere he has landed. The Pelicans have minutes to hand out in a backcourt rotation that lost bodies over the summer.
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Gibson is still playing at 41
The other half of the deal is the strange one. Gibson is 41. He appeared in 10 games for Memphis last season, one of them a start, and averaged 3.4 points and 2.7 rebounds. Almost nobody in league history logs regular-season minutes at that age, and Gibson is now entering his eighteenth NBA season since Chicago drafted him in 2009.
Teams have kept him around for the locker room as much as the box score. He rarely plays more than a handful of games in a season now, but he tends to be attached to young rosters, and New Orleans qualifies.
What the Pelicans give up
Hawkins was the 14th pick of the 2023 draft out of UConn and never settled in New Orleans. He managed 5.1 points and 1.7 rebounds in 51 games last season, with a single start. Peavy, 25, produced 4.3 points and 1.9 rebounds in 61 games as a rookie in 2025-26, starting four of them.
Memphis gets two rotation-age wings with more NBA mileage than Johnson, plus the second-round capital. New Orleans gets a lottery-pedigree guard on a cheap deal and clears a little runway. Neither side moved a rotation cornerstone, which is usually the point of a trade made in early September.
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