While the US got a basketball player that can't stop being high for too long to not risk a foriegn prison.
Apparently, the US also wanted an ex-marine but looks like he was left to rot for the virtue signal. I doubt Viktor's contacts are still active after nearly a decade but it's more showing that being loyal to Russia means they will get you back eventually is good PR for them.
Edit: Thought I'd add this on as credit to MagnumRabbits who brought up something that I overlooked. What are the two things Russia is having issues with:
Weapons supply
Sanctions and embargoes
This man, just this man if he still has his golden touch, could negate a lot of the impact for BOTH of these issues, Biden just traded Russia's Oppenheimer for a knock-off LeBron James.
It's a little funny because him selling their weapons left and right for so long helped a bit to arrive at this current state of shortages (but not much, he was moving mostly old shit that now would be only even older and very possibly just junk because of their horrible storage habits, such as simply dumping vehicles and munitions around without even a roof above to sit there for years or decades).
What's way more funny is how he used to arm for example the Bosnians despite the Serbs being still convinced that the Russian state apparatus (now bailing him out) was having their back, thinking it's forever 1914.
He worked on this with Osama, among others. Osama was still based in Sudan. It was before they both got involved in Afghanistan.