NBA Trade Deadline Fever
It’s every NBA nerd’s favourite time of year: trade deadline week. After 10 February, teams will be prevented from trading until next off-season. For me, that means closely watching Adrian Wojnarowski’s twitter for every rumour and trade market move.
Now that teams have played 50 games, they have an idea whether they’re happy with their lot in life, need to bring in another guy to improve, or need to off-load their own terrible decisions onto another team. This is the time of year for teams to dump their terrible mistakes of contracts into OKC’s gulf of cap space, in exchange for the rights to the entire 2026 draft.
Of course, there’s one trade hanging over the entire season and there’s only a few days left to do it. On top of that, it’s becoming ever more apparent that James Harden’s time in Brooklyn may be over and the Nets, led by the sensible Sean Marks, will make sure that he doesn’t leave for free and seek out a trade while they still can.
As it turns out, James Harden is apparently great friends with Sixers minority owner Michael Rubin through their mutual connection and rapper Lil Baby. Of course, one of the driving factors of an NBA superstar trade in 2022 is the guy who once rapped “wah wah wah, bitch I’m a baby”, the other driving factor being another superstar’s complete lack of desire to complete the contractual conditions of his employment. I’m struggling to think of another occasion when a superstar was available at trade deadline time, let alone two.
I learnt from the first draft of this article, when I spent a great deal of time speculating about potential landing spots for Domantas Sabonis, only to wake up and read he’d been traded to the Kings, that predicting trades without being connected to NBA GM’s is pretty difficult. I tell you what though, Sabonis would have made a fantastic Raptor.
The advantage of being on the other side of the world from the NBA is that I can take a breath from the dropping of Woj-bomb’s and assess what happened in the last few days before another 45 players get traded tomorrow. So let’s go over the trades that have been completed so far and see how the landscape has changed in the last few days.
The Cavs gain Caris LeVert
My favourite trade of this deadline has been Cleveland’s acquisition of Caris LeVert from the Indiana Pacers. To get their hands on LeVert, Cleveland gave up the injured Ricky Rubio, plus draft picks including a lottery-protected 2022 first rounder. If there’s one thing Indiana is familiar with, it’s drafting outside the lottery. It’s worth repeating that Indiana haven’t drafted inside the top 10 picks of the draft since 1989 and have still developed Reggie Miller and Paul George and even got three good years of Roy Hibbert!
Moving on from LeVert was stage one of Indiana’s restructuring plan, which is new territory for them. Indiana’s owners are famously old school in the sense that they have tried desperately to stay in the playoffs and avoid the luxury tax (the penalty for teams who exceed the salary cap) every year. Now they’ll look to bottom out in the hope of getting their hands on a player who can turn their franchise around. Now without Levert and Sabonis, Indiana just has to complete their dream of finally trading Myles Turner.
LeVert is the kind of explosive scorer Cleveland needs. When he’s in a mood, LeVert can score 50, regardless of whoever is defending him. The only problem that comes with his extreme confidence is his tendency to slow down the offense while searching for his shot, but Cleveland’s offense still lags far behind their defense, so they can afford to gamble on the chance LeVert gives them the extra scoring to put them over the top. You might think that acquiring a guy who averages 18 points a game doesn’t do much to move the needle, but LeVert is only 1 of 20 players to score more than 40 points this season, dropping 42 against Chicago in his farewell game from Indiana.
On a sentimental note, it’s nice to see two players that Brooklyn cast off to made room for James Harden, in LeVert and Jarrett Allen, find themselves together on an up-and-coming playoff team while Brooklyn find themselves stuck in an 9-game losing streak.
Cleveland will spend the remainder of the season trying to lock down home court advantage and don’t need to dramatically change anything to get there, considering they’ve got a generous spattering of Magic and Pistons games to round out the season. This gives LeVert and the Cavs time to find their rhythm before the playoffs. The real question is, how loud can Caris bark?
The Trailblazers dump salary; the Clippers gain Norman Powell
Over in the Western Conference, the Clippers acquired Norman Powell and Robert Covington from the Trailblazers in a move which was mostly salary cap relief for Portland, who weren’t keen on paying Powell the $90m he’s owed between now and the 2025-26 season, in exchange for having to play Eric Bledsoe 30 minutes a night, formally waving the white flag for the remainder of this season.
Powell’s contract sounds bad, but by the time he’s 32 and earning $20m there’ll be a new collective bargaining, the salary cap will have jumped 3 times and the maximum contract will be above $60m a season. Meanwhile, Covington is entering free agency this off-season and needs to play like the same guy that earned himself a four-year $62m extension from the Sixers way-back-when. If he wants to earn himself another contract in the tens-of-millions he needs to become prime-Jordan the rest of the season.
The Clippers brass are savvy: they’ve already resurrected the careers of Nicolas Batum, Reggie Jackson, Luke Kennard and plucked Terance Mann out of the depths of the draft. Powell and Covington have the best chance of playing quality basketball, and returning to their best, in Los Angeles.
For Portland, this trade clears up $60m in cap space which they can use in a last ditch attempt to finally build something around Damian Lillard. Dame had abdominal surgery in early January and is in no rush to get back this season, allowing Portland to get a good look at the rest of their squad and figure out who will become part of the rebuild and who will be shipped-off for more parts. A lot of that space has come from the McCollum trade, which we’ll get to in a moment.
The one year rebuild is a bold strategy, and failure nearly guarantees Lillard’s departure in 2023. Portland’s stacks of cash will attract plenty of free agents, they can throw it all at Zach LaVine or maybe take a shot at Gary Harris. Even better, Portland can give rival teams financial headaches by throwing max-offer sheets at restricted free agents. As a brief explanation, a restricted free agent can accept offers from any other team, but their current team has the chance to match any offer and bring that player under contract.
Portland can really cause trouble for Phoenix, Cleveland or Charlotte, maybe even two of them at once, by forcing them to choose between paying more than $30m a year for Ayton, Sexton or Bridges, or watching them walk for nothing. Best case scenario: Portland find themselves a young star that’s already had 4 years of development.
Sabonis to Sacramento; Haliburton to Indiana
Way back in the infancy of this season, and before this became The Blocked Content, I wrote after week one that ‘I really like Indiana and Sacramento, but I’m afraid they will betray me’ when they both showed signs that they might be functional basketball teams capable of success. Instead, neither of them have achieved anything and have both decided to throw players at each other in case that works: Indiana sending Domantas Sabonis, Jeremy Lamb and Justin Holiday to Sacramento for Buddy Hield, Tyrese Haliburton and Tristan Thompson. I hate this trade and it makes me sad about Sacramento.
This trade is mostly terrible for the fact that it involves Sacramento. I was excited by the prospect of watching Sabonis contribute on a winning team and play meaningful basketball again. NBA front offices don’t owe their players any duty to trade them somewhere they want to go, but there’s an unspoken obligation not to send them to Sacramento, the NBA wasteland where talent goes to die.
Indiana have had a ‘for sale’ sign around Sabonis’ neck the past few months, as it became increasingly obvious that a Sabonis-Turner front court couldn’t survive anything more than a first round playoff series in today’s NBA. Any hope of a productive season was lost when franchise point guard Malcolm Brogdon suffered a season-ending achilles injury in January.
It’s most shocking that Sacramento were willing to give up Tyrese Haliburton. Haliburton was the steal of the draft last year after being taken with the 12th pick and proved quickly that he belonged in the league, showing an uncommon knack for finding the best play in every offensive set whenever given the opportunity in his rookie year. Now, only in his second year, he’s managed to rank 6th in assists when spending the majority of his minutes alongside another point guard in De’Aaron Fox. Haliburton even managed to dish out 17 assists in a game this season in a team that only averages 23 a game.
In a far nerdier stat: Haliburton leads the league in pick and roll scoring when the screener switches, scoring 1.2 points per possession and beating out Darius Garland, Steph Curry, LaMelo Ball and Donovan Mitchell – some very esteemed company. 1.2 points doesn’t sound like much until you account for the fact that Haliburton’s been playing for a team that sucks and it becomes far more impressive.
Haliburton is young, he’s on a cheap contract, he’s a leader, he’s never caused any drama and he’s been relatively untouched by injury – he’s stable and reliable, things the Kings have been completely lacking the last decade. So why not give him away? No other team in the league must have known Haliburton was available otherwise we’d have seen a full on bidding war. The word I’m getting is that the Pacers agreed to Haliburton immediately then hung up before Sacramento could hear them laughing through the phone.
Haliburton and Hield’s fit within Indiana’s gluttony of guards is an issue for next season, especially since the majority of them are injured right now. The future back-court of Brogdon and Haliburton is a mouth-watering combination of efficient playmaking.
Finally, Tristan Thompson finds himself in a new city, with a new training staff and renewed opportunities to cheat on Khloe Kardashian. The NBA needs to step in and stop this man from changing teams again for his own good.
McCollum to the Pelicans; the end of an era
I’ve already talked about Portland being sellers, and whilst this is the move that gives them the greatest opportunity for off-season improvements, it’s tinged by the sadness of a breakup.
CJ McCollum really gave the Blazers everything he had and was more than just a second banana to Damian Lillard. Even if the majority of the Blazers highlight plays are individual plays by Dame, McCollum played a pivotal role in all of those games with his own shooting. CJ finally got his own highlight in the 2019 playoffs, scoring 37 points in a game 7 on the road, erasing a 17 point Denver Nuggets lead and taking the team to the Western Conference Finals.
My memories of that Blazers team are tainted by Warriors bias, enraged by comparisons to Klay and Steph. The Warriors were the team that stood in Portland’s way, booting them from the playoffs 3 times in 4 years, including their only Western Conference Finals appearance. I have to admit I feel conflicted now that it’s all over.
When it comes to the Pelicans, I can’t find it within myself to give a shit about them until Zion is back. Sure, they could be decent with CJ, Ingram, Jonas, Herb Jones, Devonte’ Graham and Larry Nance Jr. but that’s not a truly competitive team without the human cannonball that is Zion Williamson. The pieces are there but they’re not anywhere close to being put together yet.
Portland is lucky to get Josh Hart, who is the hardest working player in the NBA and will do literally anything his team needs. Hopefully he can find plenty of minutes alongside Lillard next year.
The next few days will contain the same mania as trade fever catches the rest of the league and no team wants to be the last one standing without a dance partner. Will Marcus Smart be moved? Will Dallas make a play to capitalise on their good run of form? Can Memphis make themselves even better? They probably can: but please, for the love of god DO NOT TRADE STEVEN ADAMS.
I’ll be keeping both eyes locked on Woj’s twitter as we reach the crescendo of trade season and chaos reigns.