OPENING TIP
After a short All Star break trip to Turks and Caicos, we’re back! We’re getting locked in for what should be an exciting few months leading into the playoffs.
In the East, the top six teams are all within five games, the Nets are in line for a play-in spot, and the prospect of a Nets/76ers first round series featuring “Hack-a-Ben” down the stretch looms large. In the West, there are three good teams and a bunch of also-rans, while Klutch furiously tries to pretend that the Lakers failing to trade for John Wall was somehow a mistake. In short, no one has any clue what will happen, so it will be fun to watch how things play out.
Before we get too wrapped up in the stretch run, we wanted to revisit the trade deadline activity before the break. We had three big takeaways about the deadline, and a number of reasons that explain these trends.
1. There were more high-profile trades than we expected
We’ve been telling readers for months not to get your hopes up about deadline fireworks. And then they started exploding. Three current or recent All Stars (James Harden, Ben Simmons, and Domas Sabonis) changed teams. And it wasn’t just stars: Tyrese Haliburton packed his bags for Indiana; Norman Powell decamped for LA; and CJ McCollum joined the Pelicans.
While this level of movement is not literally unprecedented, it does rival the most active deadlines in memory, even 2011 when Deron Williams and Carmelo Anthony changed teams.
2. Desirable wings stayed put
The most desirable players thought to be available (outside of Simmons) were wings: Harrison Barnes, Jerami Grant, and Eric Gordon. None of them were traded. The only nominal 3 & D players that were traded are bench guys (Torrey Craig and Robert Covington), despite their obvious desirability.
3. Financial flexibility is less important
As we’ve noted before, a significant number of deadline trades every year fall into the “financial flexibility” bucket. And that was still the case this year; witness Serge Ibaka departing the Clippers, and reducing their tax bill by $40 million in the process, or the Celtics dumping Dennis Schroder.
But there was a specific type of trade that didn’t happen: the team dumping a multi-year contract to free up cap space for the summer. The closest we got to this was the McCollum trade, but the price the Pelicans paid indicate they think he is a positive value on his contract. The Mavericks-Wizards trade involved swapping two mid-sized ugly contracts for a big one, but neither team gets any meaningful cap space sooner as a result.
(Even though @pickuphoop is probably right, the Sixers were still able to get their man at the deadline.)
So what explains these trends? There are a few overlapping factors.
Shorter contract lengths. The changes to the CBA rules have meant that, with shorter max contract lengths, it’s harder (but not impossible!) to sign truly untradable contracts. So teams with guys on bad contracts don’t have too long to wait them out, and thus aren’t willing to give up much to get off of them.
More buyers than in the past. The Play-in Tournament, by offering a simulacrum of playoff basketball to the 9 and 10 seeds in each conference, has somehow Jedi mind-tricked bad teams like the Kings about their chances. And so the Kings decided to keep Harrison Barnes rather than accept the reality that yet again they’ll be in the lottery. Not every fan is thrilled about this, btw:
Acquirers are out of ammo. Teams that have gone all in on trading for their last star, like the Bucks did for Jrue Holliday, the Nets did for Harden (!), the Clippers did for PG, the Lakers did for Russ (!!!), or even the Jazz did for Mike Conley, have few if any tradable assets left. The Lakers could have desperately used Eric Gordon or Jerami Grant, but they had no means of acquiring them other than an unprotected 2027 draft pick that is on track to be a very juicy asset.
Fewer expiring contracts. The seller teams with desirable wings each had players not on expiring contracts. Thus, they had the option of “leaving the oil in the ground” rather than having to sell for less than fair value. Also, shorter contracts have made extensions relatively more desirable for players, and so fewer and fewer players are forgoing them to hit free agency. More on this next.
Cap space is useless. This is a trend we’ve covered before. In the old days, a free agent star would feel constrained by who had the cap space available to sign him; nowadays, free agency just as frequently occurs via sign-and-trade (Jimmy Butler to the Heat; Lonzo Ball and DeMar DeRozan to the Bulls; Gordon Hayward to the Hornets). So this explains both teams’ lack of focus on freeing up cap space, but also star movement (e.g. Harden to Philly) as everyone now assumes stars just force their way to their preferred destination, regardless of whether that destination has space or not.
Put it all together, and you have a volatile mix: lots of teams gunning for the playoffs, with few free agent options to improve their team available should they hold pat. It’s an incentive structure that should produce more player movement, and hopefully more excitement down the stretch. Let’s go!
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