Well, if last year’s NBA trade deadline was a snooze, this year’s could be likened to something closer to a Red Bull laced with amphetamine. This particular deadline was already destined for the NBA history books with the shocking swap of Luka Dončić of the Dallas Mavericks for Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers on Saturday, marking what many agree is the biggest trade in league history. But the seismic move shifted the proverbial tectonic plates of the rest of the league, too, as other teams followed suit with their own dramatic dominos. The annual February musical chairs have never had a more feverish soundtrack, so let’s break down the preliminary assessment of which teams came out ahead, and which ones got left seatless.
Winners
Los Angeles Lakers Several teams got markedly better at the deadline. But only one of them pulled off a trade so unbelievable that the entire internet assumed that the reporter who broke the news must have gotten hacked. Players like Luka Dončić just don’t become available via trade, especially not at age 25, but for reasons maybe not ever knowable, he did, and the Lakers were able to capitalize. Yes, losing Anthony Davis and Max Christie stung, but nothing eases the pain of losing your best player and a promising young wing like getting back literally one of the top three best players in the league at the beginning of his prime. Lakers GM Rob Pelinka was able to shake off years-long criticisms that he’s been too inactive and risk-averse by not only executing the splashiest trade in league history, but also basically fully retooling the roster into a bona fide contender between December and February. He swapped rebellious point guard D’Angelo Russell for three-and-D stalwart Dorian Finney-Smith in late December, and then followed up the Dončić acquisition by swapping rookie Dalton Knecht, Cam Reddish and draft capital for Charlotte’s Mark Williams, who will fill the desperately needed starting center void left by Davis. The Lakers had to overpay for Williams, but they severely underpaid for Dončić, and getting Dončić a big that aligns with his wishes, and thus increases the likelihood of both a championship this year and that Dončić will be interested in staying long term, is worth its weight in (purple and) gold.
San Antonio Spurs There’s a certain expectation of timeline when a team drafts a No 1 overall pick, even a generational one. If you’re bad enough to have the honor of drafting first, you generally have bought yourself a little extra time to “go for it”. But Victor Wembanyama is not your typical rookie, and he’s even more special than the typical No 1 pick. So plans change, and timelines get accelerated. Chris Paul has proven to be a solid choice as both a mentor to the French phenom, and a temporary solution as floor general until some of the younger talent on the roster come into their own, but an upgrade was needed. And an upgrade they got, in the form of fringe All-Star and former Clutch Player of the Year De’Aaron Fox, who requested to be traded from his longtime home in Sacramento to join forces with the most promising young prospect since LeBron James. Fox and Wembanyama are a basketball match made in heaven, one can only salivate at the prospect of the transition lob dunks to come for Wemby moving forward. And just like that, the ceiling is immediately raised in South Texas.
Cleveland Cavaliers The Cavaliers have been having a historically dominant season, but, at least to this point, I don’t know anyone who truly sees them as a frontrunner to win it all. To the Cavs’ credit, they clearly aim to change that and truly go for it this season. They showed as much at the deadline, by upgrading at the wing and swapping Caris LeVert and Georges Niang for Atlanta’s De’Andre Hunter, who is having a career year and is owed significantly more future salary than LeVert and Niang combined. They’ve been relatively risk-averse since the LeBron James era, and this move indicates a massive commitment from Cleveland to push their chips in on this roster and give the floundering defending champion Celtics a run for their money, which, while sensical, is impressive.
Honorable mention An additional shout out to ESPN’s NBA Insider Shams Charania, who had, perhaps, a better trade deadline than anybody. Not only did he clear his name once and for all (it is very clear that he was, in fact, correct about Jimmy Butler requesting a trade out of Miami), but in his first trade deadline since the retirement of his mentor/rival Adrian Wojnarowski, Charania had all the shine in the world, and pretty much every trade-breaking exclusive. The cherry on top, of course, is that with the “was he hacked?!” tweet breaking the Dončić/Davis trade, he firmly etched himself into the annals of NBA history.
Losers
Dallas Mavericks You’d be hard-pressed to find a bigger Anthony Davis evangelist than myself, but even I can see that trading a 25-year-old Luka Dončić, who apparently expressed zero desire to do anything besides retire as the face of the Mavericks franchise, for a 31-year-old Davis and not a whole lot else is an unmitigated catastrophe. The Mavericks did also net a promising young wing in Max Christie, who’d been shining in starting rotation minutes for the Lakers of late, and a first-round draft pick, but guess what makes that measly single first-round draft pick immediately even less valuable? That’s right. Luka Dončić. The team made another move to get Caleb Martin from Philadelphia for Quentin Grimes, but short of another All-Star caliber player, there was no undoing the damage. Unless Dončić goes off a Joel Embiid-esque injury cliff or is found to have a literal or proverbial body buried in his backyard, this will likely go down as one of the worst front-office moves in NBA history.
Phoenix Suns The Suns are, to put it mildly, a hot mess this season. And their trade deadline was no exception. For starters, they weren’t able to rectify their now obviously colossal mistake of trading for Bradley Beal and his albatross of a contract by convincing him to waive his no-trade clause (!) for it to be moved by the deadline. Then they had to give up a first-round pick just to move Jusuf Nurkić’s contract, who they traded Deandre Ayton for just a season ago. And to make very bad matters even worse, they let it leak that they were shopping their No 1 superstar Kevin Durant, news which, when it reached him, he was apparently none too pleased to hear. It’s a classic case of New Owner Syndrome™. The Suns currently sit at .500 and are ninth in the West, which would put them squarely in the play-in tournament this spring, but they’re only a precarious single game up on the Warriors, Spurs and Kings in the loss column, all of whom got better at the deadline. A dark time in the valley of the sun, indeed.
Chicago Bulls Death, taxes, and me asking “What in God’s name are the Bulls doing?” every February. They finally seem to have, tepidly, started their long-overdue rebuild: they’ve now moved Alex Caruso and DeMar DeRozan (this summer), and as of this week, Zach LaVine, too. The problem is twofold: for starters, the returns for those three players were downright pitiful (they only netted one, yes, one, first-round pick among the three players, and it was their own protected pick being returned to them). Secondly, they didn’t move center Nikola Vučević, so they haven’t actually fully cashed in on all potential assets to go full tear-it-down mode. They remain stuck somehow in an even worse, even more depressing iteration of where they’ve been for several years: purgatory. And with unclear building blocks and subpar assets, the future doesn’t look particularly bright.
