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Terrible. I agree
He should have brought back Russ and kept same team. They were finally gelling and nearing a 29 game win streak
The Official NBA Season Thread: SFA Prevails
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He should have brought back Russ and kept same team. They were finally gelling and nearing a 29 game win streak
lawdog1
Supporter
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Part of it is the LeBron effect. There were continual roster shake-ups during his second Cleveland stint too.
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wait who did they bench, Duren or Isaiah Stewart? wild either way
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A Lakers dream turned to nightmare: Inside the 'toxic' end of the Russell Westbrook era
Both sides tried to salvage this partnership, but in the last week before Wednesday's trade, it became clear it was time to move on.
theathletic.com
A Lakers dream turned to nightmare: Inside the ‘toxic’ end of the Russell Westbrook era
Sam Amick and Jovan Buha
Feb 9, 2023
Save Article
After a tumultuous 18 months, the Lakers and Russell Westbrook finally moved on from one another.
As part of a three-team deal with the Utah Jazz and Minnesota Timberwolves, the Lakers traded Westbrook, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones and a first-round pick to Utah, and a 2024 second-round pick to Minnesota, league sources told The Athletic on Wednesday. The Lakers received D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt in the trade. Westbrook was sent to the Jazz, though he’s expected to be bought out and will command interest from the Clippers and Bulls, according to The Athletic and Turner Sports.
The Lakers believe there is an addition-by-subtraction element to dealing the nine-time All-Star. The situation had become untenable over the past week or so, multiple team and league sources close to the situation told The Athletic, all of whom were granted anonymity so that they could speak freely. Two sources described the situation as “toxic.” And while Lakers owner Jeanie Buss was known to be against the idea of waiving Westbrook, sources say there was a strong sense from the coaching staff that it might be necessary if no trade was forthcoming.
Lakers coaches had grown frustrated with Westbrook’s recent behavior, and he was known to be upset with being openly mentioned in trade discussions. Both sides were ready to move on from an imperfect partnership.
The trade ends Westbrook’s disastrous tenure with the Lakers – a homecoming marred by his awkward fit on and off the court, and multiple injuries to the Lakers’ two other stars. Los Angeles was 22-22 in the 44 games that LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Westbrook played together across two seasons, a subpar record for a trio of Top 75 players and future Hall of Famers still producing at high levels.
Westbrook’s exit was nearly a year in the making. The Lakers explored trading him at the 2022 trade deadline before more seriously considering it last offseason in potential deals with Brooklyn for Kyrie Irving and Indiana for Myles Turner and Buddy Hield. Those developments being so public naturally affected Westbrook, though he denied it publicly.
“No. I do not,” he said Saturday when asked if trade rumors affected him. “That’s not up to me. Like I said, I’ve known this was a business since I was 18, 19 years old, since I got into it. My dad taught me that at that age, getting to this league is a business, and people make whatever decision they make. And I’ll make sure I’m ready and professional, like I always have been and always will be.”
Tension had been rising inside the Lakers’ locker room with James’ scoring record, the team’s inconsistency and the trade deadline looming, as demonstrated by the silent, awkward atmosphere before and after losses in New Orleans and against Oklahoma City – the latter despite James passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. James’ pro-Irving tweets, postgame “duh” comment in New Orleans and interview with ESPN about being disappointed in not trading for Irving added even more eyes on the Lakers’ internal dynamics.
During the second quarter of Tuesday’s 133-130 loss to the Thunder, Westbrook and assistant coach Phil Handy had a verbal confrontation on the sideline — their second in roughly a month — which eventually earned the Lakers a delay of game warning. That upset the bench and led to a more contentious argument between Westbrook and head coach Darvin Ham during intermission, as first reported by ESPN on Wednesday.
Halftime of Westbrook’s Lakers finale was an emblematic ending to his time with the franchise. Ham went, well, HAM on the entire team because of its porous defensive effort in the first half. The Lakers had given up 76 first-half points to a young Thunder team that entered play averaging just 58.1 points in every other first half of this season.
So Ham, whose offseason pitch to land this coaching job had included a promise to communicate directly, candidly and fearlessly with his players, did just that when the team reached the locker room. He admonished them for focusing too much on their individual play, and implored them to take more pride and compete.
“His message was that it’s bulls—,” one team source said.
But when Ham turned his attention to Westbrook and his specific individual struggles, sources say the future Hall of Famer appeared to take it personally. As had been the case so many times before, when the coaching staff struggled with Westbrook’s unwillingness to be held accountable for his play, Westbrook wasn’t hearing it.
Ham, sources say, was upset at a number of on-court developments from the first half. But the final straw, it seems, was Westbrook’s choice to walk off the court so slowly after he was replaced late in the second quarter. For both parties, the topic of great disagreement centered on respect — or lack thereof. In the end, with the tension in the room adding to the toxicity of their environment yet again, they agreed to disagree.
Only Westbrook truly knows what these past 18 months have been like for him and his family. This was a lifelong dream realized, a chance to come back to the city of Los Angeles, where he rose to prominence at Leuzinger High and then UCLA. He had been personally recruited by James and Davis during their summer of superstar shopping in 2021, then helped get the trade over the finish line by making a personal plea to Wizards owner Ted Leonsis to let him head for home.
Remember, the Lakers had been on the verge of doing a deal with Sacramento that would have landed them shooting guard Buddy Hield in exchange for Kyle Kuzma and Montrezl Harrell. The Kings, league sources said then, firmly believed that the deal was all but done. But just like that, everything changed and the Lakers got Westbrook instead.
While James now often says that roster management is vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka’s job, the proverbial separation of church and state didn’t exist when this deal went down. From both ends of this spectrum – Westbrook’s maneuvering with Washington, James and Davis exerting their influence on the Lakers – this was a superstar-driven trade if ever there was one. It was a partnership born out of a power play, one that would ultimately prove costly to the Lakers in ways that went well beyond what they gave up in the deal (Kuzma, Harrell, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and the draft rights to Isiaah Jackson, the No. 22 pick in the 2021 draft).
Former Lakers coach Frank Vogel paid a price for the Westbrook addition, as his inability to inspire total buy-in from the future Hall of Famer was a significant factor in his April 2022 firing. Never mind that he was just 18 months removed from leading the Lakers to the storied franchise’s 17th title in the Orlando bubble.
For Westbrook’s part, he spent last summer wondering what might come next. In mid-July, he parted ways with his longtime agent, Thad Foucher of the Wasserman Media Group, who cited “irreconcilable differences” over their view of the Lakers’ situation. Westbrook later signed with Jeff Schwartz of Excel. His future was as uncertain as ever entering the season, with Lakers officials spending those days before training camp deciding whether to execute the well-chronicled deal with Indiana that would have landed them center Turner and Hield.
When the games resumed, Ham followed through on his promise to hold Westbrook accountable. He developed a strong relationship with him upon arrival, then leaned on that personal capital in all of their hard conversations along the way. He convinced Westbrook to come off the bench in mid-October, and that ‘exploratory move’ went well enough in those next two months that the Lakers were no longer focused on trading Westbrook because he wasn’t seen as a pivotal reason for their problems.
But that would eventually change. The familiar discomfort of this Westbrook-Lakers dynamic returned when Davis’ extended absence brought their on-court issues back to the surface. James’ social media posts at the end made the off-court element with Westbrook uncomfortable again.
Once James started publicly declaring that he wanted a reunion with Irving, it became clear that Westbrook’s feelings were not top of mind for the franchise centerpiece. Everyone knew that an Irving trade with the Nets would have ended Westbrook’s Lakers tenure, with him likely going to a third team because the Nets did not want him, league sources say.
Yet James sent that conspicuously-timed tweet on Friday, sharing the eyes-wide-open emoji and a champion’s crown not long after Irving asked for a trade out of Brooklyn. The following day, when James was asked if Irving would help the Lakers, he made his view more transparently known by deeming it a ‘duh’ question. After Irving was traded to Dallas on Sunday, he told ESPN’s Michael Wilbon that he was “disappointed” the Lakers didn’t land his former running mate. Within the Lakers’ walls, there was some sympathy for the position Westbrook was put in as a result of James’ messaging, and confusion as to why James chose to use his voice in that way.
There were always going to be limitations to the Lakers-Westbrook partnership. Both sides attempted to make adjustments, but neither could provide the other with what they needed. Westbrook wasn’t capable of adjusting without the ball in his hands and embracing role-player duties after 13 years of being a superstar. The Lakers didn’t have the requisite shooting or perimeter defense to embolden him offensively and hide his off-ball defensive errors.
There were glimpses of potential every so often. There were also particularly challenging moments, never more so than in the final week. But when this three-team deal was finally done, with the very real possibility of missing the playoffs a driving force for these underachieving Lakers and more roster moves to come, this harrowing homecoming finally came to an end.
Sam Amick and Jovan Buha
Feb 9, 2023
Save Article
After a tumultuous 18 months, the Lakers and Russell Westbrook finally moved on from one another.
As part of a three-team deal with the Utah Jazz and Minnesota Timberwolves, the Lakers traded Westbrook, Juan Toscano-Anderson, Damian Jones and a first-round pick to Utah, and a 2024 second-round pick to Minnesota, league sources told The Athletic on Wednesday. The Lakers received D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley and Jarred Vanderbilt in the trade. Westbrook was sent to the Jazz, though he’s expected to be bought out and will command interest from the Clippers and Bulls, according to The Athletic and Turner Sports.
The Lakers believe there is an addition-by-subtraction element to dealing the nine-time All-Star. The situation had become untenable over the past week or so, multiple team and league sources close to the situation told The Athletic, all of whom were granted anonymity so that they could speak freely. Two sources described the situation as “toxic.” And while Lakers owner Jeanie Buss was known to be against the idea of waiving Westbrook, sources say there was a strong sense from the coaching staff that it might be necessary if no trade was forthcoming.
Lakers coaches had grown frustrated with Westbrook’s recent behavior, and he was known to be upset with being openly mentioned in trade discussions. Both sides were ready to move on from an imperfect partnership.
The trade ends Westbrook’s disastrous tenure with the Lakers – a homecoming marred by his awkward fit on and off the court, and multiple injuries to the Lakers’ two other stars. Los Angeles was 22-22 in the 44 games that LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Westbrook played together across two seasons, a subpar record for a trio of Top 75 players and future Hall of Famers still producing at high levels.
Westbrook’s exit was nearly a year in the making. The Lakers explored trading him at the 2022 trade deadline before more seriously considering it last offseason in potential deals with Brooklyn for Kyrie Irving and Indiana for Myles Turner and Buddy Hield. Those developments being so public naturally affected Westbrook, though he denied it publicly.
“No. I do not,” he said Saturday when asked if trade rumors affected him. “That’s not up to me. Like I said, I’ve known this was a business since I was 18, 19 years old, since I got into it. My dad taught me that at that age, getting to this league is a business, and people make whatever decision they make. And I’ll make sure I’m ready and professional, like I always have been and always will be.”
Tension had been rising inside the Lakers’ locker room with James’ scoring record, the team’s inconsistency and the trade deadline looming, as demonstrated by the silent, awkward atmosphere before and after losses in New Orleans and against Oklahoma City – the latter despite James passing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. James’ pro-Irving tweets, postgame “duh” comment in New Orleans and interview with ESPN about being disappointed in not trading for Irving added even more eyes on the Lakers’ internal dynamics.
During the second quarter of Tuesday’s 133-130 loss to the Thunder, Westbrook and assistant coach Phil Handy had a verbal confrontation on the sideline — their second in roughly a month — which eventually earned the Lakers a delay of game warning. That upset the bench and led to a more contentious argument between Westbrook and head coach Darvin Ham during intermission, as first reported by ESPN on Wednesday.
Halftime of Westbrook’s Lakers finale was an emblematic ending to his time with the franchise. Ham went, well, HAM on the entire team because of its porous defensive effort in the first half. The Lakers had given up 76 first-half points to a young Thunder team that entered play averaging just 58.1 points in every other first half of this season.
So Ham, whose offseason pitch to land this coaching job had included a promise to communicate directly, candidly and fearlessly with his players, did just that when the team reached the locker room. He admonished them for focusing too much on their individual play, and implored them to take more pride and compete.
“His message was that it’s bulls—,” one team source said.
But when Ham turned his attention to Westbrook and his specific individual struggles, sources say the future Hall of Famer appeared to take it personally. As had been the case so many times before, when the coaching staff struggled with Westbrook’s unwillingness to be held accountable for his play, Westbrook wasn’t hearing it.
Ham, sources say, was upset at a number of on-court developments from the first half. But the final straw, it seems, was Westbrook’s choice to walk off the court so slowly after he was replaced late in the second quarter. For both parties, the topic of great disagreement centered on respect — or lack thereof. In the end, with the tension in the room adding to the toxicity of their environment yet again, they agreed to disagree.
Only Westbrook truly knows what these past 18 months have been like for him and his family. This was a lifelong dream realized, a chance to come back to the city of Los Angeles, where he rose to prominence at Leuzinger High and then UCLA. He had been personally recruited by James and Davis during their summer of superstar shopping in 2021, then helped get the trade over the finish line by making a personal plea to Wizards owner Ted Leonsis to let him head for home.
Remember, the Lakers had been on the verge of doing a deal with Sacramento that would have landed them shooting guard Buddy Hield in exchange for Kyle Kuzma and Montrezl Harrell. The Kings, league sources said then, firmly believed that the deal was all but done. But just like that, everything changed and the Lakers got Westbrook instead.
While James now often says that roster management is vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka’s job, the proverbial separation of church and state didn’t exist when this deal went down. From both ends of this spectrum – Westbrook’s maneuvering with Washington, James and Davis exerting their influence on the Lakers – this was a superstar-driven trade if ever there was one. It was a partnership born out of a power play, one that would ultimately prove costly to the Lakers in ways that went well beyond what they gave up in the deal (Kuzma, Harrell, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and the draft rights to Isiaah Jackson, the No. 22 pick in the 2021 draft).
Former Lakers coach Frank Vogel paid a price for the Westbrook addition, as his inability to inspire total buy-in from the future Hall of Famer was a significant factor in his April 2022 firing. Never mind that he was just 18 months removed from leading the Lakers to the storied franchise’s 17th title in the Orlando bubble.
For Westbrook’s part, he spent last summer wondering what might come next. In mid-July, he parted ways with his longtime agent, Thad Foucher of the Wasserman Media Group, who cited “irreconcilable differences” over their view of the Lakers’ situation. Westbrook later signed with Jeff Schwartz of Excel. His future was as uncertain as ever entering the season, with Lakers officials spending those days before training camp deciding whether to execute the well-chronicled deal with Indiana that would have landed them center Turner and Hield.
When the games resumed, Ham followed through on his promise to hold Westbrook accountable. He developed a strong relationship with him upon arrival, then leaned on that personal capital in all of their hard conversations along the way. He convinced Westbrook to come off the bench in mid-October, and that ‘exploratory move’ went well enough in those next two months that the Lakers were no longer focused on trading Westbrook because he wasn’t seen as a pivotal reason for their problems.
But that would eventually change. The familiar discomfort of this Westbrook-Lakers dynamic returned when Davis’ extended absence brought their on-court issues back to the surface. James’ social media posts at the end made the off-court element with Westbrook uncomfortable again.
Once James started publicly declaring that he wanted a reunion with Irving, it became clear that Westbrook’s feelings were not top of mind for the franchise centerpiece. Everyone knew that an Irving trade with the Nets would have ended Westbrook’s Lakers tenure, with him likely going to a third team because the Nets did not want him, league sources say.
Yet James sent that conspicuously-timed tweet on Friday, sharing the eyes-wide-open emoji and a champion’s crown not long after Irving asked for a trade out of Brooklyn. The following day, when James was asked if Irving would help the Lakers, he made his view more transparently known by deeming it a ‘duh’ question. After Irving was traded to Dallas on Sunday, he told ESPN’s Michael Wilbon that he was “disappointed” the Lakers didn’t land his former running mate. Within the Lakers’ walls, there was some sympathy for the position Westbrook was put in as a result of James’ messaging, and confusion as to why James chose to use his voice in that way.
There were always going to be limitations to the Lakers-Westbrook partnership. Both sides attempted to make adjustments, but neither could provide the other with what they needed. Westbrook wasn’t capable of adjusting without the ball in his hands and embracing role-player duties after 13 years of being a superstar. The Lakers didn’t have the requisite shooting or perimeter defense to embolden him offensively and hide his off-ball defensive errors.
There were glimpses of potential every so often. There were also particularly challenging moments, never more so than in the final week. But when this three-team deal was finally done, with the very real possibility of missing the playoffs a driving force for these underachieving Lakers and more roster moves to come, this harrowing homecoming finally came to an end.
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I’m just glad the Spurs didn’t go for Wiseman. Dude a bum. Detroit seems suitable for him.
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Wild his beard never got no better
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Man I hope so.
jpzx
Supporter
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Come on man
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Breh half them names is *** lol
Better players got moved than what’s on that list not named Durant or Irving
HOU$TON
formerly convertibleburt
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Eric Gordon immediately becomes the best slasher on the clippers
akajae
formerly akajaedeuce
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who's gonna tell him?
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Looks like the Lakers 
blocked the Celtics again
Few years ago they tried for AD only to see him come to the purpngold.
This year they tried to beef up and add another big in Mo Bamba, only to once again see him go to the Lakers, the Land of Big Men lol
So what's the best the mediocre franchise can do? Trade for Laker cast off Muscala, who is softer than any big on their roster
Now let's see who captures #18 first!
blocked the Celtics again Few years ago they tried for AD only to see him come to the purpngold.
This year they tried to beef up and add another big in Mo Bamba, only to once again see him go to the Lakers, the Land of Big Men lol
So what's the best the mediocre franchise can do? Trade for Laker cast off Muscala, who is softer than any big on their roster
Now let's see who captures #18 first!
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ESPN Trade Grades Pt. 1 of 3
Lakers get: Forward Davon Reed
2025, 2026 and 2029 second-round picks
Denver Nuggets: B+
Having already traded three future first-rounders to build the team that leads the West by 4.5 games heading into the trade deadline, the Nuggets can't keep up with the blockbuster moves elsewhere in the conference. But Denver did have a few second-round picks available to address the team's biggest need: backing up two-time MVP Nikola Jokic at center.
So far this season, the Nuggets have been outscored by 10.2 points per 100 possessions with Jokic on the bench according to NBA Advanced Stats data. That's actually worse than last season (minus-7.
despite the return of Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. to play minutes with second units.
To some extent, it probably doesn't matter who is behind Jokic for Denver. His style of play is so singular that it can't be replaced by any backup, but Bryant looks like an upgrade on the players the Nuggets have tried there so far. DeAndre Jordan has predictably performed at a below-replacement level for a center this season. So too has Zeke Nnaji, who provides more defensive versatility but is largely a nonfactor on offense.
Enter Bryant, who has performed at the best level of his career while playing for the veterans minimum in L.A. Bryant offers similar above-the-rim finishing to Jordan's (he has 70 dunks this season, per Stathead.com data, good for 20th in the NBA and in fewer minutes than anyone ahead of him on the list) while bringing some stretch to the 5 spot.
Although Bryant is taking 3s less frequently than during his time with the Washington Wizards, he's hitting them at a career-best 44% clip, having previously cleared 40% in 2019-20 before struggling last season coming back from an ACL injury. Add the dunks and the 3s and Bryant has been the NBA's most efficient scorer among qualified players, leading the NBA with a .712 true shooting percentage.
Despite his size and athleticism, Bryant has always been a below-average rim protector. Fortunately, Denver's defensive system isn't built around that kind of play.
We'll see whether Bryant will play enough in the postseason to swing a game or series. Even if he simply helps the Nuggets be more competitive when Jokic misses time in the regular season -- he has sat out five times in the past month, with Denver going 2-3 in those games -- that's probably enough to justify this trade.
Los Angeles Lakers: A-
Lakers fans are surely bummed about this trade. Bryant, originally drafted by the Lakers in 2017 and jettisoned after one season to help clear cap space to sign LeBron James, had been the team's best success story in two years of signing veterans for the minimum. Bryant's production as a starting center helped keep the Lakers afloat with Anthony Davis sidelined for an extended period.
In a way, Bryant had almost played too well for the Lakers to re-sign him using non-Bird rights, a form of Bird rights that limits teams to paying 120% of a player's previous salary without dipping into another exception. That might not be enough for Bryant, who could have an above-minimum market this summer.
With the addition of Jarred Vanderbilt, the Lakers now have enough size to get by in the frontcourt without Bryant as long as Davis is healthy. And if Davis misses another extended stretch, the Lakers' season is probably over. So the Lakers rebuilding their stockpile of second-round picks, tapped into to add Rui Hachimura, makes sense.
Technically, the Lakers aren't guaranteed any picks in this trade, as the second-rounders they're acquiring go elsewhere if the Nuggets don't send first-round picks due to their protections. However, the 2025 and 2026 picks are contingent on Denver not giving up a first-round pick that's lottery-protected this season, which would require a historic collapse.
Forward Matisse Thybulle
76ers get:
Forward Jalen McDaniels
2024 second-round pick (via New York)
2029 second-round pick (via Portland)
Hornets get:
Guard Svi Mykhailiuk
2023 second-round pick (via most favorable of Atlanta, Brooklyn and Charlotte)
2027 second-round pick (via most favorable of New Orleans and Portland)
Philadelphia 76ers: A-
The Sixers managed to accomplish a pair of important goals in this trade: ducking the tax and adding more shooting to their second unit.
More than nearly any team, Philly is dependent on shooting to space the floor for Joel Embiid. That made Thybulle a tricky fit despite his obvious defensive talent (he was an All-Defensive second-team pick each of the past two seasons, including in 2020-21 despite averaging just 20 MPG off the bench). With more wing depth this season, Thybulle has seen his role crater to a career-low 12.1 MPG.
Since Thybulle was coming up on restricted free agency this summer, dealing him now to get under the tax line was a logical outcome. The 76ers found a way to do that while saving enough money to sign a buyout candidate -- and potentially upgrading the spot.
McDaniels was a particularly valuable trade candidate at the deadline because of his $1.9 million salary in the final season of a four-year, minimum deal signed ahead of his rookie season as a late second-round pick with limited leverage. McDaniels has since developed into a key rotation player, with a career-high 26.7 MPG as a part-time starter this season.
Granted, McDaniels won't be confused with Stephen Curry any time soon. He's making just 32% of his 3s this year after hitting 38% in 2021-22 and is at 34% career. Still, his accuracy and his volume of attempts (4.9 per 36 minutes) are better than those of Thybulle, a career 32.5% 3-point shooter despite taking only wide-open looks. Per Second Spectrum's quantified shot quality metric (qSQ), Thybulle's 3-point diet this season was third-easiest among players with at least 50 attempts based on location, type and distance to nearby defenders.
Additionally, McDaniels' free throw shooting (78% career, 85% this season) suggests more natural shooting potential than Thybulle (67%).
Although not the defensive threat Thybulle is, McDaniels could have playoff utility in matchups where Philadelphia needs length more than the strength provided by defensive specialists Danuel House Jr. and P.J. Tucker.
An unrestricted free agent this summer, McDaniels will likely command a sizable raise from his current contract. No longer limited by the hard cap incurred this year by using the biannual and non-taxpayer midlevel exceptions, the Sixers should be able to pay to keep him around.
On paper, Philadelphia trading one second-round pick in this deal and getting two back looks like another win. In reality, the pick the 76ers are sending out is easily the most meaningful of the four involved in this trade and the seconds they're getting back probably the least valuable of the group.
Portland Trail Blazers: A
Consider this part two of the Blazers' deadline plan, which started Wednesday night by dealing Josh Hart to the New York Knicks for a protected first-round pick. That move created enough room under the tax line, as well as a trade exception, for Portland to take on Thybulle's contract.
As players, Hart and Thybulle are probably more similar than their reputations would suggest, particularly with Hart's reluctance to shoot 3s this season. (He has attempted fewer per 36 minutes and has made them at a worse clip than Thybulle so far.) Thybulle is almost precisely two years younger and is likely to have a weaker market as a restricted free agent this summer than Hart will unrestricted.
Add in the Blazers converting a couple of distant second-round picks into what could be a first-rounder in the late teens this season and this looks like a strong piece of business for the Portland front office.
There are still questions about how Thybulle fits offensively, but given that the Blazers entered the trade deadline 26th in defensive rating, adding Thybulle should help.
Charlotte Hornets: C+
For the Hornets, the primary motivation here was getting back what will most likely be their own second-round pick. Charlotte dealt it to Atlanta to acquire Devonte' Graham on draft night in 2018, and a series of swaps sent it to Philadelphia as the most favorable of three second-round picks.
Since the Hornets are all but certain to finish with a bottom-four record this season, that second-rounder became a valuable commodity, enough to persuade Charlotte to give up a chance to re-sign McDaniels using full Bird rights this summer.
Because the Hornets will almost certainly use cap space, taking advantage of McDaniels' minimum cap hold to spend that money and then go over the cap to re-sign him would have been a good outcome. As a result, it's imperative that Charlotte make good use of its pick the second time around.
Spurs get: Center Khem Birch
Protected 2024 first-round draft pick
Two future second-round picks
Toronto Raptors: B+
Cue Skylar Grey: Poeltl is coming home. Drafted No. 9 overall by the Raptors out of Utah, Poeltl developed into a starter after being sent to San Antonio as part of the Kawhi Leonard trade before his second NBA season. In particular, Poeltl has excelled at protecting the rim, adding a dimension Toronto's undersized lineups have lacked.
Rim protection was more of a Poeltl strength the previous two seasons. In 2020-21, opponents made just 50% of their attempts within 5 feet when Poeltl was the defender on record, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats. Among players who defended at least four such shots per game, that was fourth lowest in the league, just behind Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.
Last season, that mark was 54%, good for 11th among the same group according to Second Spectrum. Playing in front of a porous group of perimeter defenders this season with the loss of Dejounte Murray and Derrick White, Poeltl hasn't been nearly as effective. Opponents are hitting 62% of attempts within 5 feet, a mark only slightly better than that of new teammate Scottie Barnes.
Surely, the Raptors are betting Poeltl's rim protection will revert to form with better defenders around him. If so, he can help a Toronto defense that has dropped to 17th on a per-possession basis after finishing ninth in 2021-22. The Raptors could also benefit the rest of the way from regression to the mean.
Second Spectrum's quantified shot probability measure suggests the looks opponents are getting aren't much different from last season when considering their location, type, distance to nearby defenders and the ability of the shooter. Yet Toronto has gone from 18th to 29th in opponent effective field goal percentage (eFG%).
With the Raptors 10th in the East at 26-30 and still considering dealing some of their incumbent starters before Thursday afternoon's trade deadline, the Poeltl trade can't just be about this season. Toronto inherits Poeltl's full Bird rights, and ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Raptors' intention is to re-sign him this summer.
At 27, Poeltl is squarely in the middle of his prime. He has also made strides offensively the past two seasons, pushing his usage rate into the high teens after it languished in the low teens previously in his career. Although Poeltl has virtually no range (his 53% career foul shooting could be an issue if he ever played a key role on a playoff team), he has developed a nice touch finishing off pick-and-rolls when a dribble or two is required.
After dealing a first-round pick for Poeltl, the Raptors do have to avoid falling into the Bird rights trap of overpaying him because he can't be replaced with an equivalent talent in free agency. But part of the value for Toronto of this trade -- likely the extra second-rounders -- is to clear Birch's $7 million 2023-24 salary from the books, creating more spending power next summer.
San Antonio Spurs: B+
The same relative youth that made Poeltl an attractive trade candidate also meant the Spurs could have simply re-signed him this summer amid a rebuild. Clearly, his presence wasn't enough to keep San Antonio (the league's third-worst team at 14-41 with the worst point differential in the NBA at minus-10.1 PPG) from accumulating pingpong balls.
Still, the Spurs were probably wise to grab value for Poeltl while they could. Like every other team near the bottom of the standings, San Antonio is hoping to land the No. 1 pick and draft center Victor Wembanyama this June. Additionally, there's no guarantee Poeltl would have re-signed as an unrestricted free agent.
Despite taking back Birch's contract, the Spurs actually increased their cap space with this trade after using some of it to complete Tuesday's trade for Dewayne Dedmon. San Antonio now has $25 million in remaining cap room. With Russell Westbrook landing in Utah, it's unlikely the Spurs can use all of it before the deadline, but they'll give it their best shot in the remaining hours.
Phoenix Suns: A
When he was NBA commissioner, David Stern famously told new owners, upon their approval by the NBA's board of governors, "Welcome to the NBA! You're one player away."
In the case of Mat Ishbia, hours removed from completing his purchase of the Phoenix Suns, the joke proved accurate now that we know that one player is Kevin Durant.
Of course, Phoenix would surely have pursued Durant no matter who owned the team. ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Durant wanted to join the Suns, and almost any franchise that had been within striking distance of a championship so recently (leading the 2021 NBA Finals 2-0) would go all-in adding a player still performing at an All-NBA level with four years remaining on his deal.
That said, this particular version of the trade would almost certainly not have happened if not for Ishbia's purchase. Because Phoenix held on to center Deandre Ayton, its second-highest salary after untouchable star Devin Booker, this deal more than doubles its projected luxury tax payment to over $68 million.
Let's talk about the basketball impact. Although the Suns retained Ayton, this deal cost them two quality young forwards as well as the opportunity to add a player by dealing Crowder elsewhere. Bridges is perhaps the definitional 3-and-D archetype, having made 38% of his 3s in his career and finished runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year last season. He was also on a team-friendly rookie extension paying him an average of $22.5 million through 2025-26.
Johnson was president of basketball operations James Jones' best draft pick. Phoenix shocked observers by taking Johnson No. 11 in the 2019 draft after trading down from No. 6. By Year 3, he had developed into a better than 40% 3-point shooter who more than holds his own defensively. Johnson is just wrapping up his rookie contract and will be a restricted free agent this summer.
The upside for the Suns is they've spent much of this season playing without both Johnson, limited to 17 games by surgery to repair a meniscus tear in his right knee, and Crowder, who mutually agreed with the Suns to stay home.
Those absences were a factor in Phoenix sitting fifth in the West standings at 30-26, already eight more losses than all of last season as the top seed at 64-18, but the Suns got credible play from Torrey Craig as a fill-in power forward and have seen Dario Saric play well at both frontcourt spots since the start of January.
Additionally, a sneaky part of this trade is Phoenix bringing back Warren, a Suns draft pick dealt by Jones on the night of the 2019 draft. Signed by Brooklyn for the veterans minimum after missing nearly two full seasons because of a stress fracture of the navicular bone in his left foot, Warren has been quietly solid in limited minutes and will help fill out the Suns' frontcourt rotation.
I'm burying the lede by waiting this long to talk about Durant's impact. With Chris Paul no longer as effective creating his own offense, Durant's addition is a game-changer for a Suns team that has struggled to score with Booker sidelined, dropping to 16th in offensive rating.
When both stars are healthy, Phoenix will have 48 minutes of elite one-on-one creation. And Monty Williams' creative pick-and-roll schemes should ensure the Suns don't stagnate into predictable, alternating isolations late in games as sometimes happened with the Nets. Then again, even if that does happen in Phoenix, the team has added the NBA's best shot-maker to go with two elite ones in Booker and Paul. Nobody is beating the Suns in a one-on-one battle.
In particular, Phoenix looks well equipped to pick apart the Denver Nuggets' defense as it did during a 4-0 sweep in the 2021 conference semifinals. With Jamal Murray sidelined, that Denver team lacked the firepower of the current West leaders, but I'd now make the Suns the favorites to win the conference as long as they stay healthy.
There are still key questions for Phoenix. It remains to be seen whether shifting Paul to a lower-usage role will help his efficiency bounce back after falling from a .581 true shooting percentage in 2021-22 to .557 so far this season. The Suns will also need to find enough touches for Ayton to keep him invested on defense.
Looking ahead, there are risks for Phoenix. The Suns are now invested heavily in a 37-year-old point guard and a 34-year-old forward who has dealt with repeated injuries in his 30s. There's a reason Brooklyn wanted to push the swap rights in this deal as far out as possible, after Paul and likely Durant are potentially done playing in Phoenix.
Nonetheless, if you're going to gamble all tradable first-round picks on a single addition, Durant is undoubtedly the best player gettable. Ayton's stagnant development and Bridges' uneven performance in a higher-usage role this season were indications that the Suns couldn't have it both ways by competing for a championship now and maintaining a contending core for after Paul's inevitable departure.
Now, Ishbia won't have to wait long to find out whether Phoenix was truly one player away.
Brooklyn Nets: B
This wasn't how the Nets wanted the Durant era to end when they signed him and Kyrie Irving to great fanfare in the summer of 2019. It presumably wasn't how Brooklyn wanted it to end as recently as Sunday, when the Irving trade returned primarily present value in Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith rather than focusing on future draft picks.
(The "What if the Nets traded Irving to the Los Angeles Lakers for two first-round picks and Russell Westbrook?" section of the "what if" chapter in the next edition of "The Book of Basketball" is going to be a doozy.)
At some point, Brooklyn surely had to recognize the Durant era was ending and get the best return possible while sending him to a desired destination. That latter factor is key. It would be interesting to know what the Nets could have gotten from the New Orleans Pelicans and Toronto Raptors, teams with higher-upside young prospects and (in New Orleans' case) tantalizing draft picks coming from the Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks.
Still, Brooklyn got a package that combined young talent and draft picks instead of picking between the two. The Nets can't entirely replace their own pair of first-round picks and two swaps sent to the Houston Rockets in the James Harden trade, but they are now well ahead in terms of total first-rounders and control the Suns' draft from 2027 through 2029, when Durant's contract will be up and Booker will be in his 30s.
Bridges and Johnson are young enough to be part of Brooklyn's future, particularly with tanking an unappetizing prospect over the next few seasons. In a fascinating twist, the Nets have gone from three stars to suddenly flushed with more 3-and-D role players than any team in the NBA, albeit without a star to complement -- unless Cam Thomas keeps scoring 40 points per game (can't rule it out).
Given that roster construction, Sean Marks will certainly be busy working the phones until Thursday's deadline. Crowder will certainly be rerouted elsewhere, an easier task now that Brooklyn isn't looking for current value in return like Phoenix was (hopefully, Jones threw in the notes from the Suns' trade calls involving Crowder as part of the deal).
Even discounting Crowder, the Nets simply can't find minutes for all their forwards after adding Bridges, Finney-Smith and Johnson to a group that already included Royce O'Neale, Ben Simmons and Yuta Watanabe. Brooklyn almost has to make trades to thin out those ranks and add a little more size to the roster.
Ultimately, debating whether the Nets got enough for Durant is almost beside the point. It's always better to have Durant, which is why Brooklyn quickly cast aside its prized culture when the opportunity to sign him and Irving presented itself four years ago. The good news is that compared with the last time they started over after trading away multiple first-rounders, the Nets are much better positioned in terms of young talent and outside draft picks.
When he was NBA commissioner, David Stern famously told new owners, upon their approval by the NBA's board of governors, "Welcome to the NBA! You're one player away."
In the case of Mat Ishbia, hours removed from completing his purchase of the Phoenix Suns, the joke proved accurate now that we know that one player is Kevin Durant.
Of course, Phoenix would surely have pursued Durant no matter who owned the team. ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Durant wanted to join the Suns, and almost any franchise that had been within striking distance of a championship so recently (leading the 2021 NBA Finals 2-0) would go all-in adding a player still performing at an All-NBA level with four years remaining on his deal.
That said, this particular version of the trade would almost certainly not have happened if not for Ishbia's purchase. Because Phoenix held on to center Deandre Ayton, its second-highest salary after untouchable star Devin Booker, this deal more than doubles its projected luxury tax payment to over $68 million.
Let's talk about the basketball impact. Although the Suns retained Ayton, this deal cost them two quality young forwards as well as the opportunity to add a player by dealing Crowder elsewhere. Bridges is perhaps the definitional 3-and-D archetype, having made 38% of his 3s in his career and finished runner-up for Defensive Player of the Year last season. He was also on a team-friendly rookie extension paying him an average of $22.5 million through 2025-26.
Johnson was president of basketball operations James Jones' best draft pick. Phoenix shocked observers by taking Johnson No. 11 in the 2019 draft after trading down from No. 6. By Year 3, he had developed into a better than 40% 3-point shooter who more than holds his own defensively. Johnson is just wrapping up his rookie contract and will be a restricted free agent this summer.
The upside for the Suns is they've spent much of this season playing without both Johnson, limited to 17 games by surgery to repair a meniscus tear in his right knee, and Crowder, who mutually agreed with the Suns to stay home.
Those absences were a factor in Phoenix sitting fifth in the West standings at 30-26, already eight more losses than all of last season as the top seed at 64-18, but the Suns got credible play from Torrey Craig as a fill-in power forward and have seen Dario Saric play well at both frontcourt spots since the start of January.
Additionally, a sneaky part of this trade is Phoenix bringing back Warren, a Suns draft pick dealt by Jones on the night of the 2019 draft. Signed by Brooklyn for the veterans minimum after missing nearly two full seasons because of a stress fracture of the navicular bone in his left foot, Warren has been quietly solid in limited minutes and will help fill out the Suns' frontcourt rotation.
I'm burying the lede by waiting this long to talk about Durant's impact. With Chris Paul no longer as effective creating his own offense, Durant's addition is a game-changer for a Suns team that has struggled to score with Booker sidelined, dropping to 16th in offensive rating.
When both stars are healthy, Phoenix will have 48 minutes of elite one-on-one creation. And Monty Williams' creative pick-and-roll schemes should ensure the Suns don't stagnate into predictable, alternating isolations late in games as sometimes happened with the Nets. Then again, even if that does happen in Phoenix, the team has added the NBA's best shot-maker to go with two elite ones in Booker and Paul. Nobody is beating the Suns in a one-on-one battle.
In particular, Phoenix looks well equipped to pick apart the Denver Nuggets' defense as it did during a 4-0 sweep in the 2021 conference semifinals. With Jamal Murray sidelined, that Denver team lacked the firepower of the current West leaders, but I'd now make the Suns the favorites to win the conference as long as they stay healthy.
There are still key questions for Phoenix. It remains to be seen whether shifting Paul to a lower-usage role will help his efficiency bounce back after falling from a .581 true shooting percentage in 2021-22 to .557 so far this season. The Suns will also need to find enough touches for Ayton to keep him invested on defense.
Looking ahead, there are risks for Phoenix. The Suns are now invested heavily in a 37-year-old point guard and a 34-year-old forward who has dealt with repeated injuries in his 30s. There's a reason Brooklyn wanted to push the swap rights in this deal as far out as possible, after Paul and likely Durant are potentially done playing in Phoenix.
Nonetheless, if you're going to gamble all tradable first-round picks on a single addition, Durant is undoubtedly the best player gettable. Ayton's stagnant development and Bridges' uneven performance in a higher-usage role this season were indications that the Suns couldn't have it both ways by competing for a championship now and maintaining a contending core for after Paul's inevitable departure.
Now, Ishbia won't have to wait long to find out whether Phoenix was truly one player away.
Brooklyn Nets: B
This wasn't how the Nets wanted the Durant era to end when they signed him and Kyrie Irving to great fanfare in the summer of 2019. It presumably wasn't how Brooklyn wanted it to end as recently as Sunday, when the Irving trade returned primarily present value in Spencer Dinwiddie and Dorian Finney-Smith rather than focusing on future draft picks.
(The "What if the Nets traded Irving to the Los Angeles Lakers for two first-round picks and Russell Westbrook?" section of the "what if" chapter in the next edition of "The Book of Basketball" is going to be a doozy.)
At some point, Brooklyn surely had to recognize the Durant era was ending and get the best return possible while sending him to a desired destination. That latter factor is key. It would be interesting to know what the Nets could have gotten from the New Orleans Pelicans and Toronto Raptors, teams with higher-upside young prospects and (in New Orleans' case) tantalizing draft picks coming from the Lakers and Milwaukee Bucks.
Still, Brooklyn got a package that combined young talent and draft picks instead of picking between the two. The Nets can't entirely replace their own pair of first-round picks and two swaps sent to the Houston Rockets in the James Harden trade, but they are now well ahead in terms of total first-rounders and control the Suns' draft from 2027 through 2029, when Durant's contract will be up and Booker will be in his 30s.
Bridges and Johnson are young enough to be part of Brooklyn's future, particularly with tanking an unappetizing prospect over the next few seasons. In a fascinating twist, the Nets have gone from three stars to suddenly flushed with more 3-and-D role players than any team in the NBA, albeit without a star to complement -- unless Cam Thomas keeps scoring 40 points per game (can't rule it out).
Given that roster construction, Sean Marks will certainly be busy working the phones until Thursday's deadline. Crowder will certainly be rerouted elsewhere, an easier task now that Brooklyn isn't looking for current value in return like Phoenix was (hopefully, Jones threw in the notes from the Suns' trade calls involving Crowder as part of the deal).
Even discounting Crowder, the Nets simply can't find minutes for all their forwards after adding Bridges, Finney-Smith and Johnson to a group that already included Royce O'Neale, Ben Simmons and Yuta Watanabe. Brooklyn almost has to make trades to thin out those ranks and add a little more size to the roster.
Ultimately, debating whether the Nets got enough for Durant is almost beside the point. It's always better to have Durant, which is why Brooklyn quickly cast aside its prized culture when the opportunity to sign him and Irving presented itself four years ago. The good news is that compared with the last time they started over after trading away multiple first-rounders, the Nets are much better positioned in terms of young talent and outside draft picks.
Nuggets deal for Lakers' Thomas Bryant
Nuggets get: Center Thomas BryantLakers get: Forward Davon Reed
2025, 2026 and 2029 second-round picks
Having already traded three future first-rounders to build the team that leads the West by 4.5 games heading into the trade deadline, the Nuggets can't keep up with the blockbuster moves elsewhere in the conference. But Denver did have a few second-round picks available to address the team's biggest need: backing up two-time MVP Nikola Jokic at center.
So far this season, the Nuggets have been outscored by 10.2 points per 100 possessions with Jokic on the bench according to NBA Advanced Stats data. That's actually worse than last season (minus-7.
despite the return of Jamal Murray and Michael Porter Jr. to play minutes with second units.To some extent, it probably doesn't matter who is behind Jokic for Denver. His style of play is so singular that it can't be replaced by any backup, but Bryant looks like an upgrade on the players the Nuggets have tried there so far. DeAndre Jordan has predictably performed at a below-replacement level for a center this season. So too has Zeke Nnaji, who provides more defensive versatility but is largely a nonfactor on offense.
Enter Bryant, who has performed at the best level of his career while playing for the veterans minimum in L.A. Bryant offers similar above-the-rim finishing to Jordan's (he has 70 dunks this season, per Stathead.com data, good for 20th in the NBA and in fewer minutes than anyone ahead of him on the list) while bringing some stretch to the 5 spot.
Although Bryant is taking 3s less frequently than during his time with the Washington Wizards, he's hitting them at a career-best 44% clip, having previously cleared 40% in 2019-20 before struggling last season coming back from an ACL injury. Add the dunks and the 3s and Bryant has been the NBA's most efficient scorer among qualified players, leading the NBA with a .712 true shooting percentage.
Despite his size and athleticism, Bryant has always been a below-average rim protector. Fortunately, Denver's defensive system isn't built around that kind of play.
We'll see whether Bryant will play enough in the postseason to swing a game or series. Even if he simply helps the Nuggets be more competitive when Jokic misses time in the regular season -- he has sat out five times in the past month, with Denver going 2-3 in those games -- that's probably enough to justify this trade.
Los Angeles Lakers: A-
In a way, Bryant had almost played too well for the Lakers to re-sign him using non-Bird rights, a form of Bird rights that limits teams to paying 120% of a player's previous salary without dipping into another exception. That might not be enough for Bryant, who could have an above-minimum market this summer.
With the addition of Jarred Vanderbilt, the Lakers now have enough size to get by in the frontcourt without Bryant as long as Davis is healthy. And if Davis misses another extended stretch, the Lakers' season is probably over. So the Lakers rebuilding their stockpile of second-round picks, tapped into to add Rui Hachimura, makes sense.
Technically, the Lakers aren't guaranteed any picks in this trade, as the second-rounders they're acquiring go elsewhere if the Nuggets don't send first-round picks due to their protections. However, the 2025 and 2026 picks are contingent on Denver not giving up a first-round pick that's lottery-protected this season, which would require a historic collapse.
Thybulle to Blazers in 3-team deal
Trail Blazers get:Forward Matisse Thybulle
76ers get:
Forward Jalen McDaniels
2024 second-round pick (via New York)
2029 second-round pick (via Portland)
Hornets get:
Guard Svi Mykhailiuk
2023 second-round pick (via most favorable of Atlanta, Brooklyn and Charlotte)
2027 second-round pick (via most favorable of New Orleans and Portland)
The Sixers managed to accomplish a pair of important goals in this trade: ducking the tax and adding more shooting to their second unit.
More than nearly any team, Philly is dependent on shooting to space the floor for Joel Embiid. That made Thybulle a tricky fit despite his obvious defensive talent (he was an All-Defensive second-team pick each of the past two seasons, including in 2020-21 despite averaging just 20 MPG off the bench). With more wing depth this season, Thybulle has seen his role crater to a career-low 12.1 MPG.
Since Thybulle was coming up on restricted free agency this summer, dealing him now to get under the tax line was a logical outcome. The 76ers found a way to do that while saving enough money to sign a buyout candidate -- and potentially upgrading the spot.
McDaniels was a particularly valuable trade candidate at the deadline because of his $1.9 million salary in the final season of a four-year, minimum deal signed ahead of his rookie season as a late second-round pick with limited leverage. McDaniels has since developed into a key rotation player, with a career-high 26.7 MPG as a part-time starter this season.
Granted, McDaniels won't be confused with Stephen Curry any time soon. He's making just 32% of his 3s this year after hitting 38% in 2021-22 and is at 34% career. Still, his accuracy and his volume of attempts (4.9 per 36 minutes) are better than those of Thybulle, a career 32.5% 3-point shooter despite taking only wide-open looks. Per Second Spectrum's quantified shot quality metric (qSQ), Thybulle's 3-point diet this season was third-easiest among players with at least 50 attempts based on location, type and distance to nearby defenders.
Additionally, McDaniels' free throw shooting (78% career, 85% this season) suggests more natural shooting potential than Thybulle (67%).
Although not the defensive threat Thybulle is, McDaniels could have playoff utility in matchups where Philadelphia needs length more than the strength provided by defensive specialists Danuel House Jr. and P.J. Tucker.
An unrestricted free agent this summer, McDaniels will likely command a sizable raise from his current contract. No longer limited by the hard cap incurred this year by using the biannual and non-taxpayer midlevel exceptions, the Sixers should be able to pay to keep him around.
On paper, Philadelphia trading one second-round pick in this deal and getting two back looks like another win. In reality, the pick the 76ers are sending out is easily the most meaningful of the four involved in this trade and the seconds they're getting back probably the least valuable of the group.
Consider this part two of the Blazers' deadline plan, which started Wednesday night by dealing Josh Hart to the New York Knicks for a protected first-round pick. That move created enough room under the tax line, as well as a trade exception, for Portland to take on Thybulle's contract.
As players, Hart and Thybulle are probably more similar than their reputations would suggest, particularly with Hart's reluctance to shoot 3s this season. (He has attempted fewer per 36 minutes and has made them at a worse clip than Thybulle so far.) Thybulle is almost precisely two years younger and is likely to have a weaker market as a restricted free agent this summer than Hart will unrestricted.
Add in the Blazers converting a couple of distant second-round picks into what could be a first-rounder in the late teens this season and this looks like a strong piece of business for the Portland front office.
There are still questions about how Thybulle fits offensively, but given that the Blazers entered the trade deadline 26th in defensive rating, adding Thybulle should help.
For the Hornets, the primary motivation here was getting back what will most likely be their own second-round pick. Charlotte dealt it to Atlanta to acquire Devonte' Graham on draft night in 2018, and a series of swaps sent it to Philadelphia as the most favorable of three second-round picks.
Since the Hornets are all but certain to finish with a bottom-four record this season, that second-rounder became a valuable commodity, enough to persuade Charlotte to give up a chance to re-sign McDaniels using full Bird rights this summer.
Because the Hornets will almost certainly use cap space, taking advantage of McDaniels' minimum cap hold to spend that money and then go over the cap to re-sign him would have been a good outcome. As a result, it's imperative that Charlotte make good use of its pick the second time around.
Feb. 8: Raptors get center Poeltl in trade with Spurs
Raptors get: Center Jakob PoeltlSpurs get: Center Khem Birch
Protected 2024 first-round draft pick
Two future second-round picks
Toronto Raptors: B+
Cue Skylar Grey: Poeltl is coming home. Drafted No. 9 overall by the Raptors out of Utah, Poeltl developed into a starter after being sent to San Antonio as part of the Kawhi Leonard trade before his second NBA season. In particular, Poeltl has excelled at protecting the rim, adding a dimension Toronto's undersized lineups have lacked.
Rim protection was more of a Poeltl strength the previous two seasons. In 2020-21, opponents made just 50% of their attempts within 5 feet when Poeltl was the defender on record, per Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats. Among players who defended at least four such shots per game, that was fourth lowest in the league, just behind Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert.
Last season, that mark was 54%, good for 11th among the same group according to Second Spectrum. Playing in front of a porous group of perimeter defenders this season with the loss of Dejounte Murray and Derrick White, Poeltl hasn't been nearly as effective. Opponents are hitting 62% of attempts within 5 feet, a mark only slightly better than that of new teammate Scottie Barnes.
Surely, the Raptors are betting Poeltl's rim protection will revert to form with better defenders around him. If so, he can help a Toronto defense that has dropped to 17th on a per-possession basis after finishing ninth in 2021-22. The Raptors could also benefit the rest of the way from regression to the mean.
Second Spectrum's quantified shot probability measure suggests the looks opponents are getting aren't much different from last season when considering their location, type, distance to nearby defenders and the ability of the shooter. Yet Toronto has gone from 18th to 29th in opponent effective field goal percentage (eFG%).
With the Raptors 10th in the East at 26-30 and still considering dealing some of their incumbent starters before Thursday afternoon's trade deadline, the Poeltl trade can't just be about this season. Toronto inherits Poeltl's full Bird rights, and ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the Raptors' intention is to re-sign him this summer.
At 27, Poeltl is squarely in the middle of his prime. He has also made strides offensively the past two seasons, pushing his usage rate into the high teens after it languished in the low teens previously in his career. Although Poeltl has virtually no range (his 53% career foul shooting could be an issue if he ever played a key role on a playoff team), he has developed a nice touch finishing off pick-and-rolls when a dribble or two is required.
After dealing a first-round pick for Poeltl, the Raptors do have to avoid falling into the Bird rights trap of overpaying him because he can't be replaced with an equivalent talent in free agency. But part of the value for Toronto of this trade -- likely the extra second-rounders -- is to clear Birch's $7 million 2023-24 salary from the books, creating more spending power next summer.
San Antonio Spurs: B+
The same relative youth that made Poeltl an attractive trade candidate also meant the Spurs could have simply re-signed him this summer amid a rebuild. Clearly, his presence wasn't enough to keep San Antonio (the league's third-worst team at 14-41 with the worst point differential in the NBA at minus-10.1 PPG) from accumulating pingpong balls.
Still, the Spurs were probably wise to grab value for Poeltl while they could. Like every other team near the bottom of the standings, San Antonio is hoping to land the No. 1 pick and draft center Victor Wembanyama this June. Additionally, there's no guarantee Poeltl would have re-signed as an unrestricted free agent.
Despite taking back Birch's contract, the Spurs actually increased their cap space with this trade after using some of it to complete Tuesday's trade for Dewayne Dedmon. San Antonio now has $25 million in remaining cap room. With Russell Westbrook landing in Utah, it's unlikely the Spurs can use all of it before the deadline, but they'll give it their best shot in the remaining hours.
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ESPN Trade Grades Pt. 2 of 3
Trail Blazers get:
Guards Ryan Arcidiacono
Svi Mykhailiuk
Guard/forward Cam Reddish
2023 first-round pick (via New York, top-14 protected, converts to four second-round picks)
New York Knicks: B-
With coach Tom Thibodeau deciding he has no interest in playing Reddish (who hadn't seen action since Dec. 3) and little more in playing Evan Fournier (who's played in three games since Jan. 9), the Knicks' wing rotation was troublingly thin behind starters RJ Barrett and Quentin Grimes and reserve Immanuel Quickley.
Enter Hart, whose appeal to Thibodeau is obvious. Few players in the NBA get more out of their talent than Hart, whose hustle, stamina and strength allow him to play up defensively. At 6-foot-5, he's started all season for Portland at small forward while occasionally logging minutes at the 4. From that standpoint, Thibodeau is sure to value his contributions more than he has Fournier and Reddish.
That size and strength could be particularly useful to New York's second units, which tend to get troublingly small. Instead of Fournier, Thibodeau has taken to using 6-3 Quickley and 6-2 Miles McBride together off the bench. Barring another move before the deadline, this trade probably signals that more of Quickley's minutes will come at point guard with McBride out of the rotation.
In particular, Hart's superior rebounding for his size -- his 8.8 rebounds per 36 minutes was second on the Blazers behind starting center Jusuf Nurkic -- could help address a weakness for the Knicks. They're 21st overall in defensive rebound rate at 71% after finishing fourth a year ago and drop further to 68% with Grimes on the bench.
That said, if Hart is simply wing depth, potentially giving up a first-round pick for an impending free agent would be a lot. To make cutting into the minutes of (presumably) Grimes and Quickley make sense, Hart will have to be more dangerous shooting the ball than he had been with the Blazers.
Hart's reluctance to shoot 3s this season has been surprising. Although Hart has never been a particularly accurate long-range shooter (35% career), he attempted at least 3.9 per game starting in 2018-19, his second NBA campaign. During 13 games in Portland after last year's deadline trade from the New Orleans Pelicans, that shot up to 6.4 a night.
Unexpectedly, Hart's 3-point attempts have dropped to a career-low 2.2 per game this season. His decline of 1.9 attempts per 36 minutes is sixth largest among players who have played at least 1,000 minutes each of the past two seasons.
At some point, that lack of confidence started translating into worse results. After hitting 35% of his 3s through the end of December, Hart is 11-of-47 (23%) since. His recent accuracy issues and his reticence to fire from 3 have caused defenses to pay Hart less attention on the perimeter, with that lack of gravity gumming things up a bit more for the Blazers' attack.
The contract Hart signed with New Orleans as a restricted free agent in the 2020 offseason contains an unusual final season. If Hart exercises a $13.0 million player option, his salary is non-guaranteed through June 25 per ESPN's Bobby Marks. That seems to all but assure Hart will test free agency.
Assuming the Knicks decline Derrick Rose's $15.6 million team option, they'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million below the luxury-tax line, plenty of room to re-sign Hart this summer -- though perhaps at the expense of using the non-taxpayer midlevel exception.
The structure of the first-round pick New York sent out in the trade protects the team from giving up a lottery pick. If the Knicks miss the playoffs this year, they'll send four second-round picks to the Blazers instead. Before the trade, FiveThirtyEight's model gave New York a 68% chance of reaching the playoffs and sending away the pick, while ESPN's Basketball Power Index had the Knicks in the playoffs 84% of the time. After incorporating the trade, BPI simulations boosted New York's playoff odds to 94%.
Portland Trail Blazers: B+
Part of the Blazers' unspoken task this season was to play well enough to persuade ownership to pay the luxury tax to re-sign Hart, assuming he declined his player option, and fellow starting forward Jerami Grant.
With Grant averaging 21 PPG and making a career-high 41% of his 3-pointers, Portland has to prepare to give him a significant raise over this season's $21 million salary, meaning a new deal for Hart would likely take them into the tax.
As the Blazers hover around .500 and currently sit outside the play-in spots in the Western Conference, they couldn't justify paying the tax, making a Hart trade all but inevitable before the deadline. Likely getting a first-round pick is a good outcome, particularly because Portland will also get a free look at Reddish the rest of the season.
Remember, it was less than 13 months ago that the Knicks gave up a first-round pick to get Reddish, then in the third season of his four-year rookie contract. Thibodeau apparently wasn't part of that decision. Reddish has logged just 653 minutes since then, causing his trade value to crater.
Despite the occasional big effort, including a 26-point outburst in November against Oklahoma City, Reddish's game has always looked better on a scouting report than on the court. He could be a shooter but has hit just 32% of his 3s. He has the physical tools, including more size than Hart at 6-8, to be a strong defender. That skill set hasn't translated consistently either, though.
Those issues noted, Reddish is actually younger than a player drafted last June (Atlanta Hawks wing Tyrese Martin), so there's still time for him to put it all together. With minutes available and a need for more size on the perimeter, the Blazers will surely give him the opportunity he never found in New York.
Because the Knicks had to include two minimum-salary players (Ryan Arcidiacono and Svi Mykhailiuk) to match salary, Portland will have to either waive or trade a player under full NBA contract to complete this deal. There's no obvious candidate, so a deal might be the best solution.
Lakers get: Guards Malik Beasley
D'Angelo Russell
forward/center Jarred Vanderbilt
Timberwolves get: Guards Nickeil Alexander-Walker
Mike Conley
2024 second-round pick (via lower of Memphis and Washington)
2025 and 2026 second-round picks (via Utah)
Jazz get: Guard Russell Westbrook
forward Juan Toscano-Anderson
center Damian Jones
2027 first-round pick (via Lakers, top-four protected)
Los Angeles Lakers: B
There's simple math to explain when it comes to how this trade helps the Lakers. Westbrook had averaged 28.7 minutes per game off the bench for them this season. Russell was averaging 32.9 MPG for the Timberwolves as their starting point guard, while Beasley (26. and Vanderbilt (24.1) were both key rotation players for the Jazz.
Combined, the three newcomers have played 56 minutes a night more than Westbrook. That's up to 56 minutes the Lakers have been giving mostly to players making the veterans minimum, the price they've paid for swapping two starters (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma) and a third rotation player (Montrezl Harrell) to the Washington Wizards for Westbrook in the summer of 2021.
The timing of this trade just as the Lakers get as healthy as they've been all season means coach Darvin Ham is going to have the happy problem of figuring out whom not to play among a whopping 12 players averaging at least 20 minutes thus far. None of the three players the Lakers are adding is a star. As long as Anthony Davis and LeBron James are healthy, they don't necessarily need another star. After prioritizing shot creation in a series of transactions dating back to trading Danny Green and a first-round pick for Dennis Schroder and culminating with the ill-fated Westbrook deal, the Lakers finally focused more on the shooting needed to support AD and LeBron on offense.
In particular, Beasley is a dramatic shooting upgrade because of his high-volume attempts. Since being traded to Minnesota three years ago at the deadline, Beasley has never averaged fewer than eight 3-point attempts per game. As a result, although Beasley's accuracy on 3s (38% career, down to 36% this season) is more good than great, his volume is hard to top. From the start of the 2021-22 season to now, just two players (Stephen Curry and Buddy Hield) have made more 3s than Beasley's 409.
Remarkably, only one player previously on the Lakers has made even half as many 3s during that span: LeBron himself, with 258. Russell (294) also tops that total. We know how dangerous a formula James plus shooting has been historically, and the Lakers are much closer to that ideal with Beasley and Russell.
Russell's recent role change makes him a better fit in L.A. He has taken a step back in the Minnesota offense despite the absence of Karl-Anthony Towns much of the season due to injury. Russell's 23% usage rate would be the lowest mark in his career, and although he still led the Timberwolves in time of possession overall (5.6 minutes per game, according to Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats), Anthony Edwards has moved a hair ahead of him since the calendar turned to 2023.
With Edwards taking on more of the shot-creation load, Russell has been finding easier opportunities to score. Just 60% of his shot attempts this season have come after more than two seconds with the ball, per analysis of data from NBA Advanced Stats, down from 70%-plus in his first two full seasons in Minnesota. In turn, Russell's 57% effective field goal percentage on those self-created shots is the first time in his career he has surpassed 50% on them.
Overall, Russell is quietly enjoying far and away the most efficient offensive season of his career. His .604 true shooting percentage would blow away his previous career high of .556, during 2019-20. Looking at shot-quality data from Second Spectrum confirms Russell's shot diet this season has been the easiest of his career.
So although some regression should be expected -- his shot-making is also the best he has ever enjoyed -- there's reason to believe Russell is morphing into the sort of role player who could share ballhandling duties with LeBron but also be dangerous playing off the ball.
It will be interesting to see how Ham uses Vanderbilt, who has started 108 of the 126 games he has played the past two seasons but might be the Lakers' fourth big man at full strength. Vanderbilt has added a modicum of stretch to his game this year, hitting 19 3-pointers at a 33% clip, so he can probably play with any of the Lakers' other post players and offers a better switching option at center than Thomas Bryant.
Perhaps Vanderbilt's greatest value to the Lakers is a modest salary: He carries a $4.4 million cap hit this season, and they inherit a $4.7 million team option for 2023-24, when Beasley also has a reasonable team option ($16.5 million).
Compared with other possible permutations of a Lakers-Jazz trade, including ones with Bojan Bogdanovic last summer, this seems less likely to lift L.A. into contention this season. The Lakers will still probably have to make their playoff run through the play-in tournament, without the benefit of home-court advantage in any round.
Additionally, as much as Beasley and Russell upgrade the Lakers' shooting, playing them together with two big men and LeBron would force James into handling difficult defensive assignments on the perimeter. Ham will probably want to stagger their minutes as much as possible to keep one of his better defenders alongside them.
Lastly, the Lakers haven't really reduced their dependence on Davis staying healthy for the postseason. Adding Hachimura and Vanderbilt means they won't be nearly as small without Davis when he misses time, but asking them and Bryant to anchor the frontcourt against playoff competition is unrealistic.
The upside of this construction, however, is that the Lakers look better going forward. None of the three players they've added is older than 26 (Russell turns 27 later this month), meaning they're in their prime rather than losing value over time like Bogdanovic and Conley. The Lakers retain their 2029 first-round pick to use in a trade down the road, and -- after potentially swapping with the New Orleans Pelicans -- they'll be able to trade this year's first-rounder as soon as it's made.
By contrast to pathways that saw the Lakers either trade everything for a third star (like Kyrie Irving) or save their cap space to sign a player for $30-plus million this summer, splitting Westbrook's $47 million salary three ways gives the Lakers more tradable contracts down the road. Depending on ownership's willingness to spend next season, when the Lakers will be subject to the more punitive repeater tax, they could enhance their flexibility by flipping Patrick Beverley for a younger player in a separate trade.
The biggest pitfall for the Lakers is the same thing the Timberwolves avoided with this trade: falling into the Bird rights trap of overpaying Russell because they can't replace his production in free agency. A Russell contract too big to trade without needing to include draft compensation to take it on would leave the Lakers back in a similar spot as they were in with Westbrook.
For now, the Lakers turning Westbrook's salary into three contributors who can be part of their future without giving up both tradable first-round picks makes this a positive step after too many moves backward.
Minnesota Timberwolves: B-
If the Timberwolves were going to move on from Russell in favor of a more experienced hand at point guard, Conley was an obvious fit for basketball and financial reasons. Let's start on the court.
Despite Russell's step back, the Timberwolves still faced the problem of how to distribute possessions when Towns returned to the lineup. Remember, Russell and Edwards have been the lone starters with above-average usage rates in Towns' absence. All three other typical starters -- Rudy Gobert, Jaden McDaniels and Towns fill-in Kyle Anderson have finished fewer than 16% of the team's plays while on the court this season.
Towns' return will change that equation and make Conley's pass-first style a better match. This season has seen Conley's gradual evolution from dangerous scorer in his Memphis heyday to setup point guard intensify. Conley's 16% usage rate is the lowest of his NBA career, down substantially from last year's above-average 21% usage. At the same time, Conley's 9.3 assists per 36 minutes is far better than his previous career high (7.3 during 2020-21, his lone All-Star season).
Finding chemistry midseason with the rest of the roster might take some time, but Conley already has plenty of it with Gobert. Adding a better pick-and-roll distributor should help Gobert, whose scoring per 36 minutes is down 1.8 points from last year.
This season, Gobert's screens have yielded just 0.95 points per chance when the shot has come directly from the pick-and-roll, per Second Spectrum tracking -- worse than the league average of 0.98 points per chance. During 2021-22, Gobert screening for Conley produced 1.01 points per chance. According to Second Spectrum data, only Trae Young and Clint Capela ran more pick-and-rolls as a duo.
Financially, Conley's $24.4 million salary for 2023-24 gives Minnesota certainty as compared to rolling the dice with Russell in free agency and more flexibility than adding Kyle Lowry, who will make $29.7 million next season.
With Conley on the books, the Timberwolves enter the offseason $17 million below the projected luxury tax line. Waiving forward Taurean Prince, whose $7.65 million salary is non-guaranteed through June 28 per ESPN's Bobby Marks, would increase that to about $24 million -- likely enough for Minnesota to both re-sign unrestricted free agent Naz Reid and use the non-taxpayer midlevel exception while avoiding the tax. (As a result, teams hoping to add Reid at the deadline look like losers of this move.)
In the long run, the outlook is less rosy. Conley's contract expires just as Edwards will begin what's certain to be a max rookie extension, which could escalate if he makes an All-NBA team next season. Compared with a new Russell contract that could have pushed the Wolves deep into the tax in 2024-25, that's a cheaper option. But Minnesota needs to figure out a point guard of the future since 35-year-old Conley is merely a short-term solution.
Edwards emerging as a lead ball handler looks like the best outcome for the Timberwolves. Even that would leave Minnesota needing to find another starter on the wing without a lot of options for doing so besides internal development. As a result, although swapping Russell for Conley makes sense in the short term, a team with a young star sending out a player in his prime for one in his mid-30s is hardly reason to cheer.
Utah Jazz: A-
Although the Jazz's perspective is most straightforward here -- a team that's rebuilding, despite its surprising success this season, traded three veterans for a large expiring contract and a draft pick in a move that improves its lottery odds -- there are a couple of interesting decisions to unpack.
First, the Jazz were willing to include the Timberwolves in this deal despite having four of their upcoming first-round picks and a swap, starting this June. Presumably, Minnesota feels this trade makes it better this season, hurting a draft pick that belongs to Utah. But the Jazz's long view likely holds that swapping young for old will hurt the Timberwolves down the road, improving the future picks they hold.
Second, and related, was Danny Ainge's apparent eagerness to land a lightly protected (top-4) pick from the Lakers, taking one shot at a midlottery pick rather than trading Beasley, Conley and Vanderbilt separately, which presumably could have yielded a low-end first-rounder or two in addition to some second-rounders in the next couple of drafts. Instead, rebuilding Utah is improbably the team trading away second-round picks to make this deal happen.
Given how many picks Utah already has coming from the Gobert and Donovan Mitchell trades, that high-upside approach makes sense to me, rather than stockpiling increasing numbers of first-rounders.
Nobody would ever compare Ainge's style as a decision-maker to that of former Philadelphia 76ers executive Sam Hinkie. Like Hinkie, however, Ainge has repeatedly shown himself to have the longest view in the room to his teams' benefit.
Besides the pick, the other benefit of this trade for the Jazz is increasing their 2023 cap space. Taking back just one player (Jones) with 2023-24 salary gives Utah $30-plus million in cap space this summer. Extending or re-signing Jordan Clarkson, who is likely to decline his $14.3 million player option, would cut into that. Still, the Jazz should have plenty of room to add salary in exchange for even more draft picks.
As for Westbrook, it's hard to imagine he'll be asked to report to Salt Lake City. A buyout of Westbrook's contract makes sense for both sides, allowing Utah to recoup the salary added in this trade and Westbrook to pick his destination as a free agent.
Feb. 8: Blazers send Josh Hart to the Knicks
Knicks get: Guard/forward Josh HartTrail Blazers get:
Guards Ryan Arcidiacono
Svi Mykhailiuk
Guard/forward Cam Reddish
2023 first-round pick (via New York, top-14 protected, converts to four second-round picks)
New York Knicks: B-
With coach Tom Thibodeau deciding he has no interest in playing Reddish (who hadn't seen action since Dec. 3) and little more in playing Evan Fournier (who's played in three games since Jan. 9), the Knicks' wing rotation was troublingly thin behind starters RJ Barrett and Quentin Grimes and reserve Immanuel Quickley.
Enter Hart, whose appeal to Thibodeau is obvious. Few players in the NBA get more out of their talent than Hart, whose hustle, stamina and strength allow him to play up defensively. At 6-foot-5, he's started all season for Portland at small forward while occasionally logging minutes at the 4. From that standpoint, Thibodeau is sure to value his contributions more than he has Fournier and Reddish.
That size and strength could be particularly useful to New York's second units, which tend to get troublingly small. Instead of Fournier, Thibodeau has taken to using 6-3 Quickley and 6-2 Miles McBride together off the bench. Barring another move before the deadline, this trade probably signals that more of Quickley's minutes will come at point guard with McBride out of the rotation.
In particular, Hart's superior rebounding for his size -- his 8.8 rebounds per 36 minutes was second on the Blazers behind starting center Jusuf Nurkic -- could help address a weakness for the Knicks. They're 21st overall in defensive rebound rate at 71% after finishing fourth a year ago and drop further to 68% with Grimes on the bench.
That said, if Hart is simply wing depth, potentially giving up a first-round pick for an impending free agent would be a lot. To make cutting into the minutes of (presumably) Grimes and Quickley make sense, Hart will have to be more dangerous shooting the ball than he had been with the Blazers.
Hart's reluctance to shoot 3s this season has been surprising. Although Hart has never been a particularly accurate long-range shooter (35% career), he attempted at least 3.9 per game starting in 2018-19, his second NBA campaign. During 13 games in Portland after last year's deadline trade from the New Orleans Pelicans, that shot up to 6.4 a night.
Unexpectedly, Hart's 3-point attempts have dropped to a career-low 2.2 per game this season. His decline of 1.9 attempts per 36 minutes is sixth largest among players who have played at least 1,000 minutes each of the past two seasons.
At some point, that lack of confidence started translating into worse results. After hitting 35% of his 3s through the end of December, Hart is 11-of-47 (23%) since. His recent accuracy issues and his reticence to fire from 3 have caused defenses to pay Hart less attention on the perimeter, with that lack of gravity gumming things up a bit more for the Blazers' attack.
The contract Hart signed with New Orleans as a restricted free agent in the 2020 offseason contains an unusual final season. If Hart exercises a $13.0 million player option, his salary is non-guaranteed through June 25 per ESPN's Bobby Marks. That seems to all but assure Hart will test free agency.
Assuming the Knicks decline Derrick Rose's $15.6 million team option, they'll be somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 million below the luxury-tax line, plenty of room to re-sign Hart this summer -- though perhaps at the expense of using the non-taxpayer midlevel exception.
The structure of the first-round pick New York sent out in the trade protects the team from giving up a lottery pick. If the Knicks miss the playoffs this year, they'll send four second-round picks to the Blazers instead. Before the trade, FiveThirtyEight's model gave New York a 68% chance of reaching the playoffs and sending away the pick, while ESPN's Basketball Power Index had the Knicks in the playoffs 84% of the time. After incorporating the trade, BPI simulations boosted New York's playoff odds to 94%.
Portland Trail Blazers: B+
Part of the Blazers' unspoken task this season was to play well enough to persuade ownership to pay the luxury tax to re-sign Hart, assuming he declined his player option, and fellow starting forward Jerami Grant.
With Grant averaging 21 PPG and making a career-high 41% of his 3-pointers, Portland has to prepare to give him a significant raise over this season's $21 million salary, meaning a new deal for Hart would likely take them into the tax.
As the Blazers hover around .500 and currently sit outside the play-in spots in the Western Conference, they couldn't justify paying the tax, making a Hart trade all but inevitable before the deadline. Likely getting a first-round pick is a good outcome, particularly because Portland will also get a free look at Reddish the rest of the season.
Remember, it was less than 13 months ago that the Knicks gave up a first-round pick to get Reddish, then in the third season of his four-year rookie contract. Thibodeau apparently wasn't part of that decision. Reddish has logged just 653 minutes since then, causing his trade value to crater.
Despite the occasional big effort, including a 26-point outburst in November against Oklahoma City, Reddish's game has always looked better on a scouting report than on the court. He could be a shooter but has hit just 32% of his 3s. He has the physical tools, including more size than Hart at 6-8, to be a strong defender. That skill set hasn't translated consistently either, though.
Those issues noted, Reddish is actually younger than a player drafted last June (Atlanta Hawks wing Tyrese Martin), so there's still time for him to put it all together. With minutes available and a need for more size on the perimeter, the Blazers will surely give him the opportunity he never found in New York.
Because the Knicks had to include two minimum-salary players (Ryan Arcidiacono and Svi Mykhailiuk) to match salary, Portland will have to either waive or trade a player under full NBA contract to complete this deal. There's no obvious candidate, so a deal might be the best solution.
Lakers move Russell Westbrook in three-team deal
Lakers get: Guards Malik Beasley
D'Angelo Russell
forward/center Jarred Vanderbilt
Timberwolves get: Guards Nickeil Alexander-Walker
Mike Conley
2024 second-round pick (via lower of Memphis and Washington)
2025 and 2026 second-round picks (via Utah)
Jazz get: Guard Russell Westbrook
forward Juan Toscano-Anderson
center Damian Jones
2027 first-round pick (via Lakers, top-four protected)
Los Angeles Lakers: B
There's simple math to explain when it comes to how this trade helps the Lakers. Westbrook had averaged 28.7 minutes per game off the bench for them this season. Russell was averaging 32.9 MPG for the Timberwolves as their starting point guard, while Beasley (26.
and Vanderbilt (24.1) were both key rotation players for the Jazz.Combined, the three newcomers have played 56 minutes a night more than Westbrook. That's up to 56 minutes the Lakers have been giving mostly to players making the veterans minimum, the price they've paid for swapping two starters (Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Kyle Kuzma) and a third rotation player (Montrezl Harrell) to the Washington Wizards for Westbrook in the summer of 2021.
The timing of this trade just as the Lakers get as healthy as they've been all season means coach Darvin Ham is going to have the happy problem of figuring out whom not to play among a whopping 12 players averaging at least 20 minutes thus far. None of the three players the Lakers are adding is a star. As long as Anthony Davis and LeBron James are healthy, they don't necessarily need another star. After prioritizing shot creation in a series of transactions dating back to trading Danny Green and a first-round pick for Dennis Schroder and culminating with the ill-fated Westbrook deal, the Lakers finally focused more on the shooting needed to support AD and LeBron on offense.
In particular, Beasley is a dramatic shooting upgrade because of his high-volume attempts. Since being traded to Minnesota three years ago at the deadline, Beasley has never averaged fewer than eight 3-point attempts per game. As a result, although Beasley's accuracy on 3s (38% career, down to 36% this season) is more good than great, his volume is hard to top. From the start of the 2021-22 season to now, just two players (Stephen Curry and Buddy Hield) have made more 3s than Beasley's 409.
Remarkably, only one player previously on the Lakers has made even half as many 3s during that span: LeBron himself, with 258. Russell (294) also tops that total. We know how dangerous a formula James plus shooting has been historically, and the Lakers are much closer to that ideal with Beasley and Russell.
Russell's recent role change makes him a better fit in L.A. He has taken a step back in the Minnesota offense despite the absence of Karl-Anthony Towns much of the season due to injury. Russell's 23% usage rate would be the lowest mark in his career, and although he still led the Timberwolves in time of possession overall (5.6 minutes per game, according to Second Spectrum tracking on NBA Advanced Stats), Anthony Edwards has moved a hair ahead of him since the calendar turned to 2023.
With Edwards taking on more of the shot-creation load, Russell has been finding easier opportunities to score. Just 60% of his shot attempts this season have come after more than two seconds with the ball, per analysis of data from NBA Advanced Stats, down from 70%-plus in his first two full seasons in Minnesota. In turn, Russell's 57% effective field goal percentage on those self-created shots is the first time in his career he has surpassed 50% on them.
Overall, Russell is quietly enjoying far and away the most efficient offensive season of his career. His .604 true shooting percentage would blow away his previous career high of .556, during 2019-20. Looking at shot-quality data from Second Spectrum confirms Russell's shot diet this season has been the easiest of his career.
So although some regression should be expected -- his shot-making is also the best he has ever enjoyed -- there's reason to believe Russell is morphing into the sort of role player who could share ballhandling duties with LeBron but also be dangerous playing off the ball.
It will be interesting to see how Ham uses Vanderbilt, who has started 108 of the 126 games he has played the past two seasons but might be the Lakers' fourth big man at full strength. Vanderbilt has added a modicum of stretch to his game this year, hitting 19 3-pointers at a 33% clip, so he can probably play with any of the Lakers' other post players and offers a better switching option at center than Thomas Bryant.
Perhaps Vanderbilt's greatest value to the Lakers is a modest salary: He carries a $4.4 million cap hit this season, and they inherit a $4.7 million team option for 2023-24, when Beasley also has a reasonable team option ($16.5 million).
Compared with other possible permutations of a Lakers-Jazz trade, including ones with Bojan Bogdanovic last summer, this seems less likely to lift L.A. into contention this season. The Lakers will still probably have to make their playoff run through the play-in tournament, without the benefit of home-court advantage in any round.
Additionally, as much as Beasley and Russell upgrade the Lakers' shooting, playing them together with two big men and LeBron would force James into handling difficult defensive assignments on the perimeter. Ham will probably want to stagger their minutes as much as possible to keep one of his better defenders alongside them.
Lastly, the Lakers haven't really reduced their dependence on Davis staying healthy for the postseason. Adding Hachimura and Vanderbilt means they won't be nearly as small without Davis when he misses time, but asking them and Bryant to anchor the frontcourt against playoff competition is unrealistic.
The upside of this construction, however, is that the Lakers look better going forward. None of the three players they've added is older than 26 (Russell turns 27 later this month), meaning they're in their prime rather than losing value over time like Bogdanovic and Conley. The Lakers retain their 2029 first-round pick to use in a trade down the road, and -- after potentially swapping with the New Orleans Pelicans -- they'll be able to trade this year's first-rounder as soon as it's made.
By contrast to pathways that saw the Lakers either trade everything for a third star (like Kyrie Irving) or save their cap space to sign a player for $30-plus million this summer, splitting Westbrook's $47 million salary three ways gives the Lakers more tradable contracts down the road. Depending on ownership's willingness to spend next season, when the Lakers will be subject to the more punitive repeater tax, they could enhance their flexibility by flipping Patrick Beverley for a younger player in a separate trade.
The biggest pitfall for the Lakers is the same thing the Timberwolves avoided with this trade: falling into the Bird rights trap of overpaying Russell because they can't replace his production in free agency. A Russell contract too big to trade without needing to include draft compensation to take it on would leave the Lakers back in a similar spot as they were in with Westbrook.
For now, the Lakers turning Westbrook's salary into three contributors who can be part of their future without giving up both tradable first-round picks makes this a positive step after too many moves backward.
Minnesota Timberwolves: B-
If the Timberwolves were going to move on from Russell in favor of a more experienced hand at point guard, Conley was an obvious fit for basketball and financial reasons. Let's start on the court.
Despite Russell's step back, the Timberwolves still faced the problem of how to distribute possessions when Towns returned to the lineup. Remember, Russell and Edwards have been the lone starters with above-average usage rates in Towns' absence. All three other typical starters -- Rudy Gobert, Jaden McDaniels and Towns fill-in Kyle Anderson have finished fewer than 16% of the team's plays while on the court this season.
Towns' return will change that equation and make Conley's pass-first style a better match. This season has seen Conley's gradual evolution from dangerous scorer in his Memphis heyday to setup point guard intensify. Conley's 16% usage rate is the lowest of his NBA career, down substantially from last year's above-average 21% usage. At the same time, Conley's 9.3 assists per 36 minutes is far better than his previous career high (7.3 during 2020-21, his lone All-Star season).
Finding chemistry midseason with the rest of the roster might take some time, but Conley already has plenty of it with Gobert. Adding a better pick-and-roll distributor should help Gobert, whose scoring per 36 minutes is down 1.8 points from last year.
This season, Gobert's screens have yielded just 0.95 points per chance when the shot has come directly from the pick-and-roll, per Second Spectrum tracking -- worse than the league average of 0.98 points per chance. During 2021-22, Gobert screening for Conley produced 1.01 points per chance. According to Second Spectrum data, only Trae Young and Clint Capela ran more pick-and-rolls as a duo.
Financially, Conley's $24.4 million salary for 2023-24 gives Minnesota certainty as compared to rolling the dice with Russell in free agency and more flexibility than adding Kyle Lowry, who will make $29.7 million next season.
With Conley on the books, the Timberwolves enter the offseason $17 million below the projected luxury tax line. Waiving forward Taurean Prince, whose $7.65 million salary is non-guaranteed through June 28 per ESPN's Bobby Marks, would increase that to about $24 million -- likely enough for Minnesota to both re-sign unrestricted free agent Naz Reid and use the non-taxpayer midlevel exception while avoiding the tax. (As a result, teams hoping to add Reid at the deadline look like losers of this move.)
In the long run, the outlook is less rosy. Conley's contract expires just as Edwards will begin what's certain to be a max rookie extension, which could escalate if he makes an All-NBA team next season. Compared with a new Russell contract that could have pushed the Wolves deep into the tax in 2024-25, that's a cheaper option. But Minnesota needs to figure out a point guard of the future since 35-year-old Conley is merely a short-term solution.
Edwards emerging as a lead ball handler looks like the best outcome for the Timberwolves. Even that would leave Minnesota needing to find another starter on the wing without a lot of options for doing so besides internal development. As a result, although swapping Russell for Conley makes sense in the short term, a team with a young star sending out a player in his prime for one in his mid-30s is hardly reason to cheer.
Utah Jazz: A-
Although the Jazz's perspective is most straightforward here -- a team that's rebuilding, despite its surprising success this season, traded three veterans for a large expiring contract and a draft pick in a move that improves its lottery odds -- there are a couple of interesting decisions to unpack.
First, the Jazz were willing to include the Timberwolves in this deal despite having four of their upcoming first-round picks and a swap, starting this June. Presumably, Minnesota feels this trade makes it better this season, hurting a draft pick that belongs to Utah. But the Jazz's long view likely holds that swapping young for old will hurt the Timberwolves down the road, improving the future picks they hold.
Second, and related, was Danny Ainge's apparent eagerness to land a lightly protected (top-4) pick from the Lakers, taking one shot at a midlottery pick rather than trading Beasley, Conley and Vanderbilt separately, which presumably could have yielded a low-end first-rounder or two in addition to some second-rounders in the next couple of drafts. Instead, rebuilding Utah is improbably the team trading away second-round picks to make this deal happen.
Given how many picks Utah already has coming from the Gobert and Donovan Mitchell trades, that high-upside approach makes sense to me, rather than stockpiling increasing numbers of first-rounders.
Nobody would ever compare Ainge's style as a decision-maker to that of former Philadelphia 76ers executive Sam Hinkie. Like Hinkie, however, Ainge has repeatedly shown himself to have the longest view in the room to his teams' benefit.
Besides the pick, the other benefit of this trade for the Jazz is increasing their 2023 cap space. Taking back just one player (Jones) with 2023-24 salary gives Utah $30-plus million in cap space this summer. Extending or re-signing Jordan Clarkson, who is likely to decline his $14.3 million player option, would cut into that. Still, the Jazz should have plenty of room to add salary in exchange for even more draft picks.
As for Westbrook, it's hard to imagine he'll be asked to report to Salt Lake City. A buyout of Westbrook's contract makes sense for both sides, allowing Utah to recoup the salary added in this trade and Westbrook to pick his destination as a free agent.
moe200069
Supporter
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- 43,510
sad dubs fan checking in. glad to have gp2 back. but sad to see the wiseman experience never take off. 30 years of rooting for this team and was legit excited as hell to see the dubs finally have a big man in the post. thought the kid wouldve ushered in the post-steph era. i understand his timeline doesn’t fit the current core’s but this stinks.
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ESPN Trade Grades Pt. 3 of 3
Heat trading Dewayne Dedmon to Spurs
Spurs get:
Center Dewayne Dedmon
Second-round pick
Heat get:
Cash considerations
Miami Heat: B+
The most interesting part of this deal is the Heat's willingness to trade Dedmon two days before the deadline, suggesting they didn't see a larger deal materializing with his expiring $4.7 million salary included. (Dedmon has a $4.3 million salary for 2023-24, but it isn't guaranteed until late June.)
To some extent, Miami probably viewed trading Dedmon as part of the reason to re-sign him last summer. But Dedmon's salary alone wasn't quite enough to bring back, say, Jae Crowder, and a deal sending him and 2022 first-round pick Nikola Jovic for a player making more money would have pushed the Heat into the luxury tax.
Instead, if Miami makes a move, it will most likely involve starting point guard Kyle Lowry, who hasn't enjoyed the bounce-back season the team hoped for at age 36 (he'll turn 37 next month). Over the eight games he played between returning to the lineup Jan. 18 and sitting out because of left knee soreness that will sideline him through the deadline, Lowry has seen fourth-quarter action just twice, as coach Erik Spoelstra has opted to finish games with either Victor Oladipo or Gabe Vincent in his place.
Moving Dedmon gives the Heat more flexibility bringing back salary in a Lowry trade. Before, Miami stood just $163,000 below the luxury tax line, which will likely act as a hard cap for the Heat and other teams near the tax.
Although actual tax payments would be minimal, going into the tax would mean they miss out on the distribution from taxpaying teams, currently estimated at $17 million by ESPN's Bobby Marks. (That could decline slightly by Thursday as taxpaying teams offload salary before the deadline.)
If no bigger trade materializes, Miami still moves a player who was clearly unhappy with his role. Dedmon's frustration came to a head in January, when he was suspended a game by the team after swatting a massage gun and sending it flying on to the court during play.
Creating more room below the tax line enables the Heat to promote Orlando Robinson from a two-way contract, allowing them to fill his two-way spot. And Miami has enough flexibility now to also utilize the remaining $3.6 million of the non-taxpayer mid-level exception to offer a buyout candidate more than the minimum salary. The Heat had used only the taxpayer portion of the exception last summer to avoid hard-capping themselves in case they did go into the luxury tax.
At the cost of a distant second-round pick, that move was well worth it.
San Antonio Spurs: B
For the Spurs, completing this move now was important because it allows them to repeat the process before Thursday's trade deadline. San Antonio, which had nearly $27 million in cap space to utilize, can waive Dedmon after the trade is finalized and use the open roster spot to add another player and continue collecting draft picks. As Marks noted on Twitter, the money the Spurs will pay Dedmon the rest of the season would have been paid anyway because San Antonio is the lone team currently below the salary floor -- by nearly $15 million. Any amount below the floor will be distributed among current Spurs players. To complete this trade, San Antonio had to send something to the Heat. The NBA requires a minimum of at least $110,000 by league rules if cash considerations are the return.
Feb. 7: Nets trade Kessler Edwards to Kings
Kings get: Forward Kessler Edwards, cash considerations
Nets get: TBD
Brooklyn Nets: B+
After starting 23 games as a rookie and earning a full NBA contract (he started out on a two-way deal as a second-round pick), Edwards got lost behind the Nets' newfound wing depth this season, a problem only exacerbated by the arrival of Dorian Finney-Smith in the Kyrie Irving trade. As it was, Edwards had played just 79 minutes all season.
That small role made a money-saving trade involving Edwards almost inevitable. As reported by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, this move reduces Brooklyn's luxury tax bill by nearly $8 million. Filling the open spot on the Nets' roster, possibly with a buyout candidate, would eat into that savings but still cut Brooklyn's tax payment as compared to keeping Edwards.
For the Nets to accomplish that without dipping into their stockpile of second-round picks is a good outcome for them.
Sacramento Kings: B+
By contrast, making this move for cash considerations suggests the Kings have some interest in Edwards. They've got a clear need for a defensive upgrade on the wing, a role they've filled at times with KZ Okpala. Edwards is a far better shooter, having hit 35% of his 3s as a rookie as compared to 29% over his career for Okpala.
Wojnarowski further reported that Sacramento intends to give Edwards a chance to play with the team's G League affiliate in Stockton, so the Kings might still be on the hunt for wing help before Thursday's trade deadline. Because the Kings are $15 million below the tax line, even if they end up needing the roster spot and simply waiving Edwards, it won't affect their decision-making the rest of the week at all.
If Edwards sticks, Sacramento gets a free look at him for the rest of the season before deciding on his $1.9 million team option for 2023-24.
The Kings will have to send something in return, most likely either a top-55 protected second-round pick or the rights to former draft picks playing overseas.
Kings get: Forward Kessler Edwards, cash considerations
Nets get: TBD
Brooklyn Nets: B+
After starting 23 games as a rookie and earning a full NBA contract (he started out on a two-way deal as a second-round pick), Edwards got lost behind the Nets' newfound wing depth this season, a problem only exacerbated by the arrival of Dorian Finney-Smith in the Kyrie Irving trade. As it was, Edwards had played just 79 minutes all season.
That small role made a money-saving trade involving Edwards almost inevitable. As reported by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski, this move reduces Brooklyn's luxury tax bill by nearly $8 million. Filling the open spot on the Nets' roster, possibly with a buyout candidate, would eat into that savings but still cut Brooklyn's tax payment as compared to keeping Edwards.
For the Nets to accomplish that without dipping into their stockpile of second-round picks is a good outcome for them.
Sacramento Kings: B+
By contrast, making this move for cash considerations suggests the Kings have some interest in Edwards. They've got a clear need for a defensive upgrade on the wing, a role they've filled at times with KZ Okpala. Edwards is a far better shooter, having hit 35% of his 3s as a rookie as compared to 29% over his career for Okpala.
Wojnarowski further reported that Sacramento intends to give Edwards a chance to play with the team's G League affiliate in Stockton, so the Kings might still be on the hunt for wing help before Thursday's trade deadline. Because the Kings are $15 million below the tax line, even if they end up needing the roster spot and simply waiving Edwards, it won't affect their decision-making the rest of the week at all.
If Edwards sticks, Sacramento gets a free look at him for the rest of the season before deciding on his $1.9 million team option for 2023-24.
The Kings will have to send something in return, most likely either a top-55 protected second-round pick or the rights to former draft picks playing overseas.
Heat trading Dewayne Dedmon to Spurs
Spurs get:
Center Dewayne Dedmon
Second-round pick
Heat get:
Cash considerations
Miami Heat: B+
The most interesting part of this deal is the Heat's willingness to trade Dedmon two days before the deadline, suggesting they didn't see a larger deal materializing with his expiring $4.7 million salary included. (Dedmon has a $4.3 million salary for 2023-24, but it isn't guaranteed until late June.)
To some extent, Miami probably viewed trading Dedmon as part of the reason to re-sign him last summer. But Dedmon's salary alone wasn't quite enough to bring back, say, Jae Crowder, and a deal sending him and 2022 first-round pick Nikola Jovic for a player making more money would have pushed the Heat into the luxury tax.
Instead, if Miami makes a move, it will most likely involve starting point guard Kyle Lowry, who hasn't enjoyed the bounce-back season the team hoped for at age 36 (he'll turn 37 next month). Over the eight games he played between returning to the lineup Jan. 18 and sitting out because of left knee soreness that will sideline him through the deadline, Lowry has seen fourth-quarter action just twice, as coach Erik Spoelstra has opted to finish games with either Victor Oladipo or Gabe Vincent in his place.
Moving Dedmon gives the Heat more flexibility bringing back salary in a Lowry trade. Before, Miami stood just $163,000 below the luxury tax line, which will likely act as a hard cap for the Heat and other teams near the tax.
Although actual tax payments would be minimal, going into the tax would mean they miss out on the distribution from taxpaying teams, currently estimated at $17 million by ESPN's Bobby Marks. (That could decline slightly by Thursday as taxpaying teams offload salary before the deadline.)
If no bigger trade materializes, Miami still moves a player who was clearly unhappy with his role. Dedmon's frustration came to a head in January, when he was suspended a game by the team after swatting a massage gun and sending it flying on to the court during play.
Creating more room below the tax line enables the Heat to promote Orlando Robinson from a two-way contract, allowing them to fill his two-way spot. And Miami has enough flexibility now to also utilize the remaining $3.6 million of the non-taxpayer mid-level exception to offer a buyout candidate more than the minimum salary. The Heat had used only the taxpayer portion of the exception last summer to avoid hard-capping themselves in case they did go into the luxury tax.
At the cost of a distant second-round pick, that move was well worth it.
San Antonio Spurs: B
For the Spurs, completing this move now was important because it allows them to repeat the process before Thursday's trade deadline. San Antonio, which had nearly $27 million in cap space to utilize, can waive Dedmon after the trade is finalized and use the open roster spot to add another player and continue collecting draft picks. As Marks noted on Twitter, the money the Spurs will pay Dedmon the rest of the season would have been paid anyway because San Antonio is the lone team currently below the salary floor -- by nearly $15 million. Any amount below the floor will be distributed among current Spurs players. To complete this trade, San Antonio had to send something to the Heat. The NBA requires a minimum of at least $110,000 by league rules if cash considerations are the return.
Feb. 5: Nets trading star guard Kyrie Irving to Mavericks
Nets get:
Dorian Finney-Smith
Spencer Dinwiddie
2029 first-round pick
2027 & 2029 second-round picks
Mavericks get:
Kyrie Irving
Markieff Morris
Brooklyn Nets: B+
The 48-hour turnaround from Irving's trade request being reported to a trade being consummated seems to reflect a couple of key things from the Nets: They were ready to move on from Irving and they found the kind of market they wanted.
A lot of the analysis in the immediate aftermath of Irving's request suggested Brooklyn should call his bluff, as happened last summer when he agitated for a sign-and-trade before exercising his player option to remain with the Nets. Maybe that would have happened if the market was softer, but I think Brooklyn was right to take seriously Irving's reported threat to sit out if not traded. ESPN's Bobby Marks pointed out that actually holding out would have jeopardized Irving's ability to become a free agent, but he could have said he was unable to play because of injury.
In the best-case scenario, keeping Irving past the trade deadline would merely have been kicking the can down the road. Since Irving's return following a team suspension for his repeated failure to "unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs" (and a public apology), things had gone as well as possible on the court. That still resulted in Irving's midseason trade request.
The other difference from last summer is more teams could realistically deal for Irving. Dallas was in that group. Well into the luxury tax, the Mavericks would have had a difficult time consummating a legal sign-and-trade for Irving. Now, Dallas could offer a point guard (Dinwiddie) in addition to a valuable role player (Finney-Smith) and a first-round pick. By contrast, for a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers to yield Irving's replacement, it would have surely required at least one more team (and maybe two, depending on that team's willingness to take back Russell Westbrook's contract).
The first key to this trade for the Nets is what percentage of Irving's production Dinwiddie can replace at a lower salary and with less uncertainty. Quietly, Dinwiddie has had a strong season opposite Doncic, rebuilding his value by hitting a career-high 40.5% of his 3-point attempts.
By swapping Dinwiddie for Irving, Brooklyn is taking a step back in terms of shot creation. When placed in the role of lead playmaker, Dinwiddie has been more of a volume scorer. We saw that with the Nets in 2019-20, when they played most of the season without Durant and Irving. Dinwiddie averaged 22.2 PPG and 7.3 APG in the 44 games Irving missed, but his .470 effective field goal percentage in those games (treating 3s as 1.5 field goals to reflect their added value) was lower than any full season of his career.
With Dinwiddie at point guard, Brooklyn will become even more dependent on Durant for late-game scoring. But Dinwiddie can at least add a scoring punch when Durant is on the bench, a need the Nets had to fill. Brooklyn lineups with neither Durant nor Irving had ranked in the second percentile in terms of offensive rating, per Cleaning the Glass data.
Continuing a trend dating back to the James Harden trade a year ago, the Nets have also improved their depth by trading one rotation player for two. (Morris had been on the fringes of the rotation recently but played just 285 minutes all season.) Finney-Smith gives Brooklyn another capable two-way role player on a reasonable contract paying him an average of $14.4 million through 2025-26.
Now, Nets coach Jacque Vaughn could conceivably finish games with a lineup of Dinwiddie, Durant, Finney-Smith, center Nic Claxton and wing Royce O'Neale. That's a switchable group with no player shorter than 6-foot-4 and puts three 3-point threats around Durant and Claxton. Notably, it doesn't include Ben Simmons, whose difficulty making free throws makes him tough to play in crunch time.
Add in an unprotected first-round pick timed for after Doncic can become an unrestricted free agent, and this seems like a strong return for Brooklyn, given the circumstances. Of course, only one person's opinion about this trade really matters: Durant's. Whether he believes this supporting cast can help him win a championship with the Nets is the most important piece of this equation.
The other possible key is whether Brooklyn will make another trade by Thursday's deadline. The Nets now have two first-round picks to offer in a trade: the one from Dallas plus one from Philadelphia in either 2027 or 2028. The Nets are overloaded with wings and could stand to swap one of their shooters for another big man. Alternatively, they could try to get in on the bidding if the Toronto Raptors decide to move Fred VanVleet.
If this is Brooklyn's biggest move, it limits the team's ceiling this season in exchange for far more certainty going forward.
Dallas Mavericks: D
Let's start with the obvious but unhelpful part of the analysis: Yes, the Mavericks would have been better off simply re-signing the younger Jalen Brunson for the max -- if that's what it took to retain him last summer -- than giving up a first-round pick and a key contributor for Irving. That opportunity is gone, making it irrelevant to how the franchise moves forward.
Without Brunson, Dallas became dangerously dependent on Luka magic. Thanks to Doncic playing the most minutes per game (36.5) and sporting the highest usage rate (38.5%) of his career, the Mavericks were 28-19 in games Luka played through Thursday's win over the New Orleans Pelicans -- which saw Dallas, up 27 when he left the game with a heel contusion, hang on for a five-point win.
Saturday's Doncic-less loss to the Golden State Warriors dropped the Mavericks to 0-7 when he doesn't play, the biggest reason the Mavericks sit just a half-game out of the play-in tournament a season after reaching the Western Conference finals. Irving will undoubtedly help there, and we have ample evidence of how good he can be playing alongside another ball-dominant star.
That formula won the Cleveland Cavaliers the 2016 title, after all, and was working well for the Nets as recently as last month before Durant's MCL sprain. So does adding Irving make Dallas a title contender? I'm still skeptical. Defense is the big difference between the Mavericks and the teams that have contended with Irving and another star.
For all the fretting about the load on Luka and performance without him, Dallas' offense has actually been better than last season, ranking in the top 10. Defensively, however, the Mavericks have tumbled from seventh in Jason Kidd's first year as coach to 24th.
Adding Irving and subtracting Finney-Smith surely won't help there, though Dallas can expect better interior defense when Maxi Kleber returns from a hamstring tear that has sidelined him since mid-December.
By trading Finney-Smith, Dallas is presumably betting on Josh Green emerging as a starter. The 22-year-old from Australia, much maligned his first two seasons for not being as quick to develop as the older wings drafted after him (Saddiq Bey and Desmond Bane), has taken a step forward in Year 3. Green is making 41% of his 3s, albeit on low volume (3.7 attempts per 36 minutes) and has shown the ability to defend bigger opponents at 6-5.
Keeping Green out of this trade was the biggest win. The Mavericks also managed to maintain a couple of tradable first-round picks. Assuming this year's selection goes to the New York Knicks to complete the ill-fated Kristaps Porzingis deal (it's top-10 protected), Dallas can still deal 2025 and 2027 first-rounders this summer.
Still, the Mavericks have foregone the possibility of being able to offer a full draft to another team down the road, and given up their most tradable role player in Finney-Smith. As a result, this looks like Dallas' biggest post-Porzingis swing on trading for a star. The Mavericks will have to count on Irving staying on the court and producing.
How Dallas structures Irving's next contract will be fascinating to watch. Assuming Irving did not waive his trade bonus associated with this deal, he'll be eligible for a two-year extension with a maximum 5% raise each season over his current salary. Alternatively, Irving could play out the season and re-sign with the Mavericks this summer with no such restrictions.
In all likelihood, Dallas will push for a contract no longer than three years. The Mavericks have pointed toward 2025 as an opportunity to add a star via free agency before the final season that Doncic is under contract (2026-27, the last year of Doncic's rookie extension, is a player option he's certain to decline if he doesn't sign a supermax extension before then).
If the two sides can find a new contract that meets both of their goals, Dallas could certainly win this trade. The Mavericks gave up a single first-rounder and role players for one of the league's best players when he's on the court. Although I don't think Dallas becomes an immediate title contender, the Mavericks will have time and some flexibility to reshape the roster around Doncic and Irving in future seasons. With due respect to Brunson, Irving immediately becomes the best teammate Luka has had.
Given the ticking clock on Doncic's free agency, I understand the urgency for Dallas to take a risk in order to win now. However, based on Irving's track record of becoming unhappy with his team at inopportune moments, I wouldn't risk my superstar player's prime betting on him.
Nets get:
Dorian Finney-Smith
Spencer Dinwiddie
2029 first-round pick
2027 & 2029 second-round picks
Mavericks get:
Kyrie Irving
Markieff Morris
Brooklyn Nets: B+
The 48-hour turnaround from Irving's trade request being reported to a trade being consummated seems to reflect a couple of key things from the Nets: They were ready to move on from Irving and they found the kind of market they wanted.
A lot of the analysis in the immediate aftermath of Irving's request suggested Brooklyn should call his bluff, as happened last summer when he agitated for a sign-and-trade before exercising his player option to remain with the Nets. Maybe that would have happened if the market was softer, but I think Brooklyn was right to take seriously Irving's reported threat to sit out if not traded. ESPN's Bobby Marks pointed out that actually holding out would have jeopardized Irving's ability to become a free agent, but he could have said he was unable to play because of injury.
In the best-case scenario, keeping Irving past the trade deadline would merely have been kicking the can down the road. Since Irving's return following a team suspension for his repeated failure to "unequivocally say he has no antisemitic beliefs" (and a public apology), things had gone as well as possible on the court. That still resulted in Irving's midseason trade request.
The other difference from last summer is more teams could realistically deal for Irving. Dallas was in that group. Well into the luxury tax, the Mavericks would have had a difficult time consummating a legal sign-and-trade for Irving. Now, Dallas could offer a point guard (Dinwiddie) in addition to a valuable role player (Finney-Smith) and a first-round pick. By contrast, for a trade with the Los Angeles Lakers to yield Irving's replacement, it would have surely required at least one more team (and maybe two, depending on that team's willingness to take back Russell Westbrook's contract).
The first key to this trade for the Nets is what percentage of Irving's production Dinwiddie can replace at a lower salary and with less uncertainty. Quietly, Dinwiddie has had a strong season opposite Doncic, rebuilding his value by hitting a career-high 40.5% of his 3-point attempts.
By swapping Dinwiddie for Irving, Brooklyn is taking a step back in terms of shot creation. When placed in the role of lead playmaker, Dinwiddie has been more of a volume scorer. We saw that with the Nets in 2019-20, when they played most of the season without Durant and Irving. Dinwiddie averaged 22.2 PPG and 7.3 APG in the 44 games Irving missed, but his .470 effective field goal percentage in those games (treating 3s as 1.5 field goals to reflect their added value) was lower than any full season of his career.
With Dinwiddie at point guard, Brooklyn will become even more dependent on Durant for late-game scoring. But Dinwiddie can at least add a scoring punch when Durant is on the bench, a need the Nets had to fill. Brooklyn lineups with neither Durant nor Irving had ranked in the second percentile in terms of offensive rating, per Cleaning the Glass data.
Continuing a trend dating back to the James Harden trade a year ago, the Nets have also improved their depth by trading one rotation player for two. (Morris had been on the fringes of the rotation recently but played just 285 minutes all season.) Finney-Smith gives Brooklyn another capable two-way role player on a reasonable contract paying him an average of $14.4 million through 2025-26.
Now, Nets coach Jacque Vaughn could conceivably finish games with a lineup of Dinwiddie, Durant, Finney-Smith, center Nic Claxton and wing Royce O'Neale. That's a switchable group with no player shorter than 6-foot-4 and puts three 3-point threats around Durant and Claxton. Notably, it doesn't include Ben Simmons, whose difficulty making free throws makes him tough to play in crunch time.
Add in an unprotected first-round pick timed for after Doncic can become an unrestricted free agent, and this seems like a strong return for Brooklyn, given the circumstances. Of course, only one person's opinion about this trade really matters: Durant's. Whether he believes this supporting cast can help him win a championship with the Nets is the most important piece of this equation.
The other possible key is whether Brooklyn will make another trade by Thursday's deadline. The Nets now have two first-round picks to offer in a trade: the one from Dallas plus one from Philadelphia in either 2027 or 2028. The Nets are overloaded with wings and could stand to swap one of their shooters for another big man. Alternatively, they could try to get in on the bidding if the Toronto Raptors decide to move Fred VanVleet.
If this is Brooklyn's biggest move, it limits the team's ceiling this season in exchange for far more certainty going forward.
Dallas Mavericks: D
Let's start with the obvious but unhelpful part of the analysis: Yes, the Mavericks would have been better off simply re-signing the younger Jalen Brunson for the max -- if that's what it took to retain him last summer -- than giving up a first-round pick and a key contributor for Irving. That opportunity is gone, making it irrelevant to how the franchise moves forward.
Without Brunson, Dallas became dangerously dependent on Luka magic. Thanks to Doncic playing the most minutes per game (36.5) and sporting the highest usage rate (38.5%) of his career, the Mavericks were 28-19 in games Luka played through Thursday's win over the New Orleans Pelicans -- which saw Dallas, up 27 when he left the game with a heel contusion, hang on for a five-point win.
Saturday's Doncic-less loss to the Golden State Warriors dropped the Mavericks to 0-7 when he doesn't play, the biggest reason the Mavericks sit just a half-game out of the play-in tournament a season after reaching the Western Conference finals. Irving will undoubtedly help there, and we have ample evidence of how good he can be playing alongside another ball-dominant star.
That formula won the Cleveland Cavaliers the 2016 title, after all, and was working well for the Nets as recently as last month before Durant's MCL sprain. So does adding Irving make Dallas a title contender? I'm still skeptical. Defense is the big difference between the Mavericks and the teams that have contended with Irving and another star.
For all the fretting about the load on Luka and performance without him, Dallas' offense has actually been better than last season, ranking in the top 10. Defensively, however, the Mavericks have tumbled from seventh in Jason Kidd's first year as coach to 24th.
Adding Irving and subtracting Finney-Smith surely won't help there, though Dallas can expect better interior defense when Maxi Kleber returns from a hamstring tear that has sidelined him since mid-December.
By trading Finney-Smith, Dallas is presumably betting on Josh Green emerging as a starter. The 22-year-old from Australia, much maligned his first two seasons for not being as quick to develop as the older wings drafted after him (Saddiq Bey and Desmond Bane), has taken a step forward in Year 3. Green is making 41% of his 3s, albeit on low volume (3.7 attempts per 36 minutes) and has shown the ability to defend bigger opponents at 6-5.
Keeping Green out of this trade was the biggest win. The Mavericks also managed to maintain a couple of tradable first-round picks. Assuming this year's selection goes to the New York Knicks to complete the ill-fated Kristaps Porzingis deal (it's top-10 protected), Dallas can still deal 2025 and 2027 first-rounders this summer.
Still, the Mavericks have foregone the possibility of being able to offer a full draft to another team down the road, and given up their most tradable role player in Finney-Smith. As a result, this looks like Dallas' biggest post-Porzingis swing on trading for a star. The Mavericks will have to count on Irving staying on the court and producing.
How Dallas structures Irving's next contract will be fascinating to watch. Assuming Irving did not waive his trade bonus associated with this deal, he'll be eligible for a two-year extension with a maximum 5% raise each season over his current salary. Alternatively, Irving could play out the season and re-sign with the Mavericks this summer with no such restrictions.
In all likelihood, Dallas will push for a contract no longer than three years. The Mavericks have pointed toward 2025 as an opportunity to add a star via free agency before the final season that Doncic is under contract (2026-27, the last year of Doncic's rookie extension, is a player option he's certain to decline if he doesn't sign a supermax extension before then).
If the two sides can find a new contract that meets both of their goals, Dallas could certainly win this trade. The Mavericks gave up a single first-rounder and role players for one of the league's best players when he's on the court. Although I don't think Dallas becomes an immediate title contender, the Mavericks will have time and some flexibility to reshape the roster around Doncic and Irving in future seasons. With due respect to Brunson, Irving immediately becomes the best teammate Luka has had.
Given the ticking clock on Doncic's free agency, I understand the urgency for Dallas to take a risk in order to win now. However, based on Irving's track record of becoming unhappy with his team at inopportune moments, I wouldn't risk my superstar player's prime betting on him.
- 30,550
- 33,882
Can't believe Philly didn't give in to Korkmaz's request 
- 13,216
- 14,525
Warriors should have sent him to Taiwan for this.
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