NBA Trade Deadline Thread: 3:00 to Yuma

https://sny.tv/articles/knicks-obi-toppin-trade-interest

-A lot of interest in Obi, including from the Pacers

-The Kings have some interest in Rose

“why can’t u just pay a fraction of the cost and zero picks for jae crowder?”

Crowder was just traded for 5 second rounders! Wings with legit skills who can defend competently are just about always worth more than their BPMs et al. would indicate. Jalen McDaniels is at -2.6 for his career and just fetched some seconds.

Hart has legit outlier skills when it comes to rebounding and finishing. That’s why I can buy that there would be a serious market for him–he’s very limited, but can make your team *substantially* better at his niches.

“we are chasing the 5th seed which maybe we’ve all collectively turned into kyrie irving celebrating 4th and 5th seed trophies…. but there was a time where giving up first rd picks for that kind of chase would’ve been unanimously derided….”

The Knicks’ strategy is to get good enough that a star player(s) thinks they can get us over the top, without sacrificing so many future assets we can’t get that player even if he wants to come here.

I don’t like it all that much, but I think the Hart trade makes it more, not less, likely to succeed.

I would swap RJ and salary filler for LaVine, largely because I think RJ’s contract is a negative asset, but that’s about it. I would hope the red flags there are so obvious even the Knicks can resist trading the motherlode.

“We need to be increasing that asset base. Even just keeping it level is a failure.”

We don’t disagree, but this is a commentary on the larger strategy.

There tends to be an inverse relationship between present team quality and future asset base. A few teams have pulled off incredible trades and the like that has let them have their cake and eat it too e.g. OKC, Memphis, and New Orleans but that’s the general trend.

My first choice would be to focus on accumulating as many future assets as possible, but we’ve long established that’s not what we’re doing. It is what it is.

My second choice is to execute our chosen strategy well. In that context, I think Josh Hart represents an upgrade that outweighs his cost in future assets. In other words, he improves the “get good enough to make a star want to come here” portion of it more than he detracts from the “without sacrificing so many assets you can’t get the star” portion.

“but it makes no sense to just be ok with handing out firsts for the likes of Hart… and not giving up 2-3 more for Lavine… ”

I really can’t disagree more strongly.

The chances that our lottery protected 2023 first is the difference between us landing a star and not doing so are very, very low. I won’t say zero because you never know, but that’s just not all that great of an asset.

We can still offer a team *six firsts and four swaps.*

The likelihood that a player of Hart’s caliber is the difference between a star thinking he puts us over the top and that not happening is also low to be clear, but the former scenario seems more far-fetched to me when you consider what we can still offer.

All of this changes with LaVine. What we’d have to surrender for him could, and likely would, absolutely be the difference between us having a real star package and us falling short, and he doesn’t get us to contention on his own so that’s not outweighed by the increase in our present quality.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a sports trade defended on the basis that it mitigates the very real risk that the acquired player will never be on the roster of the acquiring team.”

…is this not the logic that basically underlies every defense of every trade ever made?

“We were already good enough for a star to want to come here. Donovan Mitchell clearly did. He actually said it. Now they are just trying to get better to be… better.”

Which is a worthwhile goal because it makes it more likely a future star who thinks he can put us over the top is correct in that assessment. The most valid anti-Mitchell trade take was that we would trade the motherlode and still not be good enough.

““We wanted the player” is the underlying logic that underlies every trade ever made. “We didn’t want to risk not having the player” is just a tautological way of saying the exact same thing. ”

Did you miss the 100+ posts about why the trade was bad because if we really wanted Hart we could’ve simply acquired him without having made the trade?

It is probably worth noting that the LaVine “rumor” came from a single source without much of a track record. My guess is the Bulls weren’t taking calls–they don’t have their own pick this year, so why would they? They can reevaluate in the offseason.

“that pick we traded was the likeliest best one that we had….”

Strongly disagree, the team is kinda good! The pick is projected to be 19th (lol, of course) as of now, and it’s quite possible it gets worse now that we’ve upgraded, the Nets downgraded, etc.

Saying this pick was the best pick we could offer is thus a *very* optimistic take on our future, one that I don’t think other teams share.

“our firsts should still mean something to us but it seems that it doesn’t matter to a large group of the fanbase.. and i’m saying if it doesn’t matter with hart.. then it doesn’t matter with players that matter much more than hart too….”

I think thinking about it in this binary a fashion is out of step with the real life market dynamics in the NBA. First-round picks can be generally important to a team even if one particular lottery-protected first is worth less than some number of added present wins.

When the Cavs traded a 1st for Jarrett Allen, he didn’t get them particularly close to real contention and I don’t think anyone would say the trade indicated firsts “don’t matter” to them, just that they valued X number of present wins higher than *that particular* first.

What that trade did is get them *closer* to contention without terminally impairing their ability to trade for a star. They then traded for a star and are now contenders!

“There’s no “the team has to be X good in order to acquire a star’s contract” clause anywhere.”

And now back to reality, where everyone on the planet knows stars being traded have a strong say in where they wind up by virtue of their ability to say “I will not re-sign with you” to the receiving team.

Independent of that though, I will repeat that it makes sense to get good enough that the incoming star *actually does* make you a contender. Thus if you can get better without impairing your ability to trade for said star, it makes sense to do so.

This of course all assumes the existence of the star which is why I don’t like the strategy, but all of the objections to the Hart trade read to me as objections to the strategy writ large. I share those, but this trade makes the strategy’s success more likely.

It’s always funny to me when E confidently declares some posters are positing something because of some deep-seated unsaid unrelated motivation, because he’s never, ever correct about it.

“Trading for a star is not the only strategy to obtain a star. There was a time around here where that was axiomatic.

Sometimes squandering draft picks is just … you know … squandering draft picks. Doing that doesn’t mean you have some different 4-D chess strategy.”

It all comes back to disagreeing with the underlying strategy which I don’t think literally anyone here except Strat defends. We should’ve tanked.

But the only thing dumber than pursuing a bad strategy is pursuing a bad strategy and then passing on opportunities to make it more likely the strategy succeeds, without actually ever abandoning the strategy. Talk about purgatory.

So yeah, feel free to say they should abandon the strategy, never should’ve pursued it, yadda yadda yadda. I’ve been banging that drum since I was posting here on my Blackberry under my desk at Stuy.

The relevant question is does trading for Josh Hart make it more or less likely that the strategy of trying to trade for a star that leads us to contention succeeds. I think the answer is yes, by a little bit, because it doesn’t impair our ability to make the trade, but does improve us enough that current team + star = contention is more plausible.

“phoenix has to really tightrope the injury bug. any one bite probably sinks them.”

This is why I can’t get around to calling them the full favorites. Durant and CP3 are very high risks to miss playoff games.

I still would’ve made the trade in Phoenix’s position because this is a level of upside you gotta go for, but it could get ugly.

“The FO likely doesn’t have the political capital to sell low on him even if they wanted to, so we’re stuck with a tank commander in a season where we’re trying to win, and for the foreseeable future.”

Yeah, it’s brutal. Ridiculous unforced error. Pretty easily their worst move to date.

I am interested in seeing what implications the acquisition of a player who plays the same position and comes with none of the baggage, and much less of the upside to be fair, has on RJ Barrett. We’re approaching the point in his career where talking about “upside” feels a bit silly. Not there yet, but closer than his fans are comfortable admitting.

“If any metric says Hart is anywhere close to OG right now, that metric is broken.”

Another thing that seems to not be getting enough attention is that in the ancient days of *checks notes* last season, Hart had a positively Anunobyian 18.6% usage rate with a .610 TS%.

He averaged 16/8/4.5 per-36. This included a 13 game stretch with Portland sans-Dame of 22/6/5 per-36 with a .622 TS%.

I don’t know exactly why his usage has dipped so much this year, but my guess is it has more to do with the return of Dame than a physical decline from age 26 to 27.

Accordingly, I can’t get on board with the idea that he’s in a completely different stratosphere than Anunoby.

“Isn’t there a rule (Stepien?) that forbid to trade “own” first in consecutive years?”

You just have to have *a* first in consecutive years. Doesn’t have to be yours. So we can trade our own 2024, 2025, 2026, and 2028 picks because we have the DAL 2023 pick and the MIL 2025 pick. We’d even be allowed to give another team swap rights on those picks.