15 Takes: What We Love and Hate about NBA Trade Season
NBA Substack on the joy and pain of The Transaction Game
We asked 15 leading NBA voices on Substack:
What do you love or hate about NBA trade season?
Check out their answers and subscribe!
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I will always marvel at (and appreciate) the ravenous public interest in NBA trade activity.
It is my belief that, as access to watching every minute of every NBA game became easier season after season, interest in the stuff that cannot be easily seen — like trade discussions — only increased.
And I will never forget the story that, at least for me, crystallized the appeal of what I like to call The Transaction Game. I've told the story many times over the years, but this is a good place to repeat it for posterity: Denver trading Earl Boykins to Milwaukee in January 2007.
I broke the story (as I remember it) and one of my favorite editors of all-time — Chris Ramsay — told me that my ESPN.com report on such a seemingly minor deal was doing huge traffic. I always point to that as a milestone moment in my career because it was then I truly realized the need to deliver as much good trade coverage as I could.
Look where we are now nearly 20 years later.
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I hate that trade season is getting more difficult to navigate.
I'm still not sure what it will do to Deadline Day long-term — last year's deadline featured movement but lacked massive fireworks — but the current CBA's rules around salary matching, particularly taxpayers not being able to aggregate multiple players' salaries to get within the required range of salaries in-versus-out, make building trades for contenders a lot more restrictive than it used to be.
I understand why the league put in those rules in the name of competitive balance, but it certainly creates new friction for deadline season.
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My feelings about trade season are similar to my feelings about Star Wars: I neither love nor hate it. It’s a passionate neutrality. I personally don’t care and won’t pay attention, but I love and understand that people find it fun and entertaining.
I have my own private trade season. *My trade season* is two months after yours. It’s the playoffs. When we *ACTUALLY* find out which trades resulted in winning and which resulted in losing.
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What I love about a midseason trade is the opportunity for a do-over it offers athletes and occasionally, teams. I'm not even talking blockbuster trades, I'm talking the guys who get included in the blockbuster trades and wind up in a better situation. They get more minutes, they find a better chemistry fit, they wind up showcasing a skill they didn't have the opportunity to use on their former team, maybe they just like living in the new city more.
What I truly, completely hate about trade time is the reduction of people to their skillset or salary value through the language of trades: calling people assets, pieces, human trade exceptions, churning names through the Trade Machine like they were fodder.
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What I love about trade season is the sense of possibility: the idea that no roster is necessarily a finished product quite yet.
I was prepared to say my “hate” was how we hyperventilate over in-season trades that rarely affect the title race, but I found more counterpoints than I expected! P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford to the Mavs last year, Andrew Wiggins to Golden State in 2020, Marc Gasol to Toronto in 2019. Admittedly a stretch, but Aaron Gordon to Denver in 2021. Or even more of a stretch, Derrick White to Boston in 2022.
That's not nothing, so maybe things really can swing at the deadline? Who knew.
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I hate the endless speculation about players who are not going to be traded, and the sourcing of reports to "rival executives." I love getting a look at what teams think they need to do in order to get themselves over the hump or set themselves up for future success.
I also love trying to figure out which moves are aimed at specific opponents, when it comes to the teams that know they will be in the playoffs. That's the kind of thing that can either work out really well or backfire really badly.
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I love the trade deadline because of the drama and intrigue. Sure, it’s soap opera-ish, but I love it anyway. It’s a chance to see how teams feel they need to remake themselves, reset or rebuild, all on the fly. Personally, I love diving into the roster/cap/CBA reasons behind trades.
What I don’t like is new “insiders” (but not really) who are suddenly connected to all 30 teams. It leads to confusion for fans and makes everyone else’s jobs harder. I also don’t love when established pundits act like trades aren’t made for non-basketball reasons sometimes. They definitely know better.
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Not pretending I’m above enjoying a juicy trade rumor or three, but my favorite part of trade season is analyzing the trades themselves from a valuation perspective.
Who gave up what and what did they get back? And what does this tell you about the value of draft picks, bench players, starters, etc.? This is more interesting now than ever before with the new CBA still being relatively fresh.
Everyone’s trying to figure this stuff out — GMs included. It also tells us a lot about teams’ motivations that may not be as evident on the surface.
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I write influenced by my past running a website focussed on the NBA. Of course, every year we covered the closing of the transfer market by the minute. The last 48 hours were so intense that we ended up exhausted.
The next day I always noticed some weariness. The effort made by the staff was enormous and the hours in front of the computer and smartphones took their toll. But not just for us. Also to the readers. Immediately after each market closure came a decrease in audience since many fans felt sick by so much NBA for days. Recovering attention after a peak of that type is not that easy.
Ray LeBov |
Hate: "Fake trades.” Almost none ever happen. Many aren't even eligible per the CBA. Fanciful is the kindest word to describe most of them: No, Team A is not going to trade their star for your benchwarmers, no matter how many you include in the proposed deal. Probably 90% of the fake trades if actually proposed would result in an immediate telephone call hang-up.
Love: The insight trade season gives into team building and development. For some reason the smartest front offices typically do well and the weakest FOs, not so much. Analyzing why and how moves are made can be fascinating, particularly in light of the constraints imposed by the newest CBA. It is like four-dimensional chess at times.
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It’s funny; almost every writer I know hates writing mock trades, but the click counts prove that there’s nothing fans want more. It’s a bummer.
I don’t do the Trade Machine. Instead, I prewrite a half-dozen trade grade pieces so that if a big name DOES get moved, I’ll have already put in some of the work. Trade season is a blast, but nothing is more disappointing than having 1,000 quality words that never see the light of day.
Sadly for me (and happily for Kings fans), my De’Aaron Fox stuff looks less likely to released by the day …
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I understand that this likely won’t earn me more readers, but I cannot stomach any conversation coming from Laker Nation regarding potential trades. It’s bad enough that come trade time we are assailed with more photoshopped images coming out of Los Angeles than your favorite IG personality’s workout feed, but it’s also the complete inability to have any semblance of rational thought about who is a prospective trade piece.
I know that it’s the nature of the beast and it drives interest, but I just want no part of Lakers trade speculation for, like, a decade or so.
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This is an easy one. I hate — no, loathe — the opportunistic nature of news outlets begging to make a mockery of a mock trade and report it as fact.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve come across an article that says something like “De'Aaron Fox Linked to So and So Because One Writer Made It Up" or “Three-Team Trade Predicted” when it’s just the media making a suggestion.
I suppose that's more of an indictment of the media landscape as opposed to the actual trade deadline, but it's hit a fever pitch, and I'm feeling sick of it already.
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As much as I love the Trade Machine (a staple of my Substack posts), I don't love the bill of goods fans are sold about the promises of midseason trades. Only two players in the last 10 years have started for the championship-winning team after being acquired around the deadline (Marc Gasol and P.J. Tucker), and just a few others have started for the championship-losing team.
I trust the reporting that teams are having these conversations and it's all intriguing, but as a fan, it gets tiring hearing that Team X acquiring Role Player A will make all the difference.
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I have a love/hate relationship with NBA trade season. Sometimes I hate that it seems that the trade deadline and July 1st seems to be more important than the NBA Finals. But I must confess that I also love playing amateur GM.
I love opening the Spotrac Trade Machine and trying to find a trade that solves every team’s problems and that works under the CBA. So maybe I am an hypocrite, because I hate that people give so much importance to rumors and trades, but I am part of the problem, too.
I enjoy the business of the mid-season trade and I always think of the pain and anxiety that the players' children must feel.