According to nba.com’s Trade Tracker, there were 16 trades from January through the trade deadline, involving about 40 players but only 3 first-round picks. That last number is particularly notable, as it represents somewhat of a departure from prior years.
Unlike previous seasons, no team traded a first rounder purely for short-term help. Teams only dealt first rounders as a means to acquire or attempt to retain a star. The Pistons traded a pick for Blake Griffin, the Cavs traded a pick to appease free agent LeBron, and in a move I’ll discuss more in Part 2, the Pelicans traded their 2018 pick for the opportunity to re-sign DeMarcus Cousins while staying under the luxury tax. Apparently no one was willing to deal a first rounder for either Tyreke Evans or Lou Williams this year, even though at least a few playoff teams could really use their shot creation abilities. Contrast that with 2017, when teams dealt first-round picks for the likes of Mason Plumlee, Kyle Korver, Serge Ibaka, and the aforementioned Lou Williams, or 2016 with Jeff Green, Markieff Morris, and Donatas Motiejunas (later rescinded after Motiejunas failed his physical).
Thus, it appears that the league as a whole has become incredibly reluctant to deal a first rounder for any sort of role player. Generally speaking, if you’re not viewed as a foundational star to build around, your contributions aren’t worth giving up a first-round pick. Relatedly, teams now have little interest in expending long-term assets for short-term improvement without substantially increasing their chances of a title. No one’s offering a decent pick or prospect just to try to make the playoffs or perhaps advance to the second round this season. These are not new concepts, and in fact I’m reminded of a phenomenal article Zach Lowe wrote back in his Grantland days, alerting us to these incipient trends. As he said in the aftermath of the 2014 deadline:
smart front offices just don’t want to be in the business of tossing away a pile of picks for non-superstar upgrades.
And that gets at two more trends trickling into the new, smarter NBA:
- Teams more than ever want to make sure they are in a position for sustained, long-term success. . . .
- On the flip side, teams understand they need a top-20 player or two to win a title, and they are going to be careful about trading any asset for a player below that level. A phrase I’ve heard constantly over the last six months: ‘Player X is just a guy.’ Seriously, ‘just a guy’ is happening around the NBA in a way ‘fetch’ never could. Front-office types apply it as a mild insult to a pretty good player making something like $6 million to $10 million per year.
The implication is that you can get 80 percent of that player’s production on something close to a minimum salary, making it silly to give up anything of real value — gobs of money, a single first-round pick — for such a player. . . .
What stands out most to me from this excerpt is Lowe’s ability to seamlessly incorporate “fetch” into a basketball column. That’s truly impressive. I think that Gretchen Wieners’s father, the inventor of Toaster Strudel, would be pleased to hear about this. Along the same lines, my friend Joe and I challenged each other in high school to incorporate basketball into our AP English impromptu essays. My most notable effort was likening a controlling metaphor to Ruben Boumtje-Boumtje and Mike Sweetney controlling the paint in tournament wins over Hampton and Arkansas. I’ll never forget how Ms. Van Witzenburg—always loath to write comments beyond the overall grade and perhaps a one-line summary at the end—inscribed “I see” in the margin next to my prolonged analogy. I think that essay got me my highest grade on an impromptu all year.
Venturing beyond Lowe’s magnificent prose, I’m left with a question: if these were recognized trends among smart front offices in 2014, what led all the holdouts to fall in line, so to speak, this year? I think for the most part the answer lies in the Atlantic Division. The Sixers and Celtics—the standard-bearers of the asset-accumulation model, or “The Process” as it’s been known in Philly throughout years of suckitude—are now thriving, and appear no worse off with their fans for biding their time in hopes of greater future success. Following Philly’s lead, other teams are committing more fully to teardowns over the so-called purgatory of early playoff exits. And no one wants to repeat the mistakes of the Nets and Knicks, who traded a bunch of first rounders without ever being contenders and now continue to pile up sub-.500 seasons with no end in sight. [The Nets get more attention because their pick was #1 last year, but the Knicks’ extended run of giving up lottery picks is more remarkable. Over the past dozen or so years they’ve made the playoffs just 3 times and won a total of 1 playoff round, and the lottery picks they’ve traded have turned into the following players: LaMarcus Aldridge, Joakim Noah, Gordon Hayward, Dario Saric, Jamal Murray, and Jakob Poeltl.]
A strong crop of buyout candidates provides yet another reason for playoff teams to be stingy with their first-round picks. Partly as a side effect of so many teams being content to remain uncompetitive in service of a brighter tomorrow, several veterans on such teams have secured or will secure buyouts to make themselves available to a playoff team at no cost beyond a roster spot and in most instances a near-minimum salary. Greg Monroe, Marco Belinelli, Joe Johnson, and Brandan Wright lead the way among those already signing elsewhere, with more on the way. Why trade a valuable pick to upgrade your bench when you can get a similar upgrade essentially for free?
Also, while it’s somewhat counterintuitive that the value of first rounders would rise at a time when the rookie scale is increasing (pursuant to the new CBA) and free agent salaries are stable or declining, it actually makes sense. Most teams won’t have significant cap space to take advantage of a buyers’ market this summer, and the unrestricted free agent pool is weak beyond the top few guys. Most of the league’s better role players cashed in with long-term deals in the rising-cap environment and, thus, their contracts aren’t particularly friendly ones to absorb in trade. And even though the rookie scale is increasing, those increases are phased in gradually and such contracts remain tremendous bargains if the pick pans out.
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