By Cyote Williams | Times Vedette
The NBA trade deadline was yesterday afternoon, and there was plenty of movement across the entire league. The professional basketball league has one of the crazier deadlines of the major North American sports. Trades are uncommon in soccer and not as widely used in hockey. The NFL will usually see some moderately important names move around, often times because a team is trying to shore up a weaker position group. The same goes for baseball. It’s common for MLB teams that are struggling to sell off their best assets to teams that are gunning for a World Series run. But, even the MLB has rules against trading draft picks. The NBA, however, goes wild every February. To put it into perspective, the Miami Heat was only one team in the Eastern Conference this season that did not make a trade.
The Stepien Rule, named after Ted Stepien, a former executive of the Cleveland Cavaliers, does prevent teams from trading away their first-round picks in consecutive future years. Let’s just say Stepien wasn’t the best team builder. Can you imagine being so bad at your job that a professional sports league creates a rule named after you to prevent yourself and other teams from blowing up your franchise too much?
But, seemingly like all rules, loopholes and workarounds exist. The main loopholes are pick swaps. A team can trade its first-round pick in consecutive years as a “swap,” meaning that the team with the pick being traded to has the right to choose which pick it wants. Through some shrewd business dealings, the mastermind that is the OKC Thunder’s General Manager Sam Presti, the NBA champion Thunder, have 13 first-round picks in the next seven seasons. That’s madness.
Following all of the wheeling and dealing that goes on in the few days leading up to the deadline is nearly impossible. National and local beat reporters do their best to detail the trades. Two things stick out to me with one team doing too much and one team doing too little.
My favorite team, the Chicago Bulls, did so much nonsensically dealing that it made my head spin. At one point, the team had zero healthy centers, no one taller than 6’9”, and had 10 guards on the roster. Last week, the Bulls had five second-round picks over the next seven drafts. Through all of their dealing, the team now has 14. As a team that has been historically bad at drafting talent for the last 20 years, I’m not sure what they are going to do with all that capital, but it probably isn’t good.
One of the league’s best talents, Giannis Antetokounmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks, is staying put at least until the end of the season. The former MVP and NBA champion’s name has been swirling in trade rumors for months, but it looks like the Greek Freak will have to wait a bit longer before he finds a new home. One way or another, the franchise star is going to be leaving Wisconsin, and the Bucks need to find a suitable replacement for him or face a painful, lengthy rebuild. Waiting until the offseason may or may not be a smart move by the Bucks. Time will tell.
Reach out with comments, complaints, story ideas and more to cyote@dmcityview.com.