HOOPSWORLD Week In Review
2013 NBA Trade Deadline Deals That Didn’t Happen
By Alex Kennedy
Josh Smith, Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Al Jefferson, Paul Millsap, Brandon Jennings, Monta Ellis, Tyreke Evans and Eric Gordon were all mentioned at some point in the march up to the 2013 NBA trade deadline. With so many big names surfacing in rumors, it seemed like it was going to be a busy day on Feb. 21. However, that wasn’t the case. Only 12 transactions were completed, but none of the players listed above were dealt despite the fact that six of them can test free agency this offseason.
The trade deadline was extremely anticlimactic this year. Executives chose to complete minor deals as opposed to the blockbuster trades that fans wanted to see. Many of the players acquired at the deadline are role players such as J.J. Redick, Jordan Crawford, Sebastian Telfair, Eric Maynor and Ronnie Brewer. While there weren’t any big trades that went down (you can see the complete list here), there were several interesting trades that were discussed but ultimately fell apart, such as…
Josh Smith to the Milwaukee Bucks
In the 24 hours leading up to the trade deadline, the general consensus around the league was that the Bucks were the favorites to land Josh Smith. They had plenty to offer the Atlanta Hawks including Monta Ellis, expiring contracts such as Beno Udrih and Samuel Dalembert, young players such as Tobias Harris, John Henson and Doron Lamb, and draft picks.
Grading the 2013 NBA Trade Deadline Deals
By Derek Page
In one of the most uneventful trade deadlines in recent memory, J.J. Redick was the most high-profile trade acquisition while the majority of teams that got involved made only minor deals. High-profile names like Josh Smith, Dwight Howard, Monta Ellis, Al Jefferson and Paul Millsap all remained with their respective teams in a mostly uninteresting string of deadline deals.
Meanwhile, players like Thomas Robinson, Jordan Crawford, Eric Maynor and Redick snatched up all the headlines on Thursday. Still, with plenty of deals made yesterday, it’s wise to take a look at how these deals will affect the teams that actually threw their hat in the 2013 NBA Trade Deadline ring.
Let’s take a look at how the trade deadline stacked up from the beginning to the closing trade:
Phoenix Acquires Marcus Morris from Houston for a 2013 Second-Round Pick
Suns: C+
Rockets: B+
One of the first dominoes to fall the night before the trade deadline, Morris to the Suns paved the way for a larger deal between the Rockets and Sacramento Kings. It was originally believed that Phoenix was looking to try to immediately flip Morris as part of a possible Josh Smith deal, but those talks fell through.
Biggest Questions Of The Final Stretch
By Yannis Koutroupis
The 2013 NBA Trade Deadline is in the review mirror, leaving us about 30 games or so in the regular season before the start of the playoffs. With that in mind, we take a look at what storylines will be the most important to keep an eye on as the regular season winds down and the second season gets ready to start.
Do the Spurs have another run in them?
The Spurs’ lack of activity on Thursday’s deadlines made the message clear: They think they have what it takes to compete for a championship. They currently sit atop the league’s standings with a 44-12 mark and have won nine of their last 10, including a thumping of the Los Angeles Clippers last night.
Houston Rockets Land Their Next All-Star?
By Bill Ingram
Before we get too deep into the hows and whys of the moves that landed Thomas Robinson in Houston, Marcus Morris in Phoenix and Patrick Patterson in Sacramento, we must first understand Houston’s thinking in just about any deal. The Rockets are a team that is never bad enough to land a high draft pick, though they have also failed to qualify for the playoffs for the past three seasons. They’ve been stuck in NBA limbo, and as such they have looked for ways to land players via trade who were taken as high draft picks.
Principally, the way the Rockets view the acquisition of Robinson is that they just landed the fifth pick in the 2012 NBA Draft.
NBA Teams One Player Away From Contending
By Stephen Brotherston
The general consensus is that we will see the Miami HEAT versus the Oklahoma City Thunder in the NBA Finals again this postseason. The San Antonio Spurs shouldn’t be overlooked and could easily end up being the top seed in the Western Conference yet again so it is almost impossible to not consider them a contender, but there are teams that could be just one addition away from threatening the status quo. The following are the top five teams that are on the cusp of contending.
1. Los Angeles Clippers
The Clippers have a deep and formidable lineup led by All-Star point guard Chris Paul and All-Star power forward Blake Griffin. Caron Butler and Chauncey Billups provide experience, toughness and scoring and DeAndre Jordan is as athletic a center as one could hope for. The reserves are led by Sixth Man of the Year candidate Jamal Crawford. Matt Barnes and Eric Bledsoe provide solid backups. This very effective and experienced lineup features just one glaring weakness. They do not have a low post presence that can be effective in a grind-it-out half court playoff series. The Clippers need another big man.
The Psychology of the NBA Trade Deadline
By Travis Heath
Imagine for a second if you were just going about your business one day at your place of work and your boss had the ability to tell you that you had been relocated to anywhere in the country (and even one place outside of it) without any sort of requirement to tell you of this in advance. In fact, he might not even tell you at all. It’s possible that you might find out from an internet report or on television prior to your boss talking with you.
To add to this, now imagine that there was a deadline once a year that once reached, you could no longer be relocated. Further, in advance of this deadline your boss would be talking with members of the media about potential destinations for workers such as yourself. Finally, imagine that people would ask you about this for weeks leading up to this deadline and in the various forms of media in the year 2013 there would be a series of rumors and denials about your future whereabouts.
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