It’s 10 days until the NBA trade deadline, and usually right now the chatter among NBA teams about potential deals is ramping up to a huge wave fans everywhere just try to ride.
This season, it’s a ripple in a pond.
Mark Cuban said this is a pretty standard year. “Relative to other years in terms of trade talk, I don’t think it’s really any different,’’ he said. But it feels different, quieter. Sure, teams tend to wait until the last second, but there is usually a lot of chatter, a lot of rumors.
This season there is the big ‘Melodrama, and in the coming days we will finally have some answer to what is next for Carmelo Anthony. Frankly, that can’t come soon enough.
But after that… not much. Not exactly crickets as there are guys being shopped — Antawn Jamison, O.J. Mayo, Andre Miller — but there is not a lot of chatter.
Part of it is the usual “contending team looks to add key veteran” market is non-existent. Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak said he was serious about making a move, but unless he wants to ship Andrew Bynum out he doesn’t have any assets a team is looking for (older players under big, long contracts are not attractive).
Orlando? Already made their big move. Boston? Maybe a small deal to provide depth with Marquis Daniels out, but nothing serious. Miami? They would love a big but have no trade assets anybody wants. Spurs? They’re doing just fine, thank you very much. Chicago? They’d love a two guard but it’s going to have to be a really good deal to make it happen.
Sean Deveney at The Sporting News taps into the other issue putting a damper on trade talks.
But what’s really strangling this year’s trade market is the uncertainty of the next collective bargaining agreement, for which commissioner David Stern has put just about everything on the table — franchise player tags, a hard salary cap, a severe rollback in players’ salaries. What often happens at the deadline is one struggling team with a high-priced star deals that contract away for an expiring contract and either young players or draft picks. That sort of deal figures to be hard to come by in this environment.
Most front-office executives remain tight-lipped about the new CBA. But there’s no question it’s having an impact on how teams are viewing their trade possibilities. “It’s really not the time to be giving up draft picks, which are one of the few things that you can figure on as far as being valuable assets,” one general manager told Sporting News. “There’s a lot of risk in just not knowing how things will shake out. You never know, things could change in the next week, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of teams are looking to pull the trigger right now.”
And most GMs by their nature seem risk averse (you’d be that way two if everything you did at your job were second-guessed in public forums the way a GM’s choices are). So this year may be quieter. Or, maybe Cuban is right and we’re all wrong. Again.