NBA Trading Places: Winners and losers so far

by UK American Sports Fans

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Two weeks ago everybody’s favourite NBA ‘insiders’ celebrated “Sources Say Day”, a day (July 1st) where the biggest free agents hit the market. Front offices of teams looking to move up in the NBA power rankings attempt to clear up cap space and evaluate the worth of their assets, taking into account the picks they have for coming years and players they feel aren’t contributing.

This year only a few teams have taken in the plunge in spending big. Newly rebranded New Orleans Pelicans have given a big money contract to Tyreke Evans and acquired Jrue Holiday. The Nets have assembled the latest ‘super-team’ in the league orchestrating a trade that brought in Celtics trio Garnett, Pierce and Jason Terry to add to their already star studded roster headed by rookie coach Jason Kidd. Detroit have moved to add Josh Smith to their roster luring him away from Atlanta, where at one point it was rumoured that Smith and Native Georgian Dwight Howard could’ve linked up at the Hawks this season.

Howard, however, chose to take his talents to a young and upcoming team and his chequebook to a state where he won’t be taxed, Dwight Howard is now a Houston Rocket, teaming up with superstar in the making James Harden turning the Rockets into genuine contenders in the West.

So who have been the biggest winners and losers from the past two weeks?

Indiana Pacers

The Pacers stretched Lebron and the Heat to seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. Arguably man-for-man in the starting line-up, the Pacers got the better of Miami for long stretches of the game, but failed to sustain any dominance for long periods of time due to a weak bench; a bench where the only players giving them hard minutes were Tyler Hansborough (not a scorer), David West and Jarrett Jack.

The Pacers have been trade winners so far this off-season, they resigned David West despite interest from elsewhere, they traded out Hansborough and in return have brought in good role players in Chris Copeland and C.J Watson and they’ll be boosted by the return of captain and all-star Danny Granger for the 13/14 NBA season. If critics out there truly believed that all they needed was a stronger bench, then you’d have to argue that Indiana are a definite for the 2nd or 3rd seed in the east depending on how this new super team in Brooklyn works out.

To add to the positive vibe floating around the Pacers organisation former player MVP, coach of the year and executive of the year Larry Bird has returned to the front office.

Los Angeles Lakers

The Lakers have simply been losers so far this offseason, they failed to convince the best centre in the league to re-sign with (Kobe’s patronising pitch surprisingly didn’t work), Metta World Peace has been amnestied to save even more cash and Kobe himself isn’t even going to be available till at least November.

This team is bottoming out. They owe Kobe $30m this year alone, as well as having to pay a luxury tax bill of $29m; this is a huge amount of money and due to the failure to bring Howard back to Hollywood, the team is now purposefully tanking.

Tanking could arguably prove to be a great move, the 2014 draft class is reported to be the best in terms of depth of talent for over a decade with prospects such as Andrew Wiggins and Jabari Parker hitting the market and the Lakers seem to be scratching off the upcoming season to gain themselves a potentially franchise changing pick.

The draft however is what it says on the tin – a lottery.

The Lakers front office heading by Jim Buss have made some poor decisions in recent months that has culminated in making arguably the most famous basketball team in the world relying a lucky draft pick and hoping that a 34 year old veteran will return from a ruptured Achilles injury.

It’s tough to call a lot of teams ‘losers’ this off-season due to the obvious tactics being played by front office members across the league to prepare for the big 2014 draft and with Lebron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh set to hit the market as well next summer is going to be five times as confusing, exciting and explosive in the NBA.