Tag: NBA Trades

Mo Bamba, Kevin Durant headline Longhorns traded before NBA deadline

Mo Bamba and Kevin Durant will look to bring new teams on playoff runs.

Two big name Longhorns will play for new teams moving forward. Kevin Durant and Mo Bamba were included in significant moves for each player’s new respective franchise.

After high profile teammate and close friend Kyrie Irving was moved to Dallas, Durant became the biggest move of the trading period. He joins Chris Paul, Devin Booker and DeAndre Ayton in what could now be the best team in the Western Conference.

The blockbuster move cost the Suns Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder and four first round draft picks. In adding Durant, the Phoenix signals it is committed to winning it all this season.

Mo Bamba became another huge trade acquisition joining LeBron and the Los Angeles Lakers. In exchange for Bamba, the Orlando Magic receive defensive ace Patrick Beverly.

Bamba hasn’t yet lived up to his lottery pick billing in Orlando, though he had a strong 2021 season. That year he put up a respectable 10.6 points per game to go with 8.1 rebounds.

Bamba will look to capitalize on a change of scenery, while Durant will push to make another NBA Finals run.

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Podcast: With NBA trade season here, what should the Rockets do?

NBA trade season unofficially began Thursday, so what might that mean for general manager Rafael Stone and the Rockets? @BenDuBose, @PauloAlvesNBA, and @stanfordkp discuss.

Thursday is Dec. 15, and each year, that date is the unofficial kickoff to NBA trade season. It is the date most players who signed new contracts in the offseason become trade eligible, and it opens many more trade possibilities, since each team has a much easier path to meeting salary matching rules.

So, what does that mean for the Houston Rockets and third-year general manager Rafael Stone? It might not mean much, since they likely will not want to jeopardize the significant salary cap room they’re in line to have in the 2023 offseason.

Even so, some situations may need resolving, such as Eric Gordon and KJ Martin, whom recent reports addressed. Thursday’s episode of The Lager Line podcast (sponsored by Clutch City Lager of Karbach Brewing) explores the likely outcomes and what the path forward should be for Stone and the Rockets.

The show also features reaction to Houston’s recent upturn in play and its five-game home winning streak, along with insight on how fans should balance those short-term improvements versus any potential detriment to their 2023 NBA draft lottery odds.

Thursday’s full podcast can be listened to below. With Ben DuBose and Paulo Alves as hosts, each episode of the weekly show is also available via flagship radio station SportsTalk 790, as well as to all major podcast distributors under “The Lager Line.”

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Where have the Boston Celtics landed among the NBA’s biggest trades of the last 20 years?

Not as high as some might assume, but a good showing nonetheless.

With every NBA season come trades that change the structure of not only the teams that make them, but oftentimes the structure of the league itself when they are involving players of a certain star level.

And while such mega-deals are by nature not especially common, at least one or two happen every year that change our expectations — if not realities — of how that respective season will play out. The Boston Celtics have made several such deals in recent league history, but where have they stacked up against the other major moves in the Association over the last 20 years?

ESPN’s Tim Bontemps broke out his magnifying glass to try and rank the biggest deals of the last two decades, and the Celtics came up twice out of the top 15 such trades in Bontemps’ estimation.

Celtics Lab 128: Assessing the Boston Celtics offseason in difficult times with Jared Dubin

The Celtics are nearly done building a contender while we sort through some trying times beyond basketball, and in this episode of the Celtics Lab podcast, FiveThirtyEight’s Jared Dubin helps us do both.

If the Boston Celtics are not done with their team-building activities in the 2022 NBA offseason, they are very likely close to it. A contract for the soon-to-be bought-out veteran forward Danilo Gallinari was quickly followed by a trade of a top-12 protected first-round draft pick, a pair of deep rotation players, and a trio of garbage time specialists for Malcolm Brogdon.

Not long after, Boston inked forward Sam Hauser and veteran big man Luke Kornet, and save perhaps for bringing on another reserve big man to eat some regular-season minutes for Al Horford and Robert Williams III, the Celtics could very well be finished with their 2022-23 roster.

To that end, we linked up with FiveThirtyEight’s Jared Dubin to talk all things Celtics offseason assessments, and wrap up our conversation with some words about covering the league in the midst of some very contentious times far beyond the game of basketball.

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Join your usual hosts Cameron Tabatabaie, Alex Goldberg, and Justin Quinn as we talk through team building in difficult times on this episode of the CLNS Media “Celtics Lab” podcast.

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This post originally appeared on Celtics Wire.

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There’s a real chance Kevin Durant might leave the Brooklyn Nets if Kyrie Irving isn’t there and that’s so wild

Kevin Durant might actually be willing to leave Brooklyn for Kyrie Irving

Kyrie Irving’s leverage play to get a deal done in Brooklyn looks like it’s going pretty well so far. We may be witnessing the end of this era of the Nets as we know it.

Irving is reportedly looking for a long-term commitment and a max extension from Brooklyn. The Nets don’t really seem to want to give him one after he only played 103 games for them in 3 seasons, which seems pretty reasonable.

Kevin Durant does not care about that at all, though. It’s either KD and Kyrie or it’s nothing — at least, if the things currently being reported are true.

We might be seeing the end of this era of the Brooklyn Nets as we know it. That’s so wild.

Five Boston Celtics players listed among HoopsHype assessment of NBA’s 100 best trade targets

As one might expect of a team in the NBA Finals, Boston has a lot of talent other teams would love to pry loose.

The Boston Celtics are not likely to be making any blockbuster trades any time in the short term future given how well their current core is doing in the 2022 NBA Finals, but it is not out of the question that the team might try to consolidate a little talent in the 2022 offseason if their goal of hanging Banner 18 ends up falling short.

And if they do, they happen to be among the best-positioned teams in the league according to a new assessment of the top 100 potential trade targets around the NBA put together by the good folks at our sister site HoopsHype.

Let’s take a look at how they assessed the Celtics’ roster for potential trade value.

A reported secret beef between James Harden and Kevin Durant may have led to the Nets trading for Ben Simmons

It looks like things were such a big mess in Brooklyn.

We’re nearly a week removed from the NBA’s trade deadline last week and it is still pretty unbelievable that what happened actually happened.

The Ben Simmons trade we were all waiting on the 76ers for finally happened. But no one expected the player on the other end to be James Harden.

James freaking Harden is a Philadelphia 76er. Ben Simmons is a Brooklyn Net. And just about everyone in the basketball world is sort of confused by all of this.

The Nets were just leading the Eastern Conference last month. The question everyone wants to be answered is simply how did this happen? How did things deteriorate so quickly in Brooklyn that they led to a trade of one of the key cogs of the Scary Hours big 3?

Well, according to Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report, things had been shaping up this way for a few weeks.

The Nets had apparently grown weary of Harden’s effort level and his conditioning while, on his end, Harden was frustrated with Kyrie Irving’s absence because of his refusal to be vaccinated as well as the team’s free-flowing play style. He reportedly wanted to get back to the iso-ball he was so good at in Houston.

It reportedly got to the point where things were so bad that Harden would “roll his eyes” when coaches called after-time-out plays for Durant.

Tensions continued to boil up until Durant reportedly had enough and told GM Sean Marks and the Nets front office to get the trade done.

“Kevin was like: ‘F–k it. James isn’t bringing s–t,” another figure with knowledge of Brooklyn added. “I don’t think that would have happened without Kevin making that decision.”

It’s truly a shame things had to end this way between Harden and the Nets. No matter what sort of tension there was off the court between the Irving, Harden and Durant, the on-court results were there when they played. They went 13-3 through 16 games with one of the most explosive offenses we’ve ever seen.

Regardless, it’s done now. This is all in the past and all parties have moved on. Hopefully, now, everyone can be happy.

Domantas Sabonis trade grades: Who won the Pacers and Kings deal?

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The Pacers did it. They actually did it. It was hard to imagine a world where they actually traded Domantast Sabonis, but they did.

Sabonis is a Sacramento King now. He goes into a situation where, there’s lots of uncertainty, but he’ll be treated like the star he believes he is — something he just never truly found in Indiana.

And the centerpiece the Pacers get back is Tyrese Haliburton who has become the third best player in the 2020 NBA draft behind Anthony Edwards and LaMelo Ball. He’s shown tons of potential as a lead guard and now he’ll get to run his own show in Indiana instead of playing in the shadow of De’Aaron Fox.

This is a wild deal. We knew the Kings were going to do something at the deadline, but we didn’t know it was this. They just went full Kangz on us.

Let’s break it down.

The Clippers just set themselves up pretty nicely for years to come with the Norman Powell trade

What a brilliant move.

This was supposed to be a down season for the Clippers, wasn’t it? I mean, typically after a team loses it’s star player for the season they completely fold their hand and tank for a year.

It wasn’t just one star for the Clippers, either. Not only did they lose their biggest star in Kawhi Leonard for the season with his torn ACL, but they’ve also lost Paul George for an indefinite amount of time with a shoulder injury. This team should clearly not be good.

Yet, here they are in the thick of things as the West’s 8th seed despite not having any star power to work with. And they just got a bit better.

Per ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, The Clippers traded Eric Bledsoe, Justise Winslow, Keon Johnson and a future second-round pick for Norman Powell and Robert Covington.

This is a straight-up fleece for the Clippers.

Not only did they get the best player in this deal, but they didn’t give up much of anything to get him. And they’re going to be so good in, both, the long and the short-term because of it.

Major, medium, minor, or no moves at the trade deadline: A history of Celtics mid-season transactions

What can Boston’s past behavior around the deadline teach us about their future?

What sort of moves have the Boston Celtics made at the trade deadline historically over the last decade? We might not be able to tell as much about what that could mean for the future given the previous decade’s transactions took place under the tenure of previous President of Basketball Operations Danny Ainge.

But we could still glean something about what might be coming down the pike for new team president Brad Stevens’ front office given a fair amount of the voices in the room remained the same for the Celtics in the transition.

With that in mind, let’s take a look at whether Boston made major, medium, minor or no moves around the NBA trade deadline over the course of the last 10 years with a little help from the CLNS Media “Celtics Lab” podcast Twitter account.