Last season, with two days left before the 2011 NBA trade deadline expired on February 24, three separate trades went down starting a deadline deal frenzy that began with James Johnson going from Chicago to Toronto, Kostas Koufas being dealt to Denver from Minnesota, and of course the blockbuster between New York and Denver for Carmelo Anthony.
But until Anthony became a Knick, all was pretty much silent on the trade front and having Johnson and Koufas headline the NBA trade deadline nearly sent everyone to their graves.
The same scenario is playing out this year.
Instead of Anthony, fans around the league are waiting to see what will happen with Orlando’s Dwight Howard, if anything at all. So if history repeats itself, chances are some minor deals featuring marginal NBA players could trigger a domino effect for front offices starting today and leading up to Thursday’s NBA trade deadline.
The other option: this just might be the quietest trade deadline week in the history of the NBA.
If so, go ahead and blame the new collective bargaining agreement for your trade deadline depression.
Don’t be shocked if Thursday comes and goes and the maximum amount of deals that are reached are two or three. While fans screamed and shouted for the NBA lockout to end throughout last summer and fall, they had no idea the new CBA would change the way trades would play out the days leading up to March 15.
Those expiring contracts that were once so highly coveted by every front office apparently are not so enticing anymore. Ray Allen, Raymond Felton, Michael Beasley and Antawn Jamison all carry expiring contracts and, while all four players have had their names mentioned in trade scenarios, none of those deals appear concrete as owners are still trying to figure out how to navigate these new CBA waters.
And of course the most courted expiring contract of them all, Dwight Howard.
League wide, there is now more cap space with the new CBA, and those expiring contracts that once helped clear space for a team are not in high demand.
That is not to say that Howard is not in such high demand. Just as New Jersey, Golden State and even Orlando continue to schmooze the Magic’s all-star center. A number of teams are also apprehensive to add bloated salaries to their books in fear of a more stringent luxury-tax system in the future. No team is in a hurry to take on more money at this point.
The way it looks now for teams that are playoff bound, sticking with the roster they have intact just may be the best deal they are going to get at this juncture of a lockout-shortened season.
Then there is the “A” word to consider: amnesty.
Under the new CBA, teams did not have to utilize their amnesty clause immediately this season (under the old CBA, an “Amnesty” had to be used within a two-week period at the beginning of the CBA) and it actually made more sense for a lot of teams to hold on to their amnesty clause for the next two years. In other words, expect to see a number of players to be amnestied this coming offseason as teams begin to shed themselves of bad contracts. Remember, of the 30 teams in the league only seven — Cleveland, New York, Golden State, Portland, New Jersey, Indiana and Orlando — exercised their one-time amnesty provision back in December.
This is supposed to be the most newsworthy week of the NBA season, perhaps even more than All-Star Weekend and the Playoffs combined. Players being dealt, new deals going down daily, and the constant debate of if swapping “Player X” for “Player Y” really makes “Team Z” that much better.
But now we have a whole different set of letters to consider leading up to Thursday: CBA.
