Are you hoping that the Los Angeles Clippers will move DeAndre Jordan? Or that they’ll deal Lou Williams?
Do you want to see the Memphis Grizzlies hit reset and ship out Marc Gasol? How about Mike Conley?
Is part of you secretly pulling for the Cleveland Cavaliers to trade their Brooklyn Nets pick? Or for the reigning Eastern Conference champions to make any significant move at all?
Are you in the camp of those who believe the Charlotte Hornets should trade Kemba Walker? And that the New York Knicks should become aggressive sellers? And that the Denver Nuggets should be fervent buyers?
Do you, with every fiber of being, hope the NBA will deliver an active, verging on chaotic, trade deadline?
If you’re rooting for any of these things, you’re not alone. You also might be barreling toward immense disappointment, because people around the league aren’t expecting any major shakeups ahead of the Feb. 8 cutoff, according to The Washington Post‘s Tim Bontemps:
The consensus among the throng of scouts and executives who convened at the Hershey Centre in Mississauga, a Toronto suburb (and, more importantly, home town of former NBA forward and St. Bonaventure legend Andrew Nicholson), is that this year’s trade deadline looks like it will be a dud. . . .
Even the one executive who thought the deadline could be more active than people think had this to say: “There are plenty of good players to be had, but the problem is no one wants to take anything back.”
Don’t fret too much about this news. Things can change over the next couple of weeks.
Right now, at least part of the relative inactivity is owed to the league’s superfluous treadmills. There aren’t a ton of teams who have the motivation to chase the Golden State Warriors as buyers; there also aren’t a lot of squads who find themselves unequivocally out of the playoff picture.
Some of this will shift before Feb. 8, with the emergence of more last-minute sellers. And that, in turn, should incite some 11th-hour buyers. So even with most teams unwilling to take back bad contracts or include first-round picks as impact sweeteners, we should still get treated to a handful of intriguing developments.
They just might not be the blockbuster-sized ones we were hoping for.
