23 Biggest Winners and Losers of the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline

The trade deadline is my favorite part of the year and the 2024 NBA Trade Deadline did not disappoint. It probably helps that my favorite team had the best day but we’ll get into that later.

And with every big event, there are winners and there are certainly losers.

Let’s start with the winners…

2024 NBA Trade Deadline Winners

1. New York Knicks: Knicks fans could be upset about the Knicks trading away RJ Barrett, Obi Toppin, Immanuel Quickley and Quentin Grimes but the benefit of drafting well is being able to use their potential as a mystery box to trick teams into giving them guys like OG Anunoby and Bojan Bogdanovic.

Joel Embiid’s knee is inside out.

Doc Rivers is in Milwaukee.

The Knicks already sonned the Cleveland Cavaliers last season.

The Miami Heat simply do not have enough talented players.

The Knicks have a genuine opportunity to make it to the NBA Finals this season and young guys don’t win playoff games. Veterans do.

I loved Quentin Grimes but I could no longer support his noticeable fear of failure where he’d hot potato the ball or make lightspeed, almost out-of-control decisions. Playing in Detroit will hopefully give him the freedom to play more freely and make the mistakes young players make without being immediately yanked from the floor. Grimes has a bright future as a key role player on a playoff team. This is his chance to prove that.

Bojan Bogdanovic and Alec Burks are both shooting 40% and are both capable of getting their own buckets which the Knicks are going to need in the playoffs when Jalen Brunson is on the bench or when he’s getting double-teamed.

This is the best Knicks roster of my lifetime. AND THEY DIDN’T EVEN GIVE UP ANY FIRST-ROUND PICKS GO NEW YORK GO NEW YORK GO.

2. Forkan Korkmaz: On July 4th, 2017, Korkmaz signed with the Philadelphia 76ers and after 7 years of being trapped in the Sixers basement being chained to a radiator, the SWAT team stormed the team facility and rescued Korkmaz from his imprisonment.

Somewhere in the world, Korkmaz sits on a street curb with a blanket over his shoulders, sipping hot cocoa while the detective on the scene writes down his witness statements.

In 2018, Korkmaz requested a trade. The team has finally granted his wishes and sent him to the Indiana Pacers. The man must be struggling with PTSD.

He was on the Sixers when the team president, Bryan Colangelo, was caught using burners on Twitter.

He was on the team when Kawhi Leonard hit that Game 7 game-winner that bounced off the rim 1,032 times before going in.

He was on the team when Ben Simmons was afraid to dunk over Trae Young.

Free at last, free at last.

3. Gordon Hayward: From Indiana to Utah to Boston to Charlotte and now to Oklahoma City, Gordon Hayward has done an incredible job of ensuring he only plays basketball in front of fans whose favorite song is the National Anthem.

4. OKCPD: I’m going to assume Gordon Hayward’s wife has already visited the local Oklahoma City Police Department and showed them how grateful she is to be in their city.

5. Tom Thibodeau: Thibs’s 2nd favorite point guard of all time is Derrick Rose, right behind Alec Burks.

Asked Thibodeau if Rose goes into lineup when available, he said Burks has been the best option. https://t.co/cIz4N29Fe4

— Stefan Bondy (@SbondyNBA) February 23, 2022

He’s even benched Derrick Rose FOR Alec Burks. Tom Thibodeau is reunited with his muse.

6. Michael Reinsdorf: The Chicago Bulls haven’t made a trade since 2021. Michael Reinsdorf is the team president as well as the son of the 87-year-old owner. My man makes 7 figures a year and keeps his phone on Do Not Disturb during the trade deadline so he can enjoy his vacation in Santorini in peace.

7. Masai Ujiri: On the other side of the spectrum is Toronto Raptors team president, Masai Ujiri, just looooooves chatting on the phone with other team GMs. There is no reason why the Raptors gave up a first-round pick to Utah for Kelly fucking Olynyk, especially with Olynyk being in the last few months of his contract.

8. The Charlotte Hornets roster: With Grant Williams coming to town, these Hornets players now have a guy to carry their luggage from the plane to the hotel. They all have lunch money now—directly from Grant Williams’s wallet. And I’m sure they’ll let Grant out of that locker when they get back.

9 Bruce Brown: Teams were in a battle royal with the victor getting the opportunity to give the Toronto Raptors all of their future first-round picks in exchange for Bruce Brown and his 12 points a game.

10. Joe Harris: Joe Harris was waived by the Pistons and is rumored to be talking to playoff teams within minutes of being cut. Harris played 16 games this season. The highest-paid coach in the NBA and owner of the longest losing streak in NBA history, Monty Williams, was giving Harris DNPs as if the man shooting 43% from 3 in his career couldn’t help the Pistons win basketball games. Monty Williams is a war criminal who will never see heaven. Monty Williams has done more damage to the city of Detroit than car manufactures replacing union workers with automated machines.

And now onto the losers…

2024 NBA Trade Deadline Losers

1. Los Angeles Lakers: The Woj tweet moments after the 3pm trade deadline saying the Lakers are staying with the team they have was my favorite moment of the day.

LeBron James and his team went as far as leaking to the press that LeBron’s agent, Rich Paul, and the Knicks team president, Leon Rose—who used to run a rival agency—had dinner as if to let the Lakers believe LeBron would opt-out of his contract and join the New York Knicks if the Lakers front office doesn’t improve the roster.

And the Lakers are calling LeBron’s bluff. It feels like the 2021 Russell Westbrook trade and the disaster that followed, made the Lakers realize LeBron has no idea how to evaluate talent and they’re no longer letting an elderly man tell them how to run their basketball organization.

But by standing up for themselves, they uh, still have the same team that’s barely above .500 and has no chance to make it out of the play-in, let alone the first round. Yike.

2. Dallas Mavericks: When you get the opportunity to sign Grant Williams to a 4-year, $53 million contract to then trade him at the deadline along with a first-round pick for an astronomically worse defender when you’re already the 22nd-ranked defense, you just HAVE to do it. PJ Washington, Tim Hardaway Jr, Kyrie Irving and Luka Doncic are about to give up 250 points every night.

3. Buddy Hield: With zero playoff games in almost a decade in the NBA, Buddy Hield was playing for a team with true postseason aspirations and all of his stats were down from previous seasons. Hield is in a contract year and he’s about to be a crucial piece of a Sixers team led by Joel Embiid—who is historically terrible in the most important games in the year.

So all eyes will be on the Sixers in the first round when Embiid, Tobias Harris and Buddy Hield score a combined 23 points in an elimination game leading to Hield reluctantly having to settle for a minimum contract to play with the 60-year-old LeBron James in LA next year. As it was written.

4. Seth Curry: People might think it’s dope to come back and play for your hometown team but buddy, I don’t think that at age 33, Seth Curry wanted to leave a playoff team in Dallas to go lose every single night with a Hornets roster full of guys more worried about scheduling their next appointment to get their neck tattoos finished up than winning basketball games.

Not only with Seth be losing but he’ll also be losing in front of alllll his old hometown hoes. Seth Curry needs to link up with Kai Jones’s dealer to start taking whatever made that young man so sweaty on IG live so the Hornets cut him too.

5. Dejounte Murray: I imagine playing with Trae Young is as fun as getting kicked in the genitals with steel-toe boots. Dejounte Murray was so close to freedom but the Hawks were looking for a perfect offer and didn’t get one. Welp, back to getting kicked in the dick.

6. PJ Tucker: PJ Tucker wanted to be traded to a team that will actually play him minutes.

PJ Tucker is not happy… pic.twitter.com/iho19gXBp2

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) February 8, 2024

He was not.

7. DeMar DeRozan: I’m sure DeMar would have liked to spend the rest of this season on a team with a better chance of actually winning a title. Especially considering he turns 35 in the summer and doesn’t have many more years left of playing basketball at a high level.

8. Killian Hayes: Killian Hayes demanded a trade and instead, got fired. Head on over to Indeed.com, my friend.

10. KD and Booker: Kevin Durant and Devin Booker need more help than Bradley Beal once a week and the best they could get is Royce fucking O’Neale.

11. Josh Giddey: Suddenly, with Gordon Hayward in town, the police are following the team everywhere they go. A guy like Josh Giddey miiiiiight start getting nervous that maaaaybe they’re re-opening an investigation but in reality, they’re just keeping Gordon’s wife company.

12. Julius Randle: There are real NBA Finals expectations on the New York Knicks now with these new roster upgrades which means Julius Randle will be in his head even more than usual in the playoffs. Randle shoots 34% from the field in his playoff career. That’s disgusting. He is about to get exposed when Jalen Brunson scores 50 in a Game 7 but the Knicks lose because Randle scored 9 points on 1-for-14 shooting and 9 turnovers. Randle is about to have an AWFUL summer.

13. Evan Fournier: Fournier played 39 more minutes of NBA basketball this season than I did. My man was making a cool $20 million watching the Knicks in frontcourt seats and now he might be forced to actually work again. All of his PTO is up.

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