thelesterlee
This year’s NBA trade deadline is February 6th, 3pm Eastern. So far, all we’ve got is Dorian Finney-Smith and Nick Richards changing teams. The NBA is dry as hell at the moment.
Not on the court.
On the court we’re witnessing some of the best basketball I’ve ever watched but I want to shake the league up a bit.
Here are 5 blockbuster trade ideas that would shift the entire NBA landscape.
Disclaimer: I tried my best to sort of match salaries but yea, obviously add whatever draft picks you want in your head to make these deals make more sense for you. The stakes are suuuuper low here.
1. Giannis Antentokoumpo To Dallas
Giannis Antentokoumpo for Kyrie Irving, Dereck Lively, Jaden Hardy and some picks
The Damian Lillard trade instantly closed the Milwaukee Bucks championship window.
The Bucks have a roster full of expensive old men—Dame or Khris Middleton or Brock Lopez—that no other team wants.
The Bucks aren’t some magic trade away from the top of the standings. They’d have to acquire draft picks and slowly rebuild their foundation so #FreeGiannis.
I know it was en vogue to call Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving the most talented backcourt ever last season but you know what would actually be the best 2-man duo in the NBA? Luka and Giannis.
Milwaukee made the Dame trade to give Giannis a scoring point guard to run pick-and-rolls.
Lillard isn’t interested in that.
Or if he is, it only shows up once a week and the rest of the time he’s sitting in his windowless Wisconsin apartment scrolling through Miami Zillow.
We’ve seen how many easy buckets Luka can generate for Dereck Lively and Daniel Gafford.
Giannis might average 30 a game off alley-oops alone.
2. Anthony Davis to New York
Anthony Davis for OG Anunoby, Precious Achiuwa and some picks
The Knicks biggest problem is their interior defense because Karl-Anthony Towns has a negative vertical where he somehow gets smaller whenever he tries to leave the Earth.
SO LET’S BRING BACK THE NEW YORK TWIN TOWERS BAYBEEEEEEEEEEEE.
Anthony Davis and Karl-Anthony Towns would be a living hell on both sides of the floor.
AD is a DPOY level defender and KAT with the ball in his hands at the top of the 3-point arch is unstoppable—hitting 3’s, driving to the basket on slower big men and passing to cutters, one of those cutters now being Anthony Davis.
Shout out to OG Anunoby.
He truly brought this Knicks team to another level immediately upon his arrival but once he signed that 5-year $212 million contract, he was a depreciating asset like the moment you drive a new car off the lot.
OG’s skillset is physicality, a tool that costs him every time he uses it. OG is not long for this league, I fear.
Someone’s going to read this and think to themselves “Anthony Davis can’t play Tom Thibodeau minutes“, well, he’ll have to.
Honestly, I think AD, KAT, Brunson and Bridges would win every game by 50 and they’d be on the bench resting by halftime.
3. Joel Embiid to Miami
Joel Embiid for Jimmy Butler and Jamie Jaquez
This trade should’ve been made already.
How many years can Joel Embiid limp around the Sixers facility, showing up whenever he wants, playing whenever he wants, losing in the playoffs year after year—before Philadelphia realizes he is a detriment to their success?
The team should be built around Tyrese Maxey and that kid who gyrates on TikTok for teenage girls.
But I also think the Eastern Conference is weak this season so why not bring in Jimmy Butler to join Tyrese and Paul George and make one big run at it with playoff Jimmy—one of the best postseason performers I’ve ever seen, capable of dragging Caleb Martin and Max fucking Strus to the NBA Finals—instead of Joel who we last saw mentally melt against the Knicks, whining for every call and putting Mitchell Robinson in the Ankle Lock.
The Process is dead. Stop trying to make The Process happen.
Also if you think Embiid for Butler straight up is a bad deal for Miami I’d like to point out that one player has an MVP trophy and the other is a barista.
4. Kevin Durant to Detroit
Kevin Durant for Tobias Harris, Tim Hardaway Jr and Ausar Thompson
The Phoenix Suns should trade Devin Booker, and to the Houston Rockets. He’ll have a way larger return than Kevin Durant.
Houston has a ton of valuable assets to throw at Phoenix like a middle-aged busty Russian woman using a frail dork for American citizenship on 90-Day Fiance. Throw those assets around Houston. Get that green card, y’all.
However, it doesn’t make sense to move on from 28-year-old Devin Booker but keep 36-year-old Durant making $50 million this season and next.
Kevin Durant loves telling us how much he just wants to “hoop” so throw on a Pistons jersey and run the 2-man weave with Cade Cunningham for a couple years.
Detroit has a little juice right now.
They’ve won 7 of their last 10 games, including a 5-game win streak wins victories over a Magic team that shows up to the arena with switchblades ready to die at midcourt and a Timberwolves team led by Julius Randle, Rudy Gobert and Naz Reid throwing elbows and uppercuts for two straight hours.
Kevin Durant is better than Tobias Harris and Tim Hardaway Jr, believe it or not.
Detroit adds KD and they could take homecourt in an Eastern Conference full of teams incapable of putting together two consecutive weeks of good basketball.
5. LeBron James to Denver
LeBron James, Christian Wood for Michael Porter Jr, Zeke Nnaji and Dario Saric
I was looking around the league and the Denver Nuggets and Minnesota Timberwolves were the only two teams with generational stars who have 5+ years of MVP-caliber ball in them.
The T-Wolves Julius Randle experiment is too funny for me to mess with any of that.
These trades are for my entertainment and nothing is more entertaining than Randle grabbing a defensive rebound, stampeding down the court, lowering his shoulder into a defender’s chest like 2005 LenDale White, receiving a blatant offensive foul and then pouting for the next 47 minutes. Julius Randle turnovers are my safe space<3
So I had to figure out how to make the Denver Nuggets better.
Nikola Jokic, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook and DeAndre Jordan vs. Everyone.
I’m not sure non-Lakers viewers know that LeBron, at 76 years old, is averaging 23.8 points per game on 51% shooting from the field and 40% from 3. He has just about the same shooting percentages as Michael Porter Jr so they’re replacing MPJ’s singular skill of perimeter shooting and upgrading it to a guy who can ALSO be an entire offensive engine capable of Nikola Jokic-level playmaking.
Personally, I think if you have a chance to replace arguably the dumbest player in the NBA with one of the smartest, you should probably do it every time.
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