#360view: NBA teams save themselves for a dramatic summer

Jay Asser 11:23 20/02/2016
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  • Free agency candidate: Dwight Howard.

    The NBA trade deadline came and went, but our unquenched thirst for chaos will have to wait until the summer when the real fireworks will light up the league.

    Every year, the trade deadline serves as a much-needed injection of excitement to revive the season in the middle of its long campaign. More importantly, it gives teams the chance to reshuffle their cards after three months worth of sample size to better position themselves going forward, whether that be for a playoff run or a rebuild.

    The reason why this trade deadline was disappointing was because of the potential it had to be one of the more memorable ones. It’s not often that so many players of All-Star calibre are available, but there was plenty of buzz in the past week surrounding the likes of Dwight Howard, Al Horford, Blake Griffin and Kevin Love.

    The decision to move a player, or not trade them in these cases, is never cut and dry, but Howard and Horford’s situations basically boiled down to their impending free agency. Both will be unrestricted free agents this off-season, which means any team trading for them is technically getting a short-term rental.

    There’s usually an agreement between the player and his new team of an extended stay, but that wasn’t the most significant factor at work in this trade deadline.

    Rather, it was the upcoming salary cap boom in the summer from roughly $70 million this season to about $90m for 2016-17, due to the new television contract kicking in. That will give franchises plenty of ammunition to work with, meaning they’ll be more patient right now.

    Why give up assets of value for Horford or Howard when you can sign them outright in a few months? Those scenarios, however, don’t pertain to Griffin or Love – two relatively young players on contenders who are locked into multi-year deals.

    Though you can certainly make the case that their respective teams should have traded them – the Los Angeles Clippers are 19-5 with Griffin sidelined to injury, while the Cleveland Cavaliers have yet to maximise Love on offence – it’s no surprise that neither was on the move at the deadline.

    Cleveland have no incentive to get rid of their stretch power forward, mostly based on past results. With both Love and Kyrie Irving out to injury in last year’s Finals, the Cavaliers still managed to take two games from the Golden State Warriors and it’s worth seeing if a fully healthy team makes all the difference.

    The Clippers, meanwhile, don’t have the same excuse as their core of Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan have failed to get out of the second round of the playoffs time and time again.

    That won’t stop coach and general manager Doc Rivers from believing his side deserve one last run, though. Rivers, as we’ve seen throughout his coaching career, is very loyal to his veterans, certainly to a fault at times.

    Trading a 26-year-old currently averaging 23.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 5.0 assists is not an easy ask, but at some point you have to realise you’re spinning your wheels.

    There’s a better possibility that both the Clippers and Cavaliers have that revelation after getting a hard dose of truth in the playoffs, rather than mid-season. We’ll have been made to wait for it, but the frenzy on the horizon will be well worth it.

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