NBA trades are not competitions

Trades in the NBA don't have to result in winners and losers, because "winning" trades is not the point. Winning games, now or later, is the point.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Death and Life; Gustav Klimt; 1908-15

Assigning “winners” and “losers” in NBA trades is a bizarre tradition. NBA trades are not competitions. The point of executing a trade should never be to win a trade. I dare say that no NBA front office leader ever views a trade as a binary good-bad, win-lose scenario.

The point of a trade is to improve conditions on the team to allow it to win games, now or in the future. Analysis that declares wins and losses in the trade game reflect only the analyst’s preferences around NBA team-building, and this analysis reflects reality only insomuch as the analyst’s preferences are empirically correct.

Some analysts will allow themselves to judge multiple teams involved in a trade as “winners.” Occassionally this logic will allow analysts to also call both parties “losers.” But most often, the determination of “winners” and “losers” are made based on how the analyst feels about:

1. The team’s direction and overall strategy

2. The reputation of the team and front office personnel making the trade

3. The players involved

The best way to earn the ire of analysts when making an NBA trade is to trade for win-now assets when you are nowhere close to winning a championship. This dogma may now (hopefully) be cracking a little bit, but for the past decade and a half the predominant view among the most prominent NBA media personalities (and their critical descendants) has been that winning championships is the only valid goal of an NBA team. I definitely came up as an NBA blogger and columnist in this philosophical lineage. (Here I am defending institutional tanking as a victimless crime in 2013.) This paradigm reflects the rise of Ringz Culture, the invention and perfection of institutional tanking, the popularization and demonization of the “Treadmill of Mediocrity,” which has somehow been perverted from its original definition to, in the minds of many, capture like 90% of the league that isn’t winning championships or coming extremely close.

This whole philosophy — that if you’re not contending, you should be rebuilding — is, in my estimation, the predominant belief about NBA team-building and has been for a long time. So front offices who spit in the face of that philosophy by trading draft capital or young players for a package more suited for near-term success when they are not in position to be a title favorite — they get the backlash.

Yes, I’m talking about the Domantas Sabonis-Tyrese Haliburton trade. Again.

Sabonis was a multi-time All-Star at a need position on a good contract. Haliburton was a stud young lead guard on a team with a slightly older, slightly less promising lead guard on a huge contract (De’Aaron Fox). The Kings were riding a 15-year playoff drought when they made the move. Prominent analysts were near universal in their contempt for the Kings’ decision. The Kings were deemed “losers” of the trade in the conventional wisdom.

But what were the goals of the Kings and the Pacers? Sacramento wanted to improve as quickly as possible and break the playoff drought. Indiana wanted to get younger and give themselves a longer runway. Sacramento was not competing with Indiana in any sense when they discussed the trade. Neither was Indiana competing with Sacramento. Both teams had divergent objectives, and mutually pursued those. Sacramento wanted to improve its chances to win now, and made a move to faciliate that goal. Indiana wanted to improve its chances to win later, and made a move to facilitate that goal.

Sabonis was named to the All-Star team and third team All-NBA, Fox blossomed into an All-Star in Haliburton’s absence, and the Kings made the playoffs for the first time since 2006. Haliburton was named to the All-Star team and looks like a foundational superstar for the Pacers, who ended up in the lottery in 2023, helping them add another young piece to the project.

Both teams came into those trade talks with goals. One team — the so-called loser of the trade — has already accomplished its mission. The other — the universal winner of the trade — also seems well on its path to meeting its objective.

The reason so many were so quick to deem the Kings losers of this trade comes down to the three bullets I shared above:

1. Most don’t believe that merely making the playoffs (even after a 16-year drought) is a lofty enough goal, and in fact can short-circuit the “valid” objective of competing for a championship.

2. The Kings were a running joke for nearly two decades, and no one knew anything about the people now running the front office.

3. Haliburton is (rightly) a darling of the NBA media. Sabonis, who is older and thus has had more exposure of his limitations, has critics.

To this day there are still folks criticizing the Kings’ trade despite the fact that the Kings have already met their goal with Sabonis being the single biggest factor (among several). The apparent rationale is that, having traded Haliburton and escaped the lottery, the Kings have no path to the NBA Finals. In other words, it’s an invalidation of the Kings’ goals of being simply “not embarrassing.” Ringz or nothing. If you’re not first, you’re last.

I reject this thinking. A healthy NBA should feature some teams striving to improve year over year, teams some striving to maintain their level. It should feature some teams striving fully to win a championship and some teams focusing on the future. A healthy NBA competitive balance isn’t 30 teams each winning 41 games. It’s not five teams gunning for a title and 25 teams tanking. It’s a solid mix of teams at different points in their paths, allowing for compelling narratives, rivalries and playoff series.

Of course, in the service of talking about moves and team-building strategies and the pros and cons of certain players and combinations, in talking about asset management and team pivots, in looking both ahead and backward in the narrative arc of a team — judging trades on their merits is totally useful and interesting. In my argument here, I’m not trying to “yuck anyone’s yum.” I just hope the discourse around trades can become a little more nuanced, a little less binary and a little more accepting of alternative viewpoints on what teams’ goals should be and what a healthy NBA looks like. That’s all.

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Links

A couple of pieces by the spectacularly productive

Marc Stein

. First: his take on who the Rockets are chasing (with some strays about the Raptors). Second, some good chatter on a Deandre Ayton-to-Dallas trade that fell through on draft night.

Zach Lowe for ESPN+ on what the NBA team executive community is learning or not learning from the Heat’s miracle run to the Finals.

Big Howard Beck offseason primer.

Nick Nurse is out as the Canadian men’s national team head coach. Kings assistant Jordi Fernandez will take over. Big summer at the FIBA World Cup for Team Canada.

Add another interesting name to free agency: Donte DiVincenzo is opting out of his deal with the Warriors.

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Alright, back on Thursday. Be excellent to each other.