5 Panic Trades NBA Fans Already Want to See
Patience among NBA fans is in short supply to begin with, and it can run out especially quickly when a season gets off to a rough start for reasons that were foreseeable over the summer.
But enough about the Los Angeles Lakers and their increasingly concerned supporters, or the Philly fans who are already looking to buy batteries in bulk.
Leave it up to the masses, and half the players in the league would have already been traded, waived or forced to make public apologies. Fortunately, front offices have more restraint than fans who observe two weeks of action and decide the season and everyone involved with it is either doomed or destined for greatness—no in-between.
Having said all that, let's indulge the restless by cooking up way-too-early (in many cases literally way-too-early because many offseason signees can't be dealt until Dec. 15) trades. All of these are designed to address an actual roster need, and the hope is to make them as plausible as possible. Ideally, the best criticism fans will be able to make about them is that they haven't already happened.
The Westbrook Trade Everyone's Been Talking About for Months
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The Trade: Los Angeles Lakers receive Myles Turner and Buddy Hield from the Indiana Pacers for Russell Westbrook and two unprotected first-round picks.
If you haven't come across this oft-rumored, long-discussed hypothetical swap by now, there's a good chance you're still using a dial-up modem to connect to the internet. It's just been sitting out there as the obvious quick fix for months.
This deal has some undeniable points in its favor, and one can sympathize with a desperate and frustrated Lakers fanbase that would view almost any change to the team's current state as an improvement. Turner and Hield would add two bona fide NBA starters to a roster that lacks them outside of LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and Hield is the kind of floor-warping three-point shooter who could punish paint-packing defenses. What better addition to the league's worst three-point-shooting team than the guy who's canned more treys (at a 39.8 percent clip, no less) than anyone not named Stephen Curry or James Harden since he entered the league in 2016-17?
There's probably even value to the franchise in not having to discuss Westbrook's fit, performance and happiness during every interaction with the media.
And yet, this is still a deal the Lakers should avoid. Their fans will clamor for it because an 0-4 start means the 2022-23 season is already circling the drain, which is why it belongs in this exercise. But, objectively, it doesn't improve the team enough to justify the cost of surrendering 2027 and 2029 first-rounders.
The fit between Turner and Anthony Davis up front could be dicey, and if the misguided Lakers somehow believe this deal will get them into playoff position, there's still the matter of Hield giving opposing offenses an obvious weak point to attack in a postseason series. It'd address the team's biggest current problem, Westbrook's damaging and increasingly untenable presence on the roster, but so would simply telling Russ to quit coming to work.
That second route would at least preserve the picks, L.A.'s only escape pods on this nosediving ship.
The Lakers aren't going to make louder playoff noise (if they can even get there in the first place) with Hield and Turner than they would with their current roster sans Westbrook. If they sacrifice the only two future first-rounders they're currently allowed to trade in exchange for an inconsequential short-term upgrade, it could doom them for the next decade.
The Suns Get Something for Nothing
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The Trade: Phoenix Suns receive Grayson Allen from the Milwaukee Bucks for Jae Crowder
The notion of opportunity cost means it's not quite right to say the Suns would get something for nothing by trading Crowder, who's contributing zero to the team while he awaits a deal. But every game that goes by with Crowder logging a "DNP-Mad About Contract Extension" is one Phoenix can't get back.
Despite all the offseason drama of Deandre Ayton's restricted free agency, owner Robert Sarver's plan to sell the team and, yes, Crowder's no-show, the Suns are good! Filling the Crowder void could make them great.
Maybe they won't win another 64 games, but they ought to be in the hunt for at least 55 victories, and that imparts some urgency—not the sky-is-falling panic Lakers fans are feeling, but an uneasiness tied to the idea of waste. Phoenix might be one rotation player away from warranting favorite status in a Western Conference defined this year by its parity. Granted, the Suns could wait until offseason signings are eligible to be dealt on December 15, which would deepen their pool of options. But fans in a panic aren't patient or rational, and a deal for Allen would bring instant gratification.
The Bucks are also a contender, and there's no such thing as too many tough, versatile defenders on a roster with championship designs. Crowder would give Milwaukee another big-wing body to throw at the Jayson Tatums of the world in the playoffs. Losing Allen would cost the Bucks one of their most dangerous shooters, but recency bias—Allen hit just five of his 24 deep attempts and didn't defend anybody in Milwaukee's conference semifinals loss to the Boston Celtics—could help grease the trade skids.
Phoenix is once again near the bottom of the league in three-point attempt frequency, ranking 26th through its first four games after checking in at No. 25 a year ago. Some of that owes to a personnel grouping led by Chris Paul and Devin Booker that excels in the mid-range area, but maybe the Suns would get up a few more triples if they had a specialist on the roster toting a career long-range hit rate of 39.0 percent.
Better Too Soon Than Too Late, Bulls Deal Patrick Williams
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The Trade: Chicago Bulls receive Jarred Vanderbilt from the Utah Jazz for Patrick Williams
On one hand, the Bulls' patience with Patrick Williams is easy to justify. The No. 4 pick in the 2020 draft shows flashes of defensive upside all the time, and at 21, he's far from fully formed. On the other, Williams' role is already shrinking this season, and his continued presence in the starting five is more an act of faith than a meritocratic reward.
What should the Bulls expect Williams to become? We're talking about a 21-year-old player in his third season averaging 6.2 points in 19.4 minutes per game. Across the last 20 years, there have been 32 other players matching those age/experience/production criteria, and Gerald Wallace (remember him?) was the only one who made a single All-Star Game in his career. Few ever became regular starters.
That doesn't condemn Williams to bust status, but history shows the odds are stacked heavily against him. Better for the Bulls to move on too soon than too late, preferably by sending Williams to an asset-hoarding team willing to take a gamble on a long shot with potential.
Chicago would sacrifice one of its only future assets by dealing Williams, but that'd be on-brand for a club that gave up Wendell Carter Jr. and two future firsts for Nikola Vucevic and dispensed with flexibility by executing a sign-and-trade for DeMar DeRozan a year before maxing out Zach LaVine. The Bulls are clearly in win-now mode, and have been for a while. Based on their bodies of work to date, Vanderbilt will help Chicago be a better team in the present than Williams.
Vando, who's only 23, already does many of the things the Bulls hope Williams someday will. He's a relentlessly energetic force, a dominant rebounder and one of the most disruptive defenders in the league. His 100th percentile ranking in steal rate at his position looks too good to be true until you note Vanderbilt rated in the 95th percentile last year and the 97th in 2020-21. He is a pure chaos engine.
If Chicago waits longer, and Williams eventually does find himself coming off the bench, his value will only further decrease—especially with rookie extension eligibility coming this offseason.
The Heat Finally Replace P.J. Tucker
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The Trade: Miami Heat receive Bojan Bogdanović from the Detroit Pistons for Nikola Jović and Duncan Robinson
Caleb Martin brings energy and has shot the ball well to start the season, but if you pumped the Heat full of truth serum, they'd confess that they still haven't really filled the void that opened up when P.J. Tucker signed with the Philadelphia 76ers in free agency.
Bogdanović, like Martin, is undersized as a power forward, but he occupied that slot just fine on some good Utah Jazz teams that also happened to have a dominant (albeit fundamentally different) defender at center. If anything, Bam Adebayo's ability to switch would protect Bogdanović from having to scramble around on the perimeter and might make things easier for him than they were alongside Rudy Gobert.
Bogdanović's status as one of the league's most accomplished three-point shooters would also add another weapon to a Miami starting five that doesn't get much spacing from Adebayo or Jimmy Butler. Tucker's 41.5 percent conversion rate helped propel the Heat to No. 1 in three-point accuracy last year. Without him, and with Duncan Robinson's role all but eliminated this season, Miami is merely a middle-of-the-pack team in that category now.
The price for the upgrade is steep. Jović is the Heat's prized prospect. But dumping Robinson and the remaining $74.4 million he's owed on the Pistons would make the exchange worthwhile. From Detroit's perspective, the chance to add Jović, a skilled forward selected 27th in the 2022 draft, justifies taking on that money. Plus, the Pistons can get a lot of the same spacing value from Robinson they've been getting from Bogdanović during his brief time with the team. For them, Robinson's defensive downsides matter far less; this is still a rebuilding effort.
Bogdanović won't replicate Tucker's defensive impact, but he'd stabilize the power forward position and help Miami avoid a repeat of the abysmal 90.3 offensive rating in half-court sets it posted during last year's playoffs.
Boston Fixes the Depth Issue It Never Expected
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The Trade: Boston Celtics receive P.J. Washington from the Charlotte Hornets for a protected 2024 first-round pick.
Set to hit restricted free agency this summer and perhaps not quite a playoff-caliber defender, Washington isn't good enough to justify the Celtics surrendering an unprotected first-rounder. But with Robert Williams III potentially missing significant time following another knee surgery in September, Al Horford in his age-36 season and Danilo Gallinari likely to miss the whole year, Boston needs competent bodies up front. Grant Williams' recent one-game suspension only further emphasized the lack of depth.
The Celtics can take Washington into one of two trade exceptions, valued at $5.9 and $6.9 million, respectively.
Washington has been on a heater to start the 2022-23 season, and with three-point percentages of 36.5 percent or better in each of his previous three campaigns, Charlotte would be justified in demanding minimal protections on that first-rounder and/or additional draft sweeteners.
The Hornets may even view Washington as a building block for the future, but that speaks more to the lack of foundational talent on their roster (beyond LaMelo Ball) than anything else. And one would imagine a notoriously cheap franchise preferring the cost control of a first-round pick, particularly with Washington due for a new, costlier deal in restricted free agency this summer.
The Celtics can afford to be patient, but not forever. Horford is at a stage of his career where his minutes should be carefully managed if there's to be any hope of him holding up in the playoffs. He's too important to Boston's big-picture goals to run into the ground in October. Fans interested in the Celtics entering the postseason with as high a seed as possible should be uncomfortable with some combination of Blake Griffin, Noah Vonleh and Luke Kornet picking up the rotation slack.
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