2024 NBA Trade Deadline Predictions with 1 Month to Go
The NBA's trade season is ramping up. The rumor mill is getting crowded. Seemingly every day, there's some new morsel on a player who could be on the move.
Conflicting reports make it difficult to suss out what's real and what's fake, too. It's also important to keep your antennae up for where reports are coming from. Are teams trying to drive a player's value one way or another? Is a player's camp trying to pressure the organization?
Here, we'll try to sort through all that and more to make some reasonable predictions on the future of players like Zach LaVine and Pascal Siakam or teams like the Detroit Pistons (who have a couple veterans that should intrigue contenders) and Los Angeles Lakers (who need help).
Pascal Siakam to the Kings
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The Athletic's Shams Charania may have given Sacramento Kings fans a little digital whiplash this week, when he reported that they were "ramping up" their pursuit of Pascal Siakam and then wrote they were "deciding to pull out of the Pascal Siakam talks" two hours later.
It's not hard to imagine how those talks went.
You interested in Siakam?
Of course. We'll send Harrison Barnes.
We want Keegan Murray in the deal.
Well, you're not getting Keegan Murray.
*Click*
With a month to go before the trade deadline, it's easy to understand why both teams here (and every team around the league) are taking sort of a hardline stance on their own players and assets.
But it makes next to no sense for the Toronto Raptors to hang onto Siakam at this point. The soft reboot already started with the OG Anunoby trade. And the relationship between Siakam, who's on an expiring contract, and the front office is messy.
"After their disappointing 2022-23 season ended with an embarrassing play-in loss to Chicago, [Masai] Ujiri and Toronto's front office cut off almost all communication with Siakam last summer, leading the seven-year vet to wonder whether he was being punished, according to a source close to the player," Josh Lewenberg wrote for TSN. "The lack of contact was especially strange, with Siakam entering the final year of his contract."
A trade feels like the next logical step. The Raptors can't afford to lose Siakam for nothing in free agency (like they did with Fred VanVleet), and the Kings have the capital to get him, even without Murray.
The salaries of Harrison Barnes and Kevin Huerter add up to enough to make a two-for-one deal work under the collective bargaining agreement, and Sacramento has control of all its first-round picks from 2025 to 2030.
The Kings already have a high-end top two with De'Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, but they need one more star (or fringe star) to really push toward the West's 1A contenders' tier.
Depth might be a bit of an issue, but a starting five of Fox, Malik Monk, Murray, Siakam and Sabonis could compete with anyone on any given night.
Zach LaVine to the Lakers
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Let me start by saying the Lakers simply may not have the goods to get LaVine.
The first few months of this season may have suppressed his value a bit. He's often looked disengaged, and the Chicago Bulls have generally been better without him. But some team could convince itself that LaVine is still the 25.1-point-per-game player he was over the five seasons prior to this one and find another suitor to beat an offer of something like D'Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura, Jalen Hood-Schifino and a first-round pick (because of the Stepien rule and previous trades, it's tricky to include more than one).
But both of these teams could be pretty desperate ahead of the trade deadline. LeBron James is already taking his passive-aggressive swipes at the roster that has him under .500 on the season, and the Bulls have to know they've gone as far as they possibly can with the LaVine-DeMar DeRozan-Nikola Vučević core.
That doesn't mean L.A. should sweeten the pot with Austin Reaves, but Max Christie, first-round pick swaps and second-rounders could be enough to put the Lakers over the top in a market that may not be clamoring for LaVine right now.
The Lakers can justify putting whatever they can (again, short of Reaves) into the mix because of the win-now situation 39-year-old LeBron and oft-injured Anthony Davis put them in, and the fact that they have a bottom-10 attack.
As a third option facing defenses focused on LeBron and AD, LaVine could find new life.
Lauri Markkanen Stays Put
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Vultures (better known as media, opposing front offices and fans of opposing teams) are circling the Utah Jazz. More specifically, they want the Jazz to add Lauri Markkanen to the list of veterans they've traded over the past couple years.
The thing is, Markkanen doesn't really fit on that list.
The Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell duo had run its course. It was time to move on. Markkanen has no such baggage with the team or any teammates. In fact, in the wake of trade rumors involving Markkanen, he told The Athletic he "loves" Salt Lake City.
Mike Conley was a mid-30s veteran on a team that had just traded its two best players. For his sake and the younger guards he was taking minutes from, it made sense to move him to a playoff team like the Minnesota Timberwolves. Markkanen's 26 and presumably five or six years away from age-related decline.
And while some team like the Oklahoma City Thunder could offer a boatload of picks and make it very difficult to decline a trade, none of those assets would be guaranteed to turn into what Markkanen already is.
Since he joined Utah, Markkanen is averaging 25.0 points, 8.6 rebounds and 3.1 threes, while shooting 38.9 percent from deep. That's genuinely bonkers production for a seven-footer.
Markkanen is also one of the most adaptable stars in the league. He doesn't dominate the ball, so he'll likely fit perfectly into whatever team Danny Ainge assembles over the next couple seasons.
Teams generally tank and rebuild to get a star. Markkanen may not be a 1A on a title team, but there's only ever a few of those in the league at a time. Utah got a star out of the Gobert-Mitchell teardown much sooner than expected, and that should change the approach going forward.
Jonathan Kuminga Stays Put
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Jonathan Kuminga may only be averaging 12.8 points and 4.1 rebounds with an exactly average true shooting percentage, but he's 6'8", a top-end athlete (even relative to other NBA players) and seemingly wants a new situation.
After sitting the final 18 minutes of a game in which the Warriors blew an 18-point, second-half lead to the Denver Nuggets, The Athletic's Shams Charania and Anthony Slater wrote that a source near to Kuminga said the game "was the straw that broke the camel's back," and that Kuminga had "lost faith" in Warriors coach Steve Kerr.
Putting all of that together means Kuminga would almost certainly have multiple suitors if Golden State ever made him available, but the team's stance right now appears to be: let's keep Kuminga.
Michael Grange detailed that stance for Sportsnet:
"Still, according to multiple sources, the Warriors are loath to trade Kuminga, who is seen as a potential star who can help them win now and in the future, the rare piece on the roster who can help Golden State both support Steph Curry in the present and transition to a successful post-Curry future, should it ever come.
"And a not insignificant detail is that Kuminga is said to have a very close relationship with Warriors owner Joe Lacob who has historically been reluctant to part with any of the young talent that represents the Warriors' so-called 'two-timelines' strategy of meshing a group of young draftees with their established championship core."
Kuminga, in combination with the bigger salaries of Chris Paul, Andrew Wiggins or Draymond Green, may be the organization's only way to add a star before the deadline, but hanging onto him would be reasonable.
Plenty of teams with superstars in the twilight of their careers have sacrificed the future for a marginally better chance to win in the present. And plenty of those moves have come back to haunt those teams when the superstar is gone (or beyond the twilight).
Fixing Golden State's problem could be as easy as playing Kuminga more (even after Draymond's return from suspension). On the season, the Warriors are plus-3.2 points per 100 possessions with Kuminga on the floor and minus-1.0 without him.
Hawks Move Dejounte Murray
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No one expected the Atlanta Hawks to compete for a title or anything, but them being several games under .500 in early January is still a bit of a surprise. The underwhelming start may have the front office thinking about retooling less than two years after a win-now move to acquire Dejounte Murray.
Bleacher Report's Chris Haynes says there's "ample interest" in Murray from multiple teams, including the Lakers and Philadelphia 76ers.
Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer said the team might even be willing to take a "step back" in the short term.
Given how ineffective the the Murray-Trae Young partnership has been (Atlanta is minus-1.2 points per 100 possessions with both on the floor since the start of last season), this news shouldn't come as a surprise. And given Murray's talent (he's averaged 20.8 points, 7.1 assists and 1.7 steals over the last three seasons), Atlanta might be able to recoup a pick or two by trading him.
Expect the Hawks to make a move that brings a little more balance to the roster and gives up-and-comer Jalen Johnson a chance to showcase himself even more.
Pistons Move Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanović
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It made little to no sense for the rebuilding Detroit Pistons to keep Alec Burks and Bojan Bogdanović before last season's deadline. After a historic 28-game losing streak, their names should be in the mill again.
Now, one of the reasons for a team in Detroit's position to move its experienced players is to lose more and get better lottery odds in the draft. The Pistons are already atrocious when either of those players is on the floor. So, that's not really the driving factor here.
Burks and Bogdanović will both be past their primes (if they aren't already) by the time Detroit is actually competing for wins. Exchanging them for younger players or picks who'll be ready to contribute in two or three years is an absolute no-brainer.
Pacers Move Buddy Hield for a Defender
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Buddy Hield has seemingly been in trade rumors from the moment he joined the Indiana Pacers, and Yahoo Sports' Jake Fischer reported he is indeed on the block right now.
Remaining in Indiana's blue and gold through multiple trade seasons made sense, given Hield's historically good three-point shooting, but the Pacers now have plenty of that.
The Pacers have five players other than Hield with 100-plus minutes and an above-average three-point percentage. Regardless of who's on the roster, there will be plenty of open outside looks generated by Tyrese Haliburton (he currently leads the league in threes assisted).
What Indiana doesn't have is much of a defense. It's currently bottom-three in the league in points allowed per 100 possessions, right between the Pistons and Charlotte Hornets.
While one player certainly won't change that by himself (especially one in the same value range as Hield), even a marginal improvement would help.
This season, Hield will finally get moved, and a two-way player should be headed back to the Pacers.
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