The trade deadline came and went, the final stretch of the season is underway, and we’re still a few months from peak draft season. The decisions that teams make or don’t make at the deadline sometimes hint at what’s to come and sometimes have big implications with regard to the lottery itself. While last week’s major trades were star-centric and didn’t see any teams blatantly fling themselves into the void of losing, there’s still a lot left to chew on as it pertains to the 2023 draft. Here are my thoughts on what’s to come after stewing on all the moves that happened and didn’t happen, and a much-discussed potential tank race that never totally occurred—but may also still have some twists left.
— We got through October, November, December and basically January (when a minor trade between Boston and San Antonio took place) with no trades at all, which I inferred was a result of how tight the bottom of the standings were—there were a lot of teams hanging around down there. But it takes another level of commitment to go from being organically bad to engineering those losses. As a result of what was essentially a frozen trade period, some natural stratification occurred, and there are now four true frontrunners in the lottery sweepstakes. Over the last month or so, Houston, San Antonio, Charlotte and Detroit have distanced themselves from the pack with their continued losing. All four made minor deals at the deadline that either made themselves worse, acquired small long-term assets, or both. Local real estate experts in those markets should already be spamming Victor Wembanyama and Scoot Henderson with emails.
When you realize how far back (or ahead, depending on your lens) those four teams are from everybody else, it makes sense why fringe playoff teams like Chicago and Toronto avoided selling off parts. Even a perfectly executed plan for one of those teams likely wouldn’t lead to top-four draft odds—plus, the addition of the play-in tournament keeps the playoffs feasibly within reach if you close the season strong. So as far as the 2023 draft is concerned, I think what we primarily saw at the deadline was the really bad teams staying bad, and other current non-playoff teams deciding to kick the can down the road.
