NBA: Playing smoke or fire with NBA superstar trade rumors
The NBA trade rumor mill is always working overtime, churning out delicious morsels for fans and the media to latch onto. Speculation, anonymous reports and endless wishes swirl across the league’s landscape. In a league where stars mean everything, where those stars play will determine who wins championships.
Two factors help to not only spread the smoke signals of NBA trade rumors but to stoke the flames behind them. The first is that today’s NBA is an impatient one, with stars expected to start winning at a young age and front offices expected to produce results on a fast turnaround. That means that teams who a few decades ago would have had years to grow together are instead shuffled and swapped in an attempt to change the franchise fortunes.
Trade rumors for many of the NBA’s superstars are swirling with a vengeance. Which rumors are just smoke, and which ones are truly fire?
The league is also at an all-time peak of player agency, with stars deciding where they want to be and, to a large extent, when. That means we aren’t only speculating on what teams could decide to trade a star player, but which players will decide to tell their teams they want out. From Anthony Davis to James Harden, players are dictating when and how they leave town.
With just a few teams left alive in the NBA playoffs, the rest of the league is sitting at home evaluating their rosters. As league executives begin intermingling at the NBA Draft Combine and pro days the trade conversations start happening.
Teams with players outside of a team’s core on guaranteed contracts are often frequent participants in those rumors. The Golden State Warriors are in win-now mode, and therefore Andrew Wiggins and James Wiseman are frequent participants in trade rumors. Portland needs to mix things up around Damian Lillard, and therefore CJ McCollum and Jusuf Nurkic are being tossed around.
Pascal Siakam has been mentioned as a player available for the right package as the Toronto Raptors teeter on the edge of a rebuild. The Utah Jazz might need to move someone to change up the roster, whether that is Joe Ingles or Derrick Favors. The Los Angeles Lakers are always a frequent participant in trade rumors.
Above the various levels of player in most trade rumors, a few star players in the league are being speculated about in a more insistent way. There is plenty of smoke surrounding these stars, fanned both by teams and by the players themselves. Which situations are just smoke, and which ones have a burning fire underneath driving them towards another team?