The 10 Biggest winners and losers of the NBA trade deadline

Loser: Russell Westbrook

The ill-advised Lakers trade for Russell Westbrook will always live as one of the worst moves in the franchise’s history. That alone makes things pretty difficult for Russ, but admittedly, he’s carved out a significant role in LA as their sixth man and has adjusted to it well. He’s been an elite playmaker this year and has surprisingly provided energy on the defensive end as well.

So long to that. Russ is being sent to the Jazz where he will soon be bought out, and after that, he will likely struggle to find a role as good as the one he had in LA.

According to Chris Haynes, the Chicago Bulls and Los Angeles Clippers have shown interest in signing Westbrook after a potential buyout. While the Clippers are obviously the better landing spot, both teams likely wouldn’t offer nearly as big of a role as the Lakers do, having Westbrook play crunch-time minutes. This seems like the next and one of the last steps in Westbrook’s eventual downfall.

Winner: Portland Trail Blazers

The Blazers did what they always do at the deadline, trading non-essential role players for new non-essential role players, without establishing any direction besides wasting Damian Lillard’s prime and being a middle-of-the-road team. However, Portland did it pretty well this year.

Sure it’s the logical decision to ” blow it up “, but in reality, an NBA franchise isn’t going to tank unless it has to, and Dame is happy in Portland, so it doesn’t.

Considering Portland’s goals of consistently being a solid team and maintaining a future of being a solid team, it succeeded, acquiring interesting young pieces in Cam Reddish and Mattise Thybulle, along with what will likely end up being nine second-round picks without giving up the team’s two best players in Damian Lillard or Jerami Grant.