The Lakers appear headed toward a slow trade deadline; they aren't alone

Buyers all over the league are frustrated with how sellers aren't, you know, selling.

Typically, this is the time of year where basketball decision makers sit down with their team’s owner, er, governor, and have that awkward conversation about how this season hasn’t panned out and it’s probably time to think about the future. Then, typically, owners begrudgingly agree and give the go-ahead to sell off some pieces to teams actually competing for something, hoping that someday those roles with reverse.

Unless you’re, like, the Charlotte Hornets, or something. Then it’s just the same song over and over and over and over and…

Now, though, with flattened lottery odds, the play-in game, and a new, incredibly punitive CBA, that cycle has slowed in real tangible ways, and sellers are far more reluctant to part with those pieces unless it comes with an exorbitant return. This has left many around the league frustrated with those conversations and legitimate curiosity on where the market goes from here.

With fewer owners being willing to OK a tear-down rebuild, the market has gotten pretty wonky. I love Tyus Jones, but the idea that potentially only a few months of his services would cost you a first rounder is ridiculous. Yet here we are.

Let’s take a look at those factors one by one and discuss their impact on a painfully slowly developing trade deadline.

Lottery Odds

Ah, math. The migraine of the intellectual world.

Without getting too far into the weeds here, teams used to be incentivized to suck so as to greatly improve their chances at landing top tier talent in the upcoming draft. This hasn’t completely gotten rid of incompetence; nothing can actually do that so long as nepotism runs as rampantly through professional sports as it does, but it’s helped.

Yes, the more you lose, the better your chances are at winning the lottery, but the odds aren’t as steep and you see more movement up and down the lottery as a result. So, at least in theory, there’s less incentive to purposefully suck, which means teams don’t have that excuse with fans when they send out popular players for the crime of helping them win a few too many games.

You remove one of those incentives to trade helpful players, and you increase the price of landing said helpful player. Hey! We got through that with almost no math. Go us.

Play-In Tournament

All in all, the NBA’s play-in games have added to the end-of-year excitement. We’ve gotten great matchups and real drama from teams living and dying with each possession in those games to earn a trip to the playoffs. In those moments, there is no denying this has been a net-positive for the league.

Now, expand this out to the rest of the regular season and specifically this time of year, and that’s where how positive an impact it’s made gets a little tricky.

Expanding the playoff field from eight to 10 teams in each conference is, inherently, going to cheapen the regular season and give more teams hope of making that postseason. Even more importantly, it gives four more owners the notion of playoff revenue, even if it’s only for one game of that atmosphere.

So, if moving a key role player who might help you tally that one extra win that puts you into those games and a couple one game sample sizes from the actual playoffs, it’s going to cost whoever acquires that player a little more than it did before the play-in games existed.

I know these are outlier examples, but we just saw two play-in teams (the Heat and the Lakers) make the finals and conference finals respectively. Uber competitive owners are going to see those runs and nix any moves that take them out of the running for those spots until the absolute last second.

The Dreaded New CBA

Man, I legitimately don’t think I’ve ever had more conversations with league personnel about any other thing than the impact this new CBA is either having right now or will have moving forward. This agreement is legitimately terrifying to people in all walks of life throughout the league.

For the sake of this piece, though, we’ll just stick to the impact it’s having on the trade market and try to avoid all the offshoots and detours along the way.

First and foremost, that second apron is operating for all but a couple teams like a hard cap, as I and many foretold at the time of the league and NBPA’s agreement. How the player’s union agreed to this is still beyond me, especially given all the uproar about the game minimum you’re seeing right now.

Oh, damnit. I said I’d avoid detours.

Anyway, because teams are so afraid of that second apron or the more punitive luxury tax system, they are A LOT less interested in taking on money beyond this upcoming summer. I’ve had several league sources say their marching orders are quite clear: Do not, under any circumstances, go above that second apron.

I’ve even had a couple team officials say their bosses are now a lot more wary of the first apron than in years past, which really limits what those front offices have been able to do.

Quick side note I promise: Remember how I whined incessantly all summer about the Lakers keeping some expiring money on their books for this season, even if roster fit was tricky? Yeah, this is why. Malik Beasley, Mo Bamba and/or Lonnie Walker on expiring deals would be real trade chips this week.

Also importantly, teams get dinged a lot more now for not hitting the salary floor under this new CBA, and we’ve seen an interesting phenomenon across the league where some teams would rather keep their guys who they know fit into their culture rather than bring in a different player even if doing so would land them some extra draft capital.

So as one team official explained, if you’re going to have some overpaid guys on your books, you may as well have your overpaid guys on your books, who you know are going to mesh with your young guys or won’t make too much noise about their roles.

So, in essence, the new CBA is squeezing the market both for teams that might usually spend a little extra to be competitive AND teams who normally shed salary because their team isn’t.

So… What Now?

Predicting how a trade deadline is going to shape up is always a fool’s errand, but I’ll take a stab at it nonetheless. I think all these factors mean teams are going to wait until the very last second to have these tough conversations and owners are not going to OK rebuilding until they know as well as they possibly can that they aren’t going to be in the play-in.

Yes, there are some outliers here. We’ve seen Toronto finally trade Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby. But I think they prove the rule more than point to more action in the weeks leading up to the deadline than right at the last second.

Notes

• The Lakers are still active in making calls but I’m told they’re preparing for a quiet deadline unless a bunch of the teams they’ve spoken to lower their asking prices.

  • My dude Jake Fischer of Yahoo! Sports reported the Lakers have been including Gabe Vincent in their trade talks, and I’m told that’s made it even trickier to upgrade the roster as his market is worse than D’Angelo Russell’s.

  • I’m also told the Lakers are working to dip under the luxury tax heading into buyout season to give themselves a little more flexibility under the hard cap, and, more importantly, reset their repeater tax counter.

  • Thursday’s night’s win over Boston only further cemented how the Lakers feel about Austin Reaves but also had quite the impact on how they feel about Russell, I’m told.

    • I said on the show last night that I was really impressed Russell impacted the game despite having a poor shooting night and, as I’ve heard since, the Lakers were too. Doesn’t mean he definitely isn’t getting traded, but that opened more eyes than his recent scoring explosion.

• I can’t believe I have to say this, but no, LeBron James isn’t getting traded. I reported this last night after the game and now you’ve also heard it from Brian Windhorst of ESPN, who had a pretty reliable source of his own.