The NBA trade deadline is quickly approaching, but not all prospective dealers are created equal. Take, say, the Oklahoma City Thunder. They may well wind up finishing with the best record in the Western Conference even without a move, yet their three best players are 25, 22 and 21 years old, respectively, and they hold more tradable draft capital than any team in the NBA. This is more or less the definition of “house money.”
But their competitors? Many of them are operating with far greater urgency ahead of Thursday’s 3 p.m. ET deadline. Their rosters are older. They have fewer assets to work with. Their financial situations are grimmer. These are the teams whose seasons, and perhaps futures, could be defined by what happens in the next several days. Below are the five teams facing the most pressure at the deadline:
1. Los Angeles Lakers
What sounds like a better approach for a team that routinely recruits superstars? Moving one tradable first-round pick at the deadline for a good starter to potentially boost a 26-25 team, or waiting until the offseason when you have three available to potentially chase someone better? It’s the latter. Players like Dejounte Murray and Bruce Brown could help the Lakers right now, but it’s just hard to believe that anyone currently on the market can turn them into legitimate title contenders even after last season’s surprise run to the Western Conference Finals. We’re talking about a team that has by and large had its two best players healthy all season and still ranks average or worse on both offense and defense. This team needs wholesale fixes (which probably includes a coaching change) to meaningfully contend.
Saying all of that on paper is one thing. Actually forcing a 39-year-old LeBron James to play out the remainder of what looks like a lost season is another. He hasn’t exactly been subtle here. He’s tweeting hourglasses in classic passive-aggressive James fashion. He wants the Lakers to make a move, and if they don’t? Well, he can use his player option to find a team more prepared to invest in him next season over the summer.
Is it likely that James will leave? Probably not, but it’s a legitimate fear the Lakers should have. After all, losing him not only ends this era of Lakers basketball, but potentially weakens the alliance between them and Klutch Sports, James’ agency. That’s a pretty big deal for a team that has historically relied on superstars forcing their way to Los Angeles. Rich Paul alone represents 10 players that have made the All-Star Game in the past three seasons. No agency has a higher concentration of talent than Klutch. The relationship between them and the Lakers has been mutually beneficial for nearly a decade now. Keeping James happy is a big part of that.
That’s the minefield the Lakers are navigating right now. How do you keep James happy without giving him too much influence over roster decisions? Go too far in one direction and you lose him. Go too far in the other and, well, you wind up with Russell Westbrook. James will turn 40 next season. It’s unclear how much longer he’ll be able to lead a championship-caliber team. Is it worth taking a risk on a sub-optimal move just for the sake of getting that extra postseason shot with an All-Star-level James? Or are the Lakers thinking more about their post-James future than winning with him now? We’ll have our answers by Thursday.
2. Minnesota Timberwolves
There are plenty of teams facing a financial crunch in the near future, but most of them, at least the ones operating on a similar timeline as the Timberwolves, have time to sort out their problems. The Pelicans are a great example of this. Yes, keeping this core together will take them well over the tax, but new deals for Trey Murphy III and potentially Jose Alvarado are still two offseasons away. They have time to figure this out.
But the Timberwolves? They’ll never have a better chance than this. They already owe over $151 million to just four players going into next season… and that’s before we account for a possible Rose Rule bump if Anthony Edwards is picked to an All-NBA team. They’re already over next season’s projected first apron before accounting for the impending free agencies of Mike Conley and Kyle Anderson. Oh, and they have new owners coming whose appetite for spending is not yet clear. In small-market Minneapolis, every penny counts.
All of this puts the Timberwolves in an incredibly precarious position. From a financial perspective, they will never have a better chance than this. This is the last season in which they’ll have Edwards and Jaden McDaniels on cheap rookie deals. They don’t have a long-term solution at point guard to replace Conley. Heck, Rudy Gobert is already 31. How much longer will he remain a Defensive Player of the Year candidate?
And yet… Edwards is 22. McDaniels is 23. Karl-Anthony Towns is 28, but his shooting suggests he’ll age fairly well. The Timberwolves should have a reasonably competitive core for a long time. So how are they going to balance the needs of that core with the possibility of a Finals run this season? How much do those needs overlap? Take Minnesota’s desperate need for a backup point guard. Is there a player out there who could fill that hole now, then replace Conley if he departs this offseason? Former Timberwolves guard and Minnesota native Tyus Jones seems to be an obvious fit in that respect.
But if things go south this postseason, the Timberwolves might have to take more drastic steps to address their finances. In an era in which the new CBA is scaring teams away from combining three major salaries, Minnesota already has four locked in for at least the next two seasons. Might one of those big names (let’s be honest, it would be Towns) be a casualty? The Timberwolves can shoo those questions away by winning. You don’t break up a champion. Getting the trade deadline right is their best chance to do so.
3. Golden State Warriors
Bob Myers had the right idea. The Warriors are 21-25. Their payroll is well above $200 million before even factoring in their tax payments. Things could potentially get a bit easier next season, when Chris Paul and Klay Thompson can come off of the books, but are the Warriors really prepared to let Thompson retire elsewhere? They might have to if Thompson still wants a significant contract, which every report has suggested he does. Thompson is posting the worst 3-point and field goal percentages of his career. He’s also not close to the elite defender he once was.
Oh, and the Warriors can’t even really rely on long-term payroll relief either. Yes, they’ll get off the Paul contract this offseason, but Jonathan Kuminga is currently playing his way into an even bigger long-term contract extension that will kick in for the 2025-26 season. With Stephen Curry, Andrew Wiggins and Draymond Green all locked up, a hefty Thompson deal would keep the Warriors buried in tax hell for the foreseeable future.
The Warriors have rarely minded hefty tax bills, but they’ve typically been accompanied by championship runs that generate significant gate revenue to help ease that pain. The Warriors might well end up paying over $400 million in total player salaries this season with taxes included. Would they be willing to do that for a lottery team? More pressingly, would they be willing to choose to continue doing that for a lottery team? Odds are, they’re not too keen on paying literally billons of dollars to host the retirement tour of the Curry-Green-Thompson trio.
So in the next few days, the Warriors are trying to figure out how to save this season, keep the winning going for a few more seasons, do so without breaking up the trio that brought them four championships and keep the payroll at a somewhat reasonable level in the process. To do that all of that, they currently have two tradable first-round picks, Paul’s expiring salary and a couple of mid-sized contracts for next year (Kevon Looney, Gary Payton II and Moses Moody). Good luck with all of that, Mike Dunleavy.
4. Phoenix Suns
The Suns built a 2018 team for a 2024 league. In general, the idea of trading for Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal to create a star trio with Devin Booker made some sense. Together, they’ve been unstoppable offensively. According to Cleaning the Glass, they’ve scored a blistering 131 points per 100 possessions when they’ve been on the court at the same time. But all three of their stars have missed time to injury. They are only the No. 6 seed in a loaded Western Conference at the moment. Three very sobering facts are staring them in the face right now:
Durant is 35, but Nikola Jokic is only 28. Anthony Edwards is 22. All three of Oklahoma City’s young stars are 25 or younger, and that’s before you consider their trade flexibility thanks to all of their picks. Victor Wembanyama is only a rookie. While Phoenix’s title window may not close after this season… it’s fair to say that Durant is likely to get worse while the rest of the West is likely to get better. Their odds are never going to be higher than they are this season.No team, in any sport, has ever been as all-in as the Suns are right now. They don’t control a single one of their own first-round picks the rest of the decade. Even some of the picks they’ve sold swap rights on have already been swapped again, giving them the worst of three possible first-rounders in those seasons. They’re over the second apron for this season. They’re over next season’s projected second apron as well even before factoring in a new contract for critical free agent Grayson Allen, and starting next season, spending enough time over the second apron can automatically move future first-round picks to the end of the round. The Suns have effectively bet their future on the idea that they can win a championship in the present.The new CBA is going to make it significantly harder for the Suns to make significant roster changes after this season. They’re already ineligible for buyout players currently making more than the mid-level exception. Next season, they won’t even be able to aggregate salaries in trades. If they want to turn multiple lower level players into someone a bit more expensive and reliable, they have to do so by Thursday.
The modern NBA just isn’t built for teams like the Suns. Three-star builds were more common half a decade ago, and at that point, the league’s roster-building landscape was designed to accommodate them. That isn’t the case anymore, and the Suns are going to start feeling that very, very soon.
5. Chicago Bulls
Look, if the Bulls aren’t going to take this seriously, I’m not sure we should either. It feels almost unfair to apply the word “pressure” to an organization whose ambitions seem not to extend beyond “make the play-in without paying the luxury tax.” There are teams trying to win the championship out here! I don’t know what the Bulls are trying to do, but it’s not that. We should be talking about the Celtics and Clippers trying to use limited matching salary to find a difference-making reserve!
But the Celtics and Clippers actually, like, have a plan. For the life of me I could not tell you what the Bulls are trying to accomplish other than saving money while remaining reasonably competitive. Even the “saving money” part might not even be possible anymore. The Bulls might not even be able to get off of the Zach LaVine contract with assets attached anymore now that he’s set to miss the remainder of the season. I’m not sure what compelled them to give Nikola Vucevic a three-year deal last summer, but that’s decidedly negative money for the next two seasons. Patrick Williams wants a raise, and DeMar DeRozan wants an extension.
They’re not gonna pay the tax next season because they’re the Bulls. But their incessant need to avoid the bottom is probably going to compel this team to keep players it shouldn’t on contracts nobody else would want. In the process, that’s probably going to cost them a pretty valuable pick. They owe the Spurs their 2025 first-rounder with a top-eight protection. Their pick this season is currently slated to come in at No. 11. What’s going to happen if they run back this roster a year from now? They’ll be older but likely a tad healthier. Say they wind up at a similar slot. If they give the Spurs a pick between No. 9 and No. 14, that would be the third lottery pick they’ve given away in the past five years, joining Franz Wagner and Jett Howard in Orlando. Has any team ever gotten less for three lottery picks? The Bulls haven’t even won a playoff series yet, and odds are, that isn’t changing soon.
The pressure here should be internal, but it doesn’t seem to be. But externally, almost everyone outside of Chicago seems to understand that the Bulls should be trying to recoup assets for DeRozan and Alex Caruso with an eye on keeping that 2025 first-round pick and potentially adding the sort of centerpiece they currently lack. The Bulls might not see it that way, but this deadline is a pretty critical inflection point. If they maintain their current trajectory, they’re headed for years of irrelevance.
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