Grading the Trade

 I’ve tried to make my trade/offseason grading more structured, this is what I have come up with.  Standard US grading system A through F where C is average.  Average here means average for the league which means you have to get slightly better from a trade to get a C because the overall talent level is still increasing.  Then the gap between a C move and an F, D, B or A is basically the impact of the move relative to league average.  Drafting Giannis at #15 is (retrospectively) an A+.  You don’t get an A for getting Ricky Rubio to play backup PG, you don’t get an A because you made a savvy move that netted you 2 2nd round picks instead of 1.  You get an A for large, impact moves that last for several years.  You get a C+ if you make a modest improvement that should last for 2-3 years, and you might get a C if you make a big upgrade that will cost you significantly in the future.  

Naturally you have to take into account time line, trading a decent player now for a future draft pick is a plus for some teams and a minus for others and getting an impact player for 1 year if you are a contender taking a stab at a title is different than if you are an 8 seed looking to move up to the 6 seed.

Finally these moves aren’t in a vacuum, I hate the phrase ‘its a good move because of these other bad moves’, its basically saying ‘compared to punching ourselves in the dick biting our own tongue was pleasant’.  You make a dumb move by trading for Vuce then making other costly moves that only make sense because you are committing the sunk cost fallacy is bad, not good.  

So grades and explanation

1.  Chicago.  C-.  This is an inept season of moves from Chi-Town, and its easy to understand why it happened.  Their post-Butler rebuild has partially failed, they got Lavine who is good, LM who is OK, and Dunn who was bad, as far as a return that is basically par for the course.  The issue they have is that none of their later 1st round picks from before nor their picks since the rebuild has turned into anything while Lavine was entering the 2nd last season of his contract.  This puts Chicago under pressure to make a change and there are two potential paths to go, one is to pay up for veterans around Lavine and the other is to move Lavine and restart the rebuild.

I prefer the latter option here, instead of starting with the 22nd and 16th picks in recent drafts + your haul you get the #4, #7, #7 picks, plus the 2021 pick (#8 but a good amount higher without Lavine) plus your package that you got for Lavine.  Now this path isn’t for everyone, you can’t always punt and restart and fans do get ancy, and you can make good moves to bring in veterans and make it work, to add to this if you were analyzing the position midseason you would note that Lavine was working well with Thad, Tomas and Temple and struggling more with White and Wendell.  It is reasonable to go and get another all-star to pair with Lavine and some veteran rotation pieces in this situation.

It is not reasonable to trade for Vuce.  Lavine is an extreme athlete who excels off motion, in transition and areas where you have to track him for many steps.  Vuce is literally the opposite offensive player, he excels when his lack of athleticism isn’t notable, when his size and footwork can put him in a good position that he can eventually exploit.  The offense cratered, a team with a 115.3 ortg with Lavine on the court dropped to 108.7 with Lavine and Vuce together.  Now this didn’t have to happen, but something had to give.  Either the defense would have been trash or you have to take a massive offensive hit to cover for Vuce and Lavines’ weaknesses.

This is why Markkanen is gone, adding Vuce and DDR to Lavine made his offensive value weak and redundant and exposed his defensive limitations.  

OK, that long preamble out of the way, and you get to this trade (skipping over other bad moves).  The Bulls have committed to winning in the near term, between Vuce and DDR you have 3 high value 1st round picks going out plus a recent top 10 pick, you have a stuffed cap sheet, and one of your young guys is now buried behind Ball, DDR and Lavine on the depth chart.  Why the hell would you want a lottery protected 1st round pick?  Yeah, if it was free you grab it but the goal here is to jam assets into this group and get a very short term, hopefully high, peak.  

Are you going to trade the pick?  How?  $130 million in salary and the hard cap due to landing a player in a S&T means you are limited in contracts coming back, and you have the Celtics issue from recent years in that you don’t have any tradeable contracts outside of Derrick Jones Jr.  How are you going to get back an impact player for $10 million in salary plus a lottery protected 1st?  So you get worse this year in a season where you are committed to get as good as you can.  From an impact perspective it's small, from a ‘understanding what you are doing’ perspective it's terrible.  This year given that they have Vuce/Lavine/DDR they are probably a little better with Jones Jr than Markkannen but over 3-4 years they are worse.  

2. Portland C+.  Its hard to make much out of this, Nance is an upgrade over DJJ, and fits well with them.  If you put me in their position I would have done something wildly different (taken LM and shipped CJ out) but that isn’t in the cards.  Adding a pick to a player to upgrade is standard ‘this is our window’ stuff in the NBA.  With Zeller, Nance and Nurkic Portland should have the best defensive training room in the league.

3. Cleveland B-.  I like this move for a lot of reasons for the Cavs, one of which is the exact same reason that a lot of people dislike (hate) the transaction, the clogged front court.  The Cavs are in a strange spot, they know that their future almost certainly lies with Evan Mobley, if he busts they will be in bad shape but if he is good it depends on how he is good, and how soon he is good.  This trade will allow the Cavs to pair him with Allen and Markkanen and see which skill set he fits best and their ages (23 and 24) mean that once you make that decision you can almost certainly trade the other and you have another full contract worth of prime and near prime years left while Mobley is on his 2nd contract.  The Cavs understand that their real future is 2+ years out and this move now gives them the chance to confidently pick between either a 25 year old rim running/shot blocking C or a 26 year old perimeter shooter, instead of having to make a decision on a 30 year old Nance’s next contract  In the meanwhile Allen and Markkanen should fit together very nicely on offense, worse this year, better when they need it.

The other large plus for the Cavs is that Markkanen still has all-star upside left in him.  Not a lot, I’d ballpark it in the 5-15% range but every few years a once promising pick turns in on in another city.  Oladipo at age 25 put it all together for a season before he was smashed with injuries, Hassan Whiteside in Miami, Eric Bledsoe in Phoenix.  This is definitely not the norm and not enough reason on its own to make the deal, but it is an upside play for a team in need of upside plays, after all you don’t want to end up like Chicago with 1 all-star and having to pay through the nose to get another.  

On the downside the risks are small, Markkanen has injury issues but so did Nance making that a lateral move.  The Cavs front court is wildly expensive, but that is because of the dead weight from Love’s contract which would exist with or without this trade.  Between Lauri, Evan and Jarrett the most expensive combined year is 4 years from now for $48 million and even that has only $32 million guaranteed.  Ownership is willing to pay the one year of difficult cost in ‘22/23 when Love is still owned $28 million and Sexton will have a contract extension coming in, and you don’t want a previous bad decision (Love) preventing you from making current good decisions.

That mostly leaves us with opportunity cost here, what else could we have gotten from Nance and when?  I’ll note that this type of deal will be much harder to make next season as Sexton’s extension will make it harder to wrangle a S&T without hitting the Apron.  Beyond that there just aren’t obvious moves either to be made or that have been made which would work better.  The Cavs #1 need is the most valuable position in the NBA.  You can’t get a strong wing player for just Nance, I’m sure the Cavs tried that and reportedly were willing to discuss a pick with Nance.  To get a guy who fits the timeline well, who adds a skill you need and who still has upside is a nice move one with some potential to really pump up their production in 2-3 years or otherwise should be solid enough if it doesn’t.