The NBA Just Went Crazy
Have you recovered from trade season yet?
The NBA All-Star break is here, which for me these days is less an exciting weekend of fun viewing and more a chance to fully switch off from basketball and say a prayer of gratitude that I get to go a week without suffering through a Pelicans game.
Reviews of said All-Star weekend - in San Francisco, this time around - seemed relatively poor. I was largely preoccupied and didn’t pay much attention. But I did see the Spurs’ cognoscenti attempt to outsmart the Skills Challenge. That was amusing. Chris Paul is clearly a good match for Victor Wembanyama, who’s proving to be wise beyond his years. Even funnier was Nikola Jokic’s disapproval of Victor’s pre-game reading ritual. You probably saw more annoyance out of Joker there than you will if he gets robbed of the MVP award.
(more on that MVP race here ⬇️)
But despite those few enjoyable laughs, my favourite point of All-Star Weekend was when Kevin Durant took to X (Twitter) in the aftermath. KD is no stranger to the platform, as many of you will know.
“Only thing [fans] enjoy is playoffs, trade deadline, free agency and when players beef with each other,” he wrote.
There’s only one phrase in there that I’ll focus on in this piece. There’s so much to unpack in that whole statement, though, if one wanted to.
But we’ll focus on the most relevant at the moment. Let’s talk about that trade deadline.
There’s so much complaining these days about the NBA. Too many threes, lack of physicality, etc. All I’ll say is, are you not entertained?
That Luka Doncic mega-trade would’ve been more than enough on its own. But a number of All-Stars were traded in that deal’s wake. It was overwhelming. I quite literally couldn’t keep up. The league went nuts.
Being one of those rare League Pass sickos - the type of 82-game watcher that Durant probably rightly believes is largely outnumbered by casual, overly pessimistic fans - even I was more drawn to the drama than to the games for a little while. It was unlike anything I’d ever seen. Any chat about the new collective bargaining agreement limiting player movement can now be thrown out the window.
I still can’t imagine being a Dallas Mavericks fan. I don’t like to even think about it. I’d already be shamefully disgusted if my Pelicans gave up on Zion Williamson anytime soon, and he hasn’t even breathed the playoffs. If he’d just delivered an NBA Finals appearance LAST SUMMER? Unthinkable. My heart goes out to Dallas, seriously.
It was a shame to see the Jimmy Butler era in Miami come to a sour end. De’Aaron Fox and Sacramento parted ways after what looked like the start of something special a couple of years back. A trade near and dear to my heart that most fans brushed aside - Brandon Ingram to Toronto - was my final straw. It turned this whole ordeal from sheer entertainment of the highest order to deep sadness that one of the best players in the history of New Orleans basketball was leaving town before anyone got to see what could have been. I quickly became sick of trade season.
It was just a truly ridiculous few weeks in the NBA world. Alas, it is over now. And attention turns towards another item on KD’s list: the playoffs.
As I’ve established in past pieces, the Boston Celtics remain (in my eyes) the clear favourite to repeat as champions. Though I do hope I’m wrong.
With about two months left in the NBA’s regular season, most teams will now start to kick into gear as the postseason nears. Not us, though. It’s already draft season down here in New Orleans!
Anyway, drop me any thoughts you had about any of the trades that went down. Let me know if I missed something noteworthy from All-Star Weekend. And I encourage you to indulge in the NHL’s Four Nations Faceoff, which is blowing the NBA’s offerings out of the water.
Finally, take a breath. The playoffs will be here before you know it.