The NBA trade deadline was somewhat overshadowed by the opening day of March Madness. Still, there were a plethora of moves made in the final hours as teams tried to make a last ditch effort to bolster their roster or build for the future. Here are the trade deadline losers.
New Jersey Nets
Their wet dream of landing Dwight Howard before the deadline didn’t happen and on top of that, it appears Howard is staying in Orlando which means the Nets won’t be landing him in free agency either. As a result, the Nets somewhat panicked in trying to find another star player to bring in along free agent-to-be Deron Williams in hopes of enticing Williams to re-sign with the team this off-season. Giving up their biggest expiring contract, Mehmet Okur and a likely top seven first round pick was a lot to acquire Gerald Wallace from Portland especially since Wallace has the ability to opt out of the final year of his contract this summer. Think about it this way; New Jersey could lose Williams and Wallace in a couple of months and then not have their lottery pick while they will be in re-building mode. If I was Jay-z, I’d be pissed.
Cleveland Cavaliers
More than likely, Ramon Sessions was going to opt out of his contract after this season anyway, so trading him seemed inevitable. However, I wouldn’t have taken on the contract of Luke Walton who is owed $6.1 million next season just to add the Lakers first round pick which will likely be in the low-20’s. Cleveland did benefit from a similar deal like this last year when they acquired Baron Davis and the Clippers first round pick (which turned out to be Kyrie Irving) but this just didn’t seem worth it to me.
Minnesota Timberwolves
The T-Wolves had one of the more intriguing trade pieces on the market in Michael Beasley but were unable to turn him into the shooting guard Minnesota desperately needed. There were plenty of rumors that Jamaal Crawford was possibly coming to ‘Sota but David Kahn was unable to pull off a deal to help the Timberwolves’ playoff push.
New Orleans Hornets
I am really surprised the Hornets didn’t move the expiring contract of Chris Kaman and gain some assets in return to help them for the future. There is little chance of Kaman re-signing with New Orleans since Emeka Okafor is already at center so why not move Kaman since he clearly is not going to help you past this season and I am sure he had plenty of value on the market?
Click here for my NBA Trade Deadline winners
David Kay is a senior feature NBA Draft, NBA, and college basketball writer for the Sports Bank. He also heads up the NBA and college basketball material at Walter Football.com and is a former contributor at The Washington Times Communities. David has appeared on numerous national radio programs spanning from Cleveland to New Orleans to Honolulu. He also had the most accurate 2011 NBA Mock Draft on the web.
You can follow him on Twitter at DavidKay_TSB.