Some time this June, the NBA will crown a champion for the 2013-14 season. The odds tell us that the champion will have done little to nothing the previous February at the trading deadline.
NBA enthusiasts, zealots and, yes, writers obsess and go into circuit overload in the third week of February – this coming week, in case you weren’t paying attention. But if history is any guide, the chances are remote that a team will make a trade which it can later point to as a reason for winning the championship that season.
The last team that can do that? The 2004 Detroit Pistons. The Pistons were looking for depth in their front line and had their eye on Rasheed Wallace. But 10 days before the deadline, Portland shipped Wallace to the Atlanta Hawks in a five-player deal. Wallace played one game for the Hawks. (It was at the Meadowlands, and I covered it. Rashed kept his jersey and called the Hawks team trainer asking for the two extras-CS).
The Pistons, undeterred, enlisted the help of Celtics’ GM Danny Ainge to work out a three-team trade on Feb. 19 and Wallace landed with Detroit. The Pistons were 34-22 at the time of the deal and trailed Indiana by six games. The two teams met in the Eastern Conference Finals with the Pistons triumphing in six games. Detroit then ousted the Lakers in five games.
“We would not have won the championship that year without Rasheed,’’ Pistons executive Joe Dumars said.
The 2008 Celtics can point to two winter transactions which indisputably helped them win the title. But neither was a trade deadline acquisition. P.J. Brown signed with the Celtics as a free agent on Feb. 27, six days after the trade deadline, and averaged 13.6 minutes a game during Boston’s playoff run. Sam Cassell signed with Boston on March 3 after the Clippers waived him.
Purists may point to the Spurs’ acquisition of Nazr Mohammed in 2005 as a deadline day deal en route to their championship that season. He started all 23 games during San Antonio’s playoff run, averaging 23 minutes a game.
Bet you forgot all about that. I sure did. I covered the Spurs in the Western Conference Finals and the NBA Finals, which lasted seven games. I have absolutely no recollection of Mohammed playing for San Antonio. Sorry Naz.
But I guess he counts, sort of. He was nowhere near the impact player that Wallace was for Detroit a year earlier. They remain the only two deals in the last decade that were done on Deadline Day whose principals ended up winning a ring.
However . . . there have been a bunch of deals in the last three decades which weren’t made on Deadline Day, but which were consummated in February, near to the deadline to make them qualify.
Probably the most memorable is the Valentine’s Day deal in 1995 which landed Clyde Drexler in Houston, where he would help the Rockets win a second consecutive NBA title. That was a remarkable playoff run for Houston, which finished with the sixth best record in the Western Conference, rallied from deficits of 2-0 and 3-1 without having the homecourt advantage, and then swept the heavily favored Orlando Magic in the Finals.
Eight days before the trade deadline in 1989, the Detroit Pistons made a stunning deal, sending the prolific Adrian Dantley to the Dallas Mavericks for Mark Aguirre. At the time, it was thought to be a concession to Isiah Thomas, who wanted his Chicago buddy. But with Aguirre, the Pistons finally broke through and won championships in 1989 and 1990.
Two years earlier, the Lakers, desperate for a big man, pried Mychal Thompson from the San Antonio Spurs in a deal which went down two days before the deadline. Thompson helped anchor the front line for championship Lakers’ teams in 1987 and 1988.
In 2014, there are probably six to seven teams which right now have a realistic shot at the title. Indiana has already added Andrew Bynum; how much he helps them is still unknown. Miami acquired Toney Douglas in a three-team deal a month ago. Sorry, no one else in the East warrants more scrutiny.
Will Shannon Brown, on his second 10-day contract, spark the Spurs? Will Houston deal Omer Asik and get a difference-maker in return? The Thunder (Russell Westbrook) and the Clippers (JJ Redick and Chris Paul) have key players returning from injuries to help them over the final third of the season.
There are still five days left, and teams usually take the college paper approach – waiting until the last possible moment.
This decade hasn’t had a deadline day deal which has impacted the playoffs like the Wallace trade.
Is this the year?
History says no, but that won’t stop us all from waiting and wondering.
Peter May is the only writer who covered the final NBA games played by Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. He has covered the league for three decades for The Hartford Courant and The Boston Globe and has written three books on the Boston Celtics. His work also appears in The New York Times. You can follow him on Twitter.
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