The Western Conference Were The Big Winners of the Trade Deadline
It looks like a few teams out West are trying to create super teams, just as the Sacramento Kings were in the top 3 in the West
The trade deadline and the Nets dismantled their team
This year’s trade deadline was insane. The Suns got undeniably better by acquiring Kevin Durant in a trade with the Brooklyn Nets. Before that, the Dallas Mavericks got some help by acquiring Kyrie Irving from the Brooklyn Nets as well.
Now that James Harden has been gone from the team since last season, the dismantling of the Brooklyn super team is complete. At least, they got some assets in the form of picks and some young players to make up for it.
The Lakers made some moves after it looked like they were doomed again
Russell Westbrook was moved from the Los Angeles Lakers. He ends up on the Utah Jazz but the Jazz will most certainly buy his contract out and cut him from the team. The Jazz definitely gets even more draft capital going forward with the trades that they made before the deadline as they look to become poised to be the Boston Celtics of the Western Conference.
The year-and-a-half experiment that the team had with him just didn’t quite work out and possibly cost Frank Vogel his coaching job before the start of this season. He never really fit in anyway.
The Lakers get back D’Angelo Russell, a player that they had drafted second in the 2015 NBA Draft. This is a homecoming for a player that they had given up on too early. He gives them a true point guard in the starting lineup now and would compliment LeBron and Anthony Davis well in the halfcourt.
The Lakers have almost certainly gotten better after all of the moves that they made this week. They also ended up sending Patrick Beverley to the Orlando Magic and getting a long and athletic center, Mo Bamba, in the trade. The Lakers are currently in 13th place and will most likely move into the top 10 sooner rather than later in a competitive Western Conference. I see these moves as possibly being enough to get into the postseason this year after missing it last year.
The Kings are going to have to fight both the Mavericks and the Suns for positioning now
The Mavericks and Suns are definitely going to put pressure on the Sacramento Kings, who are currently in third place in the West and looking to make the playoffs for the first time in 17 seasons. They are also currently leading the division that was most impacted by acquiring talent from the East. I don’t see the Sacramento Kings slipping out of the playoffs entirely. They still have the best offensive rating in the NBA and a decent bench with solid depth.
They should fall somewhere between three and seven in the rankings when all is said and done. It’s just perplexing to me that they didn’t make any major moves to upgrade the team when every other team in their division beefed their teams up considerably. The combination of De’Aaron Fox and Domantas Sabonis, both of who are having All-Star caliber seasons has catapulted the team that has struggled over the last decade and a half plus into a possible Western Conference contender.
I think that their status at this point slightly shifts and moves over to the teams that made some big moves before the trade deadline but I do think that the Kings still have enough to at least be competitive and still find a way to break the NBA’s current longest postseason drought.
The West is stronger at this point and the competition will be intense; they could even win a championship this year
The thing is, the West was looking like the weaker of the two conferences this year because of the number of teams in the East that are playing extremely well but it looks as if with Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving, in particular, moving West, the needle might shift slightly back towards the West.
What it comes down to, regardless of which Western Conference teams are most negatively impacted by missing out on adding big talent, the West ended up winning in the major shuffle of everything this year. I’m not going to make the bold prediction yet and say that the West will win the NBA Finals just yet but I’m not going to be surprised if the team that makes it out of the West becomes the favorite in the Finals against any team in the Eastern Conference at the end of the day.
