“Agent X” is an active NBA agent who offers his unique insights and stories from years in the business regularly here on Sportsnet.ca
The trade deadline creates a unique tipping point of the NBA season. Trades that are in the process of happening or happen at the deadline from a player’s perspective fall into two categories.
The first category is “I want to be traded.”
The second is “What do you mean I was traded?”
The timing of the trade deadline being so close to All-Star Weekend ties into all of this. With All-Star Weekend, everyone from around the league more or less congregates in one place and a natural by-product of this face-to face-time is that deals are worked through and trades are done.
For the players, they get together and are either in a position where they spend the weekend being grateful of their own opportunity or wistful of hearing about other guys’ opportunities. For a guy like DeMarcus Cousins, the thought of going back to your own situation and playing out the string becomes defeating.
The work that goes into these trades can sometimes be immense. For clients I’ve had to request trades for, I found it was always best to do everything quietly. A simple conversation between myself and the GM of the team where we are each honest with each other and pledge to find a way to move a player on in a way that is good for each of us is often possible. I have generally found by the time a player says it might be time for him to move on, the team often has the same feeling. Once we have that conversation we each go out and canvass the league for possibilities.
From my perspective, I am most often looking for opportunities where on paper it looks like my client will 1) play more, 2) play more successfully in terms of winning, and obviously 3) have individual success.
The reasons a player may believe that it is time to find a new home vary—everything from playing opportunities, to personality difference between the player and the coach, to just issues for the player’s family living in a given market. Over the years I have seen it all.
As we take our time going through the league, and as I find teams that have some level of interest in my client, I then pass them onto the team and my part in it is done—at that point we can only sit and wait.
Another funny phenomenon I have noticed in the NBA is that very little happens without a deadline. So it takes that drop-dead date for people to get to brass tax and make deals. This year more then any other year in my history it seems like each team is waiting on someone else to make the first big move. Take Chicago, for instance. Chicago is one of a number of teams that came into the season with big expectations that are grossly under performing. They’re also very adverse to paying the tax— not to mention that they are currently paying two coaches. This changes their perspective and their plans. The Bulls have two key pieces in Pau Gasol and Joakim Noah that they are most likely not going to be able to re sign. Will Chicago use the opportunity that a disappointing season provides to make a financial decision that, on the court, negatively impacts the team? The rest of the league is waiting to find out, but there are many teams facing similar questions and still trying to identify who is buying and selling.
When you do finally get a call that a trade has happened, it is always surprising. I had one client that went through three or four trades during his career, and yet every time I would call him just through a force of habit he would seem to collect himself and then ask, “Wait, how am I going to get my car there and all my stuff…?” He literally did this every time.
I don’t think fans understand how jarring these transactions are. Imagine today you are sitting in your office in Houston and your boss walks in and says, “OK, we traded you to another office in Sacramento and your flight is at 6:00 p.m.”
How do you wrap your mind around that? What’s the first thing you do? For players with families the process is even more complicated as it’s harder to just pick up and leave in the middle of a school year. At this point there are only two months left in the season, but for tight-knit families two months is a long time to be apart. How do you balance all of that?
I myself have never had a player flat-out refuse a trade; ultimately each player knows it is a part of the business. But I do always remember the example of Jimmy Jackson, who was traded multiple times and one year. At one point he was moved from a very good team to a very bad team, and just ended up going back to his off-season home. He told the team that traded for him that he wasn’t coming. That kind of thing happens more often than you think.
In the big picture, it is always interesting to me how much trades energize teams. A lot of times when a team makes a trade, you will see an immediate jump in the play of that group. The introduction of new energy and a new perspective really energizes the group.
This year as multiple teams gear up to overcome slow starts or, in some teams’ cases, make the move for the one piece to put them over the top, a lot of deals could happen. And if they do, they’ll come fast and furiously.