God that just felt like it was gonna be the most fun team to watch. In the end it was miserable. 

Now this is gonna be fun

I like to think Nash was a double agent, blowing up the Lakers from the inside on behalf of the Suns.

So many outlets saying that Nash was the key offseason addition. Sucks that he got hurt. Would’ve been cool to see him play out the season healthy

Or Malone and GP

I really thought that was the most op and cheating bullshit of time. Was 100% certain it’s a free championship

The Rondo 8 second violation video vs Houston in the playoffs, followed by him leaving Jason Terry wide open is a funny video to go back and watch. Carlisle was sick of his shit.

Wasn’t that team like a 1 seed or doing really well and thought adding rondo would just be a nice super bonus? And then they immediately went dog shit

Maybe it was best offense in the league

I went to college in Michigan and I remember my professor sulking into class complaining about how will we ever win when we trade our stars like Jerry Stackhouse for some no-name Wizards guard (Rip Hamilton).

To be fair, the Pistons wanted to have Wallace, Atkins, and Grant Hill together. The Magic pretty much cleared their entire cap sheet so they could get three max guys. Wallace and Atkins were announced as intending to sign with the Pistons, and then a few days later Hill made his decision to go to the Magic with McGrady. The Pistons did him a solid by making it a sign and trade so that he could get a better contract, but for all intents and purposes that was more of a free agent swap than a trade.

And they got Chucky Atkins

Detroit media reported that Hill had some ongoing stuff with his ankles and lower legs that he got treatment for by the Pistons awesome trainer at the time, Arnie Kander, to prevent major injury

It’s sad that Hill went to Orlando and almost immediately got hurt. Maybe they didn’t know about the particular leg issues he had? He sure did a lot of crazy athletic stuff while in Detroit.

Kander was Pistons trainer from 1992 onwards for 23 years. In 2023 Orlando hired him!

To be fair it was one of the first sign-and-trades if i remember right, Hill was traded in order not to lose him for nothing.

2k has an inflated player rating problem, like highly flawed players will be 85+

nothing is wrong with an 80, 80 is great but it is an insult if you ask a nba player. fifa used to have a similar problem

thats just the raptors boost lol. all of our players get boosts when they leave and get a shit ass rating on the raps… keep in mind Reaves has a higher rating than scottie

PG was really good….I get that.

But no player has ever gotten more resume out of MVP consolation votes than him. Dude literally got zero actual MVP votes (Giannis and Harden split all of those) and for 6 years we’ve heard about how one time he was third in voting.

I get that he’s better than 12th in MVP voting David Lee, 6th in MVP voting Kevin Love, 8th in MVP Sabonis, and 10th in MVP (this year) Mobley but it seems like it carries an outsized level of his rep.

There’s no way we’re comparing PG to SGA.

Diff is Tatum wasn’t load managed durin the reg season

That trade was wild. The Celtics somehow got Porzingis and 2 first rounders (which became #25 in 2023 and #14 in 2024) for Smart

Ja derailed the Ja era. But yeah, Smart looked washed in Memphis (but oddly bounced back somewhat in LA).

Marcus got married that summer and came to training camp way overweight. His preseason pictures had him looking like a can of biscuits in that tight jersey.

Nah I HATED that trade from the moment it happen. I said at the time it was a case of the front office chasing him for years and overpaying based on what he was at his best not what he was worth coming off of a down season

It’s crazy cause he seemed to be a good culture/defense guy for our kids and then kinda returned to form in LA. Memphis was the only team where he was a real mess.

The cherry on top of that disaster was that you traded a first to the wizards to salary dump him, then collapsed in the second half of the season to raise the value of the first you gave away.

That first round pick became kyshawn George, who is now a borderline foundational building block for us.

Came in and searched for this one or I wouldve said it. Folks talked big that this was the start of the Nets taking over NYC and what not

Yeah no offense, no it wasn’t. This is one of those revisionist takes that started getting accepted as true by the younger generation. My account is almost 13 years old and was commenting on this sub at the time, maybe you have others but your account is 3 years old. I don’t think you’re a good source for how this trade was remembered.

Also, no, the main reception around the trade was that it was awful for the Nets but this was their new Russian Owner Mikhail Prokhov or w/e and he was going to try to buy a championship - it was super risky but could it work??????

Like no offense, I don’t mean to be a jerk but Ive watched the common consensus history change so many times on stuff like this from younger generations coming in here and telling us stuff that just wasn’t true and eventually it just become a accepted fact.

They were not WIDELY applauded. It was basically the same reaction Jimmy got going to the Warriors. Tons of people were clowning Mikhail for ruining his team on geriatrics.

People forget too, during this time, the Eastern Conference was just Miami and everyone else. It felt like the Nets were going to be the only team to challenge them because the East was so weak. And then it blew apart for so many reasons.

I think it was more cautious optimism at best. Like “OK this looks good on paper but how soon until these guys are washed?”

And then they had to sign him to an extension which influenced their decision to trade Harden.

If perk and big baby could have been combined it would have been an all nba player.

anytime someone says “he’s an enforcer” they should really just say “this guy is absolute ass at basketball”

Even at the time I think that was a pretty controversial trade. The “in-favor” argument pointed at the Lakers with Pau and Bynum as a reason to beef up, in addition to the “championship experience/leadership.”

but people already kind of knew that Perk… didnt really do anything.

People forget Jeff Green had open heart surgery right around that trade going down. It’s a rare trade where it’s swung back and forth a bit over the years.

Even at the time of the trade it was a bit of a head scratcher. I understand the justification at the time was wanting an actual rim protecting big vs the Lakers and Spurs. But that team was a young team that beat others off of athleticism and speed. Adding Perkins just mucked up their fast playstyle and led to the downfall of that Thunder squad long before KD made the softest move in league history.

Presti’s greatest move by far

KD was fine even if da Suns overpaid. Beal done fucked things up and will prolly be booed in Phoenix the rest of his career 😂

More like Bradley Beal to the Suns

No one else here has said it.. but it also surely doesn’t help the team’s overall success if your head coach has a substance abuse problem that’s obvious to all the players.

I remember saying to my friends constantly at the time that that was going to be an awful trade given his age and injury history. They gave up so much for him and did NOTHING

Every KD move outside of GS

  at least the Bucks now can start their rebuild in earnest.

well

I remember the reaction a little differently. It was more of a “I guess the bucks had to shake things up and this could be great, but this feels like a big risk”.

I think the chemistry was fine, they just didn’t play much together, and the rest of the team was a skeleton crew.

Oh you somehow managed to stop the Dame-Giannis pick and roll this time? Here’s a Khris Middleton tween hesi splash right on your face.

Honestly anyone praising the Knicks for “shooting their shot” by overpaying for Bridges can’t clown on this trade. Bucks had a top 2 player at the time in Giannis and absolutely had to shoot their shot. They just didn’t get lucky enough to go on a heater and got injured instead. Even the PG/Kawhi trade comes down a lot to injury luck.

As a Pistons fan, our whole subreddit is melting down over these big name trades happening this year. Like, adding up big egos who have been getting unlimited touches since AAU is not necessarily a recipe for success. If anything, I would’ve predicted Giannis and Dame would be a more successful pairing with their contrasting roles.

Maybe they shouldn’t have fired the coach that got them to 30-13

Dame was an All Star starter both his years in MKE and they did win the NBA Cup. Playoffs were a disaster because of injuries.

I mean as soon as it happened, I remember the meltdown on the kings sub was legendary. But then sabonis was pretty good and they made the playoffs, so the narrative changed

No it wasn’t.

The Kings were getting clowned when the trade happened for trading Haliburton (who was looking progressively better) for an older guy who never did anything in the playoffs. The hit pieces that day were insane

It only briefly was considered a “win-win” when the Kings had their Beam Team the following season. Then they goofed that up and the pitchforks been out ever since

Halliburton liked Sacramento and was happy to stay there too. These sort of teams that everyone leaves should hold that sentiment in higher regard.

The immediate reaction was that it was a massive mistake outside of a few folks. The next season it seemed better because the Pacers weren’t that good and the Kings made the playoffs, but it was clear the next season it was a bad trade.

Hali is an easy player to build around, the Kings going in on Fox and Sabonis was always a mistake as they both topped out as roughly top 20 players. Hali pretty clearly had a much easier set of skills to optimize and that was proven true.

I always loved Hali, the day he got traded was my worse day as a Kings fan (been a Kings for almost 30 years for reference, so I’ve seen some shit).

It’s hard to judge that trade because of how bad the Kings have been at building a team around Sabonis

I mean, the Kings are just badly managed. If they kept Hali, do you really think the Kings would have had a similar run to the finals like Indiana did?

I would like to add that when Dwight chose Houston, GSW pivoted to sign Andre Iguodala. Worked out for them pretty well.

All compared to expectations

Having a strong young core, good vets (at the time), plus adding Kawhi and PG and only winning one conference game is a colossal failure considering they were title favorites

I understood the trade and why it was made, but man, losing the twins just sucked the joy out of the team. And obviously the picks given up were overboard. Ugh.

I think the Suns were in the right direction, the issue came next season

It’s hard to think of even a hypothetical parallel to what happened with SGA, let alone a real one. Like, draft picks, sure – the Cavs trading away the pick that became James Worthy, or more recently, the Clippers trading away the pick that became Kyrie Irving. But a young player getting included in a trade and then taking a leap like SGA did… like, imagine if the Knicks traded for Carmelo and then Danilo Gallinari became an MVP for the Nuggets. Or if the Clippers sent Chris Paul to the Rockets and then Montrezl Harrell led the Clippers to a championship.

KD to the Nets was a free agency signing that turned into a trade so that the Warriors could get D’Lo and not walk away with nothing.

And we celebrated the fuck out of it. One of the best moments in our franchise history and we wouldn’t have had as much fun watching the team had he not joined.

That Nets team was legit, they got screwed over by injuries and Kyrie drama

Kd, kyrie signings and harden trade is something any team does ¹⁰⁄₁₀ times

Nah because it did not cost them much. If it fails you lose 1 FRP and a pick swap, that kind of nonsense happens, it’s still a good trade

It doesn’t necessarily make Boston look better if it fails either

One thing to counter that is Maxey can shoot and Edgecumbe has shown the ability so far. We don’t have a passing guard on any level which is going to be tough for playmaking. But if the team actually gels and someone decides to play off ball, they will be lethal.

I bet you aren’t 😉

Pippen hated being in Houston. Super toxic at the time.

The Celts got Kyrie for IT and Jae Crowder. Despite Kyrie’s injuries those two years, and his false claim of wanting to be there, it was still a win for the Celtics.

One of the biggest lose-loses in recent memory. Nets got worse, Sixers got embarrassed, Harden probably shaved an entire year or two off his career picking up the slack for the Jerk Off Siblings, Simmons ran out of excuses and basically got booted from the league, and Daryl Morey went from a likeable Tech Bro Wannabe to a Washed King with a spray on beard overnight.

As a Knicks fan in Philly, that weekend where Simmons had his first game back and the Nets won was legitimately one of the greatest moments of my 20s. Went on a date to watch the game and the girl left early cause I was laughing so hard.

I dont remember the sentiment around the KAT deal being win-win. In my recollection most people just understood it as a consequence of the new second apron and a necessary evil. 

3 years is an eternity in the NBA. Things can change and make that 2029 pick valuable. Too early to tell.

Yeah it’s very weird how that all worked out. Because Elliot started off super strong but then got injured and was just not the same after. They bring in Rodman who has this rebirth on the Spurs with his Demolition Man hair dye and he’s in his prime for rebounding. He brings an edge to the Spurs that they didn’t have. There a clip of Robinson losing his shit on a ref and that was when Rodman was on the team that David started getting chippy.

And then the dude just loses it mentally and John Lucas really couldnt handle him so out he went for Purdue just for the sake of getting a solid backup big and a twin tower defensive lineup when needed with Robinson. I hated the trade at the time as did a lot of people, but it would have been such a disaster if Rodman stayed in San Antonio. He was going to do something worse than be in the arena parking lot with a loaded gun.

Nah that was widely regarded as an overpay since they could’ve just waited for FA

Agree to an extent.

Even then everyone was aware that The Knicks essentially gutted their roster for a few extra months of Melo

The PG trade was seen as a must do in order to get Kahwi. In retrospect bringing in Kahwi was one of the worst decisions in NBA history with how everything played out.

a lot of people didn’t like it mostly because Butler got suspended, and was a questionable fit, but he’s been really good for the Warriors, and hasn’t caused any drama. so I don’t think it was a bad deal.

praised by who? And now look awful to who?

Eh that’s a little unfair. Raptors were in rebuilding mode and OG was set to walk that off-season. The fact they got two building blocks for a rental still feels like a win.