The NBA Trade Deadline Has Turned Us Into Monsters

We are accustomed to a certain thing from the NBA trade deadline, and for most of Thursday, we got it. The most important deal of the day, more or less until the deadline, was one that sent Arron Afflalo to Portland for a late first-rounder and some bench-junk. A playoff team with not-unreasonable title aspirations acquired the league's foremost unspectacularly competent two-guard, in other words. It's the sort of thing you catch news of, give an approving nod, and get on with your afternoon.

Then the blitz happened. Goran Dragic to Miami, Brandon Knight to Phoenix, Isaiah Thomas to Boston (not Philadelphia, as initially reported), Michael Carter-Williams to Milwaukee, Reggie Jackson to Detroit (not Brooklyn, as had seemed likely earlier in the day), Enes Kanter to Oklahoma City. Sam Hinkie continuing to accrue assets for the sake of accruing them. JaVale McGee's goofy ass getting shipped out of Denver; Kevin Garnett's mostly decayed ass put on a return flight to Minnesota. Ramon Sessions and Andre Miller swapping underwhelming backup point guard duties in Sacramento and Washington. There was more stuff. Second-rounders, also-rans, a long period in which it was not clear which team Norris Cole was on. John Salmons was involved. It was a lot.

There is just so much to make sense of, and so much that won't make sense for a while. This is not just because of the sheer volume of activity, but because, besides Adam Silver signing some papers faxed over to the league offices, nothing has truly happened yet. It sure seems like Phoenix got hosed, doesn't it? Dragic might turn American Airlines Arena from a funeral home back into a hot club. Hinkie is either playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers, or he's masturbating while everyone talks about what a wonderful chess player he is.

Conjecture abounds, and it's fine as far as it goes, but it's also heedless and hollow at its core. It will take, for instance, another few weeks before we'll be able to see if Dragic is excelling or fumbling in South Beach, or for that matter how the Suns will deploy their new, right-sized backcourt rotation. It will take another—just checking the calendar here—several geologic eras before we can assess Hinkie's grand project. All that's for sure is Zoran Dragic, the luckiest younger brother in the NBA, is still getting that good coattail-riding money.

Trade deadlines usually underwhelm. It's nigh impossible for them not to, given how they're covered. It's as if the National Weather Service sent up enough satellites to black out the sky in anticipation of a nor'easter. Adrian Wojnarowski's Twitter account becomes the town square after a municipal election, except this town square spans the globe, and the masses are tittering over the prospect of business transactions involving people being sent from one city to another. (If that sounds like a scene from a dystopic capitalist hellscape, it's because we sort of live in one.)

This flurry of deals, for better or for worse, satisfied an audience that has come to demand nothing less. The trade deadline hit basketball geeks hard, as if they'd been buying fake ecstasy all these years and finally got a dose of the real stuff. It is not unexciting—both the moment when a bajillion reports were released about just-before-the-buzzer swaps, and the fact that we now get to watch all these players in new surroundings, some of them pitched into the middle of a playoff push, trying to rapidly acclimate themselves. Both are fun.

The obsession, though, seems to be with the first thing, the churn of it all. What everyone wanted to happen, happened. It was a balloon drop of salary figures and player names, and because of it, writers have content to push, and readers have content to consume. NBA Reddit is meme-ing and ALL CAPSing and speculating. People with the complexion of Cheez-Whiz are play-arguing on TV. Moby Dick is dead; now we light the winter with its blubber.

Examining why we do this is a can of worms and a life's work, but it is not a little irritating to see everyone react as if they are watching the final act of 13 Assassins, to see the herd excite itself and run thundering over a cliff at, like, Reggie Jackson getting sent to the Pistons. This is, however lamentably, the way we are, and it is inarguably what the trade deadline does to us. We should probably be watching our salt intake, too.

But back to that Afflalo trade. It was a good one. The Blazers, with LaMarcus Aldridge delaying his thumb surgery, have just shelled out the last of their trade chips and are apparently gunning for that number one spot this season. As they should: the Western Conference is wide open, and maybe a player as solid in all aspects of the game as Afflalo will put them over the top. It will be interesting to see how he fits into the team and his impact on their eventual playoff run. Watching that happen, or not, will also feel more substantial than Thursday's hysterics. We will once again watch for something besides numbers and names. It will be basketball, and it will be a relief.