Uncertainty Carries The Day At The NBA Trade Deadline

On a day that saw 20 players and 11 draft picks move as part of nine different deals, the only undeniable NBA's trade deadline winner was market uncertainty. There was some wheeling and dealing, to be sure—and congratulations to the Philadelphia 76ers on their new Joel Anthony—but in a broad sense, the day was eerily quiet and notably unmoving.

This was the expectation ahead of the 2015 trade deadline, too, which saw an unbelievable flurry of eleventh-hour activity. The possibility of a repeat died a quiet death on Thursday. The NBA universe sat glued to TweetDeck well past the 3 PM deadline, waiting for one final WojBomb that never came. Instead, the 2016 deadline was bogged down by the thing that was supposed to slow the wheels in 2015—a paralysis related to the looming boom in the NBA's salary cap.

The cap is projected to skyrocket, first in 2016 and then again in 2017, as the league's new television rights deal begins generating additional basketball-related income. The most recent estimates have the current cap of $70 million jumping to $92 million this summer and $108 million the season next, before coming back to Earth a bit in later years. The players won't be receiving a larger share of the total revenue pool—we'll have to wait for the next collective bargaining agreement for that—but the part they do receive is about to get a mile or so deeper. As a result, teams will have a ton of extra money and cap space this summer to chase a relatively underwhelming free agent class. The year after that, Steph Curry, Russell Westbrook, Blake Griffin, Chris Paul, and Rudy Gobert, among many others, are slated to hit the market amid a second cap boom.

Nobody seems to have a great feel for how, specifically, these shifting tides will affect the market, and that ambiguity played out on deadline day in a very dull way.

The biggest impact was on impending high-salaried free agents. The Houston Rockets found no market for Dwight Howard, a 30-year-old rental who could really help a defense, but stands as one of the most perplexing free agents of this summer. The Atlanta Hawks determined that Al Horford's Bird rights and the chance to make a brief playoff run outweighed a potential trade return for the 29-year-old All-Star. Even second-tier names like Ryan Anderson stayed put, largely because projecting their next contracts is so difficult, and potentially so painful.

"People are not sure, people really don't know what to expect next year," Toronto Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri told reporters, according to Josh Lewenberg of TSN. "Do you preserve your assets and wait until the actual showdown comes? To me it really showed. There were no typical big deals, not many chances taken. So I think teams look at that uncertainty that comes with what's going to come in the summer."

There's no greater clarity at lower salary tiers, either. The restricted free agent market could emerge as a summertime bonanza for players … or not, as teams hesitate to tie up cap space for three days while waiting for an offer sheet to be matched. In retrospect, teams that bet on the market and signed fourth-year players to what seemed like pricey extensions in the fall may look a little smarter for acquiring cost certainty. Cost certainty seems to have played a part in the Detroit Pistons effectively making their 2016 offseason acquisitions now by acquiring Tobias Harris (already locked up) and Donatas Motiejunas (a pending restricted free agent, so not quite as much, but still someone the Pistons can keep if they really want to).

Indeed, if this deadline has a winner, it's the Pistons. Pretty much by default. At least they did things. Most teams didn't, opting not to surrender major asset equity for short rentals with uncertain futures. The Boston Celtics could have swooped in for any of the big names with ease, but their hammer—an unprotected 2016 first-round pick from the Brooklyn Nets—has exceptional value to them, either as a trade chip on draft night or as a means to add some star quality on a rookie-scale deal that will skew way below market value as the cap rises.

"I know the risks were more than we were willing to do," Celtics general manager Danny Ainge said Thursday, according to Jay King of MassLive. "And that's why we didn't do any deals, obviously. But I think the contract length and security definitely plays a factor into it, security and what sort of risks you are taking."

Four first-round picks changed hands Thursday, but teams clearly valued their 2016 selections. The rookie scale is set in advance in the collective bargaining agreement and not tied to a percentage of the cap, which stands to make summertime selections significant bargains if they become rotation-level players or better.

The 2015 No. 1 pick, Karl-Anthony Towns, counts at 8.15 percent of the salary cap. The top pick in 2016—say, Ben Simmons or Brandon Ingram—will only count as 6.42 percent, based on current estimates. The effect is similar at each of the 30 first-round draft slots. In a salary-capped league, it doesn't make a great deal of sense to flip something so valuable for a small upgrade.

Complicating matters further is the general inevitability of this current NBA season. Most teams informally play by the five percent rule—a team that believes it has a five percent chance of winning the title should push its stack into the middle, as those opportunities come around rarely. With the Golden State Warriors and San Antonio Spurs, and to a slightly lesser degree the Oklahoma City Thunder and Cleveland Cavaliers, excelling as they are, even five percent strains belief for most teams.

The Raptors may be the league's fifth- or sixth-best team, but couldn't find a home for a major asset in an extra (likely) lottery pick they're owed from the New York Knicks (or Denver Nuggets) this year—in large part because they knew no player on the market would make them an even match for the Cavaliers. The Celtics, a step behind them, didn't make an aggressive move to bridge the gap, either. The Chicago Bulls may be worse today than they were before the deadline, factoring in injuries; the Miami Heat, looking to ensure they don't have to worry about paying the repeater luxury tax penalty until 2019-20, continued a season-long stripping of the end of the roster to get beneath the tax line. This is the opposite of going for it.

The Orlando Magic, meanwhile, can now clear up to $45 million in cap space, which would be a major factor in any other season, but may prove moot when everyone else also has max-level room in July. Perhaps sensing as much, the Washington Wizards made a complicated gamble on Markieff Morris, while preserving just enough space to make a long-planned and increasingly futile max offer to Kevin Durant.

In the West, no would-be challenger to the top three made a push beyond the Los Angeles Clippers' surrender of (yet another) first-round pick in a deal for Jeff Green, who wouldn't move a needle in a blood drive. The Memphis Grizzlies sort of folded up shop in light of Marc Gasol's foot injury, picking up five picks in total over the course of the week to help recoup some of their lost war chest from years of betting on their own five-percent chance. The Houston Rockets maneuvered below the luxury-tax line. By standing pat, the Dallas Mavericks may wind up the biggest winner of the West's second class, and the Portland Trailblazers eschewed a push for a playoff spot in favor of leveraging its ample cap space for (wait for it) a first-round pick in exchange for taking on Anderson Varejao's deal.

The result was a series of minor moves that focused on the luxury tax, pick accumulation, or setting things up for the summer ahead. With tight races in both conferences, the marginal importance of a win may have never been this high. On the other hand, the value of making the playoffs has never been lower, given the unlikelihood of deep runs for low seeds and the potential discounts 2015 lottery picks could provide. If teams knew how this offseason would shape up, they could have assessed risk and made their moves. But they don't, and so they didn't.