The Minnesota Timberwolves shocked the league when they traded for Rudy Gobert. But then Adrian Wojnarowski and other NBA insiders revealed the details. Five players and five first-round picks? It felt like the Wolves had dropped a nuke on the league.
Many experts initially felt it was an overpay, but some changed their tune when they realized that the Wolves traded a few rotational players for Gobert, a generational defender. Whether someone is a fan of the trade or not usually depends on how they value first-round picks. Then they moved on to the next NBA drama.
Kevin Durant‘s trade request.
The league halts when a player like Durant asks for a trade. But it was a bit different this time. The Brooklyn Nets refused to trade Durant, which was especially strange in the player empowerment era. Something was up. Had the Gobert trade broken the market?
Had the Wolves made it impossible to trade for Durant?
The short answer was no, the Wolves didn’t break the trade market. They weren’t the reason the Nets couldn’t move Durant. Five first-round picks isn’t some insane amount of draft capital. The Nets had dished out four first-rounders and four first-round swaps for James Harden the year before.
The reason the Nets didn’t trade Durant went beyond the Timberwolves. With unclear circumstances, his lofty demands and a once-in-a-lifetime trade asset made the trade sputter before it even started its engines. A player of Durant’s caliber under team control for four years has never requested a trade. Not only that, but Brooklyn’s asking price was seemingly impossible to meet.
Would you have traded Anthony Edwards, Karl-Anthony Towns, and four firsts for Kevin Durant?
I hope not.
There were many reports that executives around the NBA believed the Wolves had ruined the trade market. I don’t follow their logic, though, because there had been so many Gobert-caliber trades. It wasn’t the first time a trade seemingly broke the market, and it won’t be the last. The Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Lakers recently swung humongous trades to acquire their respective superstar players.
The Lakers arguably gave up more value, which is the perfect example of why these narratives are so wild. The deadline passed shortly after the Anthony Davis trade, so there was no “holdup” for any other trades.
The Wolves just got really unlucky with timing, and Gobert probably had a lot to do with it, too. Paul George and Davis were playing their best basketball at the time of their trades. George had just come off an MVP-caliber season, and Davis was an up-and-coming star. Wolves fans who like to discuss sports online know how much respect Gobert gets. He rarely gets any.
People often speak of him in a negative light. Many fans believe his DPOY were undeserved, and he was often blamed for the Utah Jazz’s struggles. Their negative opinion of Gobert left them thinking that Minnesota’s trade was for him so bad that it broke the market. Somehow, the Clippers didn’t break the market when they traded four first-round picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for him.
It was an unfair analysis of the trade. But unfortunately, narratives tend to run wild, and there wasn’t any way for the Wolves to shake them. Fortunately, more news broke. Donovan Mitchell reportedly wanted out of Utah, and the New York Knicks seemed like a logical landing spot.
But as trade negotiations continued, it didn’t seem it would get done. Knicks GM Leon Rose set a deadline to acquire Mitchell and eventually opted to extend RJ Barrett.
Ostensibly the Jazz’s asking price was too high for the Knicks. Maybe the Gobert trade was to blame, But then the Cleveland Cavaliers finalized a deal for Mitchell in the 11th hour and indirectly assisted the Wolves. Many fans were surprised when insiders like Woj revealed the price. The consensus is that Mitchell is the better player. So after seeing Gobert go for five firsts, could Mitchell go for seven?
If the Cavs traded seven first-round picks for Mitchell, we could say that the Wolves broke the trade market. Fortunately, they didn’t. Cleveland traded five for him, a comparable haul to the Harden trade.
