I've never been a fan of the ability to do in-season trades. I mean, you're playing hard for a team, doing your best to pave the way towards a championship, and you get traded?
In my opinion all transactions should occur during the off season, and hope for the best.
This. I wrote about this in another thread. How often to in-season trades work, in terms of taking a team and driving them to an EC/WC Finals or further?
Can we at least play ONE MONTH of games with this squad before we think about a trade?
Well let’s start with the easiest ones:
Rasheed Wallace traded to the Pistons in 2004 helped them win the Finals.
Pau Gasol traded to the Lakers in 2008 helped them reach the Finals
Dikembe Mutombo traded the Sixers in 2001 helped them reach the Finals.
Clyde Drexler traded to the Rockets in 1995 helped them win the Finals.
Rafer Alston traded to the Magic in 2009 helped them reach the Finals. (Less obvious, but pretty major since the Magivc’s All-Star point guard Jameer Nelson went down with a likely season ending injury midyear).
The more subtle ones.
2009 Champion Lakers traded starting SF Vladimir Radmanovic mid season for Shannon Brown and Adam Morrison
2005 Champion Spurs traded Malik Rose for Nazr Mohammed mid season
(maybe these trades didn’t affect the teams one way or another, but a championship team traded a key rotation guy for another key rotation guy mid season and were still able to win it all).
2002 Boston Celtics don’t reach the ECF without Rodney Rogers and Tony Delk (though let’s not discuss what other effects that trade had
).
Now not Finals or Conference Finals, but:
Kings don’t make the playoffs without trading for Ron Artest mid season in 2006. Went from 18-24 to 26-14 after the trade.
Suns don’t make the playoffs without trading for Jason Kidd mid season in 1997. Went from 8-19 to 32-23 after the trade,
Warriors don’t knock out the 67 win Mavs without trading for Stephen Jackson mid season in 2007.
Celtics don't make the playoffs without trading for Antoine Walker mid season in 2005. They were 18-22 before the trade and 27-15 afterwards. (Should have gone at least ECF in my opinion).
To me, this shows plenty of examples of mid season trades helping teams. This is the NBA, this is a grown man’s league. You’re not playing bad because you think you might be traded, but you might be traded because you’re playing bad (which then might cause you continue to play bad). Show me somebody who’s consistently been playing great on a team that’s consistently winning that’s in trade talks?
So if trade talks disrupt this team, well what the heck has been disrupting the team for the first 2 ½ months of the season? Can’t put the blame on trades. (except in 2011, totally trades fault
).