Knicks make deadline move
Bojan Bogdanovic left Detroit to join a now even-more-formidable contender in New York. Gordon Hayward is leaving Charlotte for one of the league’s best surprise stories this season in Oklahoma City. Doug McDermott was once traded by the Pacers to the Spurs, and now, the Spurs have traded him back to the Pacers.
None of those shooters were making playoff plans when Thursday started.
Trade deadline day in the NBA gave them and plenty of other players an entirely new outlook, plus may have even reshaped the start of the playoff push as well.
The Knicks made some big moves with eyes on contending in the Eastern Conference, the 76ers added a sharpshooter in Buddy Hield with hopes that it can get back on track when — or if — reigning MVP Joel Embiid returns from injury, while the Suns and Mavericks added frontcourt depth. The Suns landed Royce O’Neale from the Nets, and the Mavs are bringing in P.J. Washington from the Hornets.
“Lots of people got better!!! That’s fun for competition…” Embiid wrote on social media.
Bogdanovic was averaging 20.2 points this season with the Pistons, who have the NBA’s worst record. He and Alec Burks are headed to the Knicks, a team that entered Thursday a game out of the No. 2 spot in the East and managed to add without really subtracting — the price was Quentin Grimes, Evan Fournier and Ryan Arcidiacono.
Grimes began the year as a starter, then played off the bench. Fournier only appeared in three games and Arcidiacono made 20 appearances — without scoring a single point in any of them.
Hayward joins a Thunder team that started Thursday as the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference.
Hield left Indiana in a trade to the 76ers, and the Pacers seemed to try and replace his shooting by bringing back McDermott in a move with the Spurs. McDermott spent three seasons, 2018 through 2021, with the Pacers, so the trade was a homecoming of sorts.
The Bucks made a couple of notable moves, one by landing Patrick Beverley from the 76ers and pairing him with Damian Lillard; those two exchanged some heated words last season. The Bucks then sent center Robin Lopez to the Kings; it’s expected that Lopez will be waived by the Kings.
LeBron James’ Los Angeles Lakers didn’t make any trade-deadline deals, nor did a Warriors team that entered the season with championship hopes and finds itself in a dogfight at the bottom of the West playoff picture.
Another team that didn’t make a trade: the Cavaliers, who have won 15 of their last 16 games to move to No. 2 in the East.
“Sometimes you don’t want to mess up a good thing,” Koby Altman, the Cavs’ president of basketball operations, said on a conference call shortly after the deadline passed. “So, we’re going to roll with what we have.”