How the Trade Deadline Impacts the 2023 NBA Draft
Picks changing hands, teams buying or selling, and new position holes revealed following Thursday's deadline madness
The 2023 trade deadline has come and gone. What at first seemed like a quiet deadline had quite a few rounds of fireworks. First was the Kyrie Irving trade demand and subsequent move to the Dallas Mavericks.
To be clear, this is not an analysis on the trade deadline or a look at which teams scored great returns. (We are, by nature, somewhat opposed to the typical ‘winners and losers’ columns because those answers cannot be judged immediately). What we will do, however, is trace the ripple effects from the deadline toward what most of our work is on: the NBA Draft.
Over the past few years, the league has flattened draft lottery odds and added a play-in tournament, expanding the postseason hopefuls to include four more teams (and exactly two-thirds of the league). Both maneuvers were meant to dissuade teams from tanking, and they appear to be working: 13 teams in both conferences are within a handful of games from qualifying for the playoffs. That was expected to limit the number of sellers at the trade deadline.
Instead of seeing several teams start to enter ‘tank mode’ for the next two months, what we’ve seen is a fair amount of movement of young players and draft picks as teams sought to reshape their rosters for contention. The upcoming 2023 NBA Draft was always going to be strange due to the high concentration of picks amongst a few franchises. The Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz control three selections, while the Rockets, Magic, Blazers, Pelicans, and Hornets all could end up with two.
So which players, teams, or traded picks have changed the most in the way they relate to the 2023 NBA Draft? A few overarching alterations are already worth noting.
Projecting the Ledges of the Draft Class
An important part of deciding to trade future draft picks is assigning value to what those picks are or will be. Trying to see the value in 2029 selections (or any draft more than a couple of years out) is challenging. Prescribed value is often based on where in the draft the pick will land (selections 1 through 30) and that is based on the team’s hopeful record. Teams have a decent idea of how good they’ll be over the next two years, but everything and anything beyond that is questionable.
Scouting departments are spending their time looking forward, at current college prospects as well as high-caliber high school ones. Their goal is to try to get a feel for which draft classes will have depth, where any elite future players are, and which picks will hold weight moving forward. We use the term ‘finding ledges’ to see where there are steep dropoffs of talent. It’s a really risky exercise really far in advance, but less than five months out from a draft, we have a better feel for where those ledges might be.
For much of the last month, we’ve been pretty clear on where some ledges are in this draft class. The top two picks (Victor and Scoot) are clear elite prospects with superstar upside. Beyond them, there seems to be a lot of talent, but also a lot of uncertainty. We’re really uncertain about how to slot them and what order the prospects will be in but think we could justify so many prospects from 3 to 16.
That makes it less palatable to have pick number 3 but really good to be in the late lottery and middle of the first. In essence, if you make the play-in this year, you still get a chance at a top-ten-caliber prospect. That might have influenced teams to hang onto their pick in that range and worry less about bottoming out this year.
Brooklyn will be interesting in June
The surprising nature of the Kyrie Irving trade led to so many dominoes falling around the league this week. Kevin Durant and Kyrie are both gone, and the Nets are chocked full of veterans of intrigue. They now have two first-round picks in 2023 (theirs and the Suns) and are sitting in 5th place, a full seven-and-a-half games ahead of the 11th spot that would drop them out of the postseason. It’s completely plausible that the Nets make the playoffs this year, get two mid-1st selections, and have a great deal of depth to work with in future trades.
The quality depth in Brooklyn could allow them to make several moves on draft night, not just in July. Dorian Finney-Smith is a high-value role player on a team-friendly contract. Shooter Joe Harris will be on an expiring deal next year, as will veteran point guard Patty Mills. Royce O’Neale’s 2024 expiring is only partially guaranteed for $2.5 million. The veterans could be a chip for Sean Marks to use on draft night to add more or sweeten up the pot of their own picks.
The Jazz are committed to the long view
Danny Ainge is hoarding draft picks like my wife hoards the remote to our bedroom television. He just traded for his 15th future first-round pick or swap between now and 2029. The Jazz control so many draft boards moving forward. While I can disagree with the actual trade logistics or the motivation to offload that many good players from a current playoff team, one thing is clear: the draft runs through Utah moving forward.
While that’s a very long-term view, the truth is that the planning for the future starts now. We could see the Jazz take higher-upside swings through the draft in 2023, knowing they have a ton of bites at the apple and can gamble on star power now. While their own pick is currently slated for 13th, that could change between now and the end of the season now that the Jazz have traded away three players getting 24+ minutes a night.
Portland Prioritizing the Pick
By trading Josh Hart to the New York Knicks, it feels like the Portland Trail Blazers are quite realistic about not landing in the top-8 out West. The landscape is shifting, with the Lakers being aggressive buyers and the Jazz sellers, but the Blazers were always in a strange position of high-risk, high reward. They’re likely realistic enough to know they won’t win a first-round series with this roster — especially after the Suns made their megadeal for Durant.
Making that realization was important because the Blazers have a top-14 protected pick this year. If it falls in the top-14, they keep it. If 15 or below, it conveys to the Chicago Bulls. Teams often do surveys of the future draft classes to try and understand how valuable a draft pick is at those ledge positions — as in, even if the Blazers wind up with the 12th pick, is the 12th pick in 2023 a better value than two more years of Hart?
From our vantage point, there are a lot of quality upside pieces with little separation between picks 7 and 16, so keeping the pick can deliver a ton of return for Portland that makes it function like a top-ten pick even if the selection is made later. The depth of this lottery class makes this a more appealing strategy for the Blazers — especially considering they’ve added the Knicks 2023 pick at the deadline.
Lack of Clarity in the East
Toronto didn’t end up selling, instead acquiring Jakob Poeltl in a fairly aggressive move. The Knicks and Hawks added good rotation players without giving up any. Chicago and Washington stood pat and didn’t sell.
Those five teams, all jockeying somewhere between 7 and 11 in the East. The jumbling of all those teams, plus the Indiana Pacers and Orlando Magic hanging close enough to deserve a mention, mean someone will fall outside the play-in and likely net a top-ten pick. Orlando owns the rights to Chicago’s pick (top-4 protected), and the Knicks traded their own pick (top-14 protected) to Portland in the Josh Hart deal.
Where does that leave us? Portland is rooting for the Knicks to land at 7 or 8, the Magic are hoping the Bulls fall down to the 11th spot or below, and everyone else owns their own pick. By standing pat, it’s hard to know whether the Wizards or Bulls think they’re competitive enough to jump up in the standings or simply letting the more aggressive teams pass them by this year. The waters are muddied, and several teams remain fascinating to watch moving forward.
2nd Round Mania
We saw a TON of second-round selections trade hands this week, many of which are of the future variety. Teams seemed willing to send out four or five second-round picks for a current asset. That makes sense on its face — the prospect of those picks might not mean much to a winning team, and having an asset now is better than a few potential assets later.
But why would a team want to take five second-round picks? That’s where I’m still scratching my head right now. The hoarding of second-rounders could change the draft landscape or make for more interesting trades on draft night, even starting in 2023. Combining two or three seconds to move up into the late first (or the early 30s) is possible when you control a great deal of the draft board. It could also mean a future splurge on draft-and-stash players if teams get jammed up and are unable to trade them.