If You Went To Sleep Last Night You Missed A Classic Woj Bomb Dump

Just when you thought maybe it was safe to get some shut eye, Woj reminded us that this is no time for sleep. Things started a little before midnight when he dropped the Isaiah Thomas signing in Denver news, a move I think is going to be awesome, and suddenly the floodgates opened and a lot happened over the next 15-20 minutes. Let’s bring everyone up to speed

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Now you may be saying to yourself, why should anyone care about a trade between the Hawks and the Nuggets and Nets? Well there are a lot of moving parts so let’s start with why this matters for each team

Nuggets

The big thing here is the shedded salary. This move now brings them under the luxury tax line which while their ownership has said they don’t ming paying to win, it’s probably more important that as their young core develops they are not paying the luxury tax. For years they were trying to move Kenneth Faried, a player who relies on his high energy plays and only was making around $12M which in today’s NBA can end up being a bargain. The one knock you could say is they had to give up a first round pick, but it’s basically lottery protected in the event something disastrous happens, and if not they don’t really have the roster space for another young draft pick, and this is what teams sometimes have to do in order to shed salary. The fact that they were able to get protection was a win for them in my opinion.

Nets

Look, when your franchise is set back decades because of prior trades, you have to get creative in how you rebuild and get back to having some assets. Getting a players like Faried and Arthur in addition to a first round pick is a decent haul for a guy who is coming back from another knee injury that cost him all of last season. Sure they are a little thin at the PG position with really only having Spencer Dinwiddie/Russell on the roster at the moment, but Faried should definitely help them if they choose to keep him. He’s on an expiring deal so there is value in that if they want to later explore moving him for additional pieces. It feels weird that BKN might have smart basketball people now running the ship, but this was a no brainer for them in my opinion

Hawks

By trading for Lin and saying they plan on keeping him, this means one thing to me. They are prepared to officially trade Dennis Schroder. You don’t draft Trae Young, trade for another point guard, and decide to keep a player who makes $15M a year and has 3 years left on his deal. Especially a guy that has already talked about how he wants to get traded.

At the end of the day Schroder did average 19.4/6.2 on 43% shooting last season and is just 24, so I would think there are at least a few teams in the league that may be open to bringing him in. Maybe ATL can help someone unload a bad contract or something while getting another draft pick, things of that nature. Basically though, you don’t make this move without making a trade in my opinion, so it’ll be interesting to see what Schroder’s market actually is after it felt like maybe Hawks overspent on his 4/70M extension.

So you can see, while you may not care about any of these teams, if you’re a Nuggets fan you feel great this morning. You brought in a guy perfect for your back up point guard role that was open, you got an unhappy player out of your locker room, and you shed tons of money to get under the tax to help remain flexible. The Nets got some expiring deals and draft picks to help them claw back to above water, and the Hawks got insurance that will enable them to move an overpriced unhappy asset. Everybody wins!

But seriously though, just accept the fact that it’s never going to be OK for you to go to sleep because Woj has made it clear he will not wait until the morning under any circumstances.