NBA Draft Deadline Recap: Dan Gadzuric, still in the League

The closing of the NBA's trade deadline at 3pm today marked an end to some big NBA moves, especially of stars leaving the Northwest Division in the Western Conference for the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. Because this season's deadline was especially active DBSF will review some trades that received less publicity.

Trade #1: Troy Murphy (to Golden State) for Brandan Wright and Dan Gadzuric (to New Jersey)--Most casual NBA fans will pass this trade off as mere salary cap compromises. But, to DBSF this was commensurate to the Melo trade, excluding Melo, Billups, Favors, Felton . . . basically, all the players except the $3 million. And, well, assuming that the $3M was in Belarusian rubles and not USD.

Trade #2: Shane Battier (to Memphis) for Hasheem Thabeet and 1st Round pick (to Houston)--Battier heads to the Grizzlies to stand-in for the injured Rudy Gay and the increasingly ineffective OJ Mayo. With respect to character, replacing Mayo with Battier is like if the producers of "Two and a Half Men" replaced Charlie Sheen with Kirk Cameron. For Houston, adding Thabeet is like getting a 3-inch shorter Manute Bol, minus the shooting, rebounding, and spectacular shot blocking. So, basically a black Shawn Bradley minus the terrible contract. Thabeet's like Yao with the foot injury, but as far as we can tell all of Hasheem's ligaments and bones are all a-okay.



Trade #3: Luke Harangody and Semih Erden (to Cleveland) for 2nd round pick (to Boston)--Have you ever heard the question: if a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it does it make a noise? This trade is more like: if a dust cloud on Mimas, Saturn's smallest moon, makes a whirrr and not even the slightest resemblance of life--even at the simplest, like non-cellular amoebic level--is there to ever understand the concept of sound much less hear it does it make a noise? Announcing that two real life human beings were getting shipped to the abysmal Cavaliers for a second round pick is inhumane in DBSF's eyes.



Celtic's GM Danny Ainge should have simply cleaned out Harangody and Erdin's locker except for a one-way USAir ticket to Cleveland, with a note saying "We won't say a word." Eventually, at some point in the 2012 season someone in the media--likely an acute intern--would have noticed that the two were not on Boston's bench but were in fact sitting somewhere at the end of the Cavalier's bench. Then when questions arise about how they transferred teams the Celtic's and Cav's management could simply indicate that their microphone wasn't working or they couldn't hear the question. Eventually the whole issue would be dropped as nobody--save perhaps immediate family members--wants to talk Luke Harangody or Semih Erden for too long.