The trade deadline is arriving like a slow moving sedan in a school zone. We are all just standing on the sidewalk, watching the blinker stay on for three miles, wondering if anyone is actually going to turn.
Shams says the Bucks are keeping Giannis Antetokounmpo. This is a very normal thing to do when you have one of the best players in the history of the sport, but we spent three weeks pretending he might move to Oklahoma or perhaps a different planet. Instead, they are trading Cole Anthony and Amir Coffey for Nick Richards and Nigel Hayes-Davis.
It is a trade that feels like reorganizing your junk drawer specifically to find a battery that might still have a tiny bit of juice. We lost out on the Nick Richards sweepstakes, if you can call it that. My uncle used to say you do not buy a car for the cup holders, but here we are, looking at our empty cup holders and wondering what might have been.
The Sacramento Question
Marc Stein is reporting that the Kings really like RJ Barrett. This makes sense because RJ is from Toronto and plays basketball, and the Kings are a team that also plays basketball, sometimes quite well.
There is talk of a Sabonis deal, but the math is difficult. It is like trying to split a dinner bill when one person only had water and the other person ordered a whole lobster for themselves. The Kings do not want the extra money, and getting a third team to take Jakob Poeltl is a logistical puzzle that requires more patience than most NBA executives possess on a Thursday afternoon.
Poeltl is a good center. He stands in the right places. He is tall in a way that is consistent and reliable, like a well placed coat rack in a foyer. If he has to leave, he will probably just go somewhere else and continue to be tall there, which is his right as an individual.
The Boondocks and Other Mysteries
People on the internet are asking who Huey and Riley are in our current locker room dynamic. It is a strange question to ask about a group of grown men who play professional sports for a living. I am not sure who is who, or if anyone is anyone.
Maybe we are all just characters in a show that got renewed for too many seasons. We are just waiting for the next plot twist that never quite arrives. Scottie Barnes exists in a space between these things, doing things on a court that make me think everything will be fine, right before I remember that everything is rarely fine for long.
Boston apparently lost the best thing they ever had, though the details are murky. People in Boston often think they have the best of everything, from their baked beans to their basketball players. When they lose something, they tend to be very loud about it.
I don't mind the silence up here. It gives you time to think about things like Kris Humphries or what happened to that one jacket you lost in 2014. The deadline will pass, the roster will change or it won't, and we will still be here, wondering why we care so much about a game played with an orange ball in the middle of February.