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Sometimes it's not the trades you make that matter, but the ones you don't make.
That can be both good and bad. Good, like when the Lakers decided they didn't need an upgrade at the point at least year's trade deadline and went on to win the le with Derek Fisher and Jordan Farmar at the controls. Or bad, like when Cleveland decided that parting with J.J. Hickson wasn't worth it to get Amare Stoudemire, and ended up not winning the championship and not having a team after LeBron James left.
This season, two trends stuck out at the trade deadline. Foremost was the unwillingness of contenders to make a deal. Sure, they'll troll the buyout market this week for leftovers, but it was stunning to see six of the league's seven best teams stand pat. While Boston was moving and shaking, the rest were unwilling or unable to do much.
Miami and L.A. were painted into a corner with virtually no tradeable assets. Orlando already made its big splash and had no bullets left to acquire an impactful backup center. San Antonio felt little pressure to make a move, considering it's running away and hiding from the rest of the league at 49-10. And Dallas was unwilling to part with Rodrigue Beaubois as a condition of upgrading its small forward spot, or making any other deal, for that matter -- we knew this was probably going to be a quiet trade deadline for Dallas when word leaked that Caron Butler's expiring contract was all they would put on the table for Devin Harris.
But the most interesting non-mover was the Bulls. Chicago desperately searched for a shooting guard upgrade who could space the floor better for its 17th-ranked offense, kicking the tires on Houston's Courtney Lee and Memphis' O.J. Mayo. We'll get to Mayo in a minute, but the Bulls' most interesting decision was their unwillingness to include defensive stalwart Omer Asik in a deal for Lee.
I believe that was the correct move -- the Bulls will have better opportunities this summer to upgrade at the 2-guard. As good as they've looked this season, I have to think sacrificing a brilliantly promising future for a slightly better present wasn't a great trade-off for them, especially since the tandem of Asik and Taj Gibson off the bench has been a vastly underrated factor in the Bulls' defensive brilliance this season.
If the Bulls were the most interesting non-trading team, Mayo was definitely the most interesting non-traded player. The apparent story is that a deal to send Mayo to Indiana for Josh McRoberts and a first-round pick broke down because the Pacers had to put another contract in the deal and Memphis wouldn't take it, so the Pacers set up a side deal to send Brandon Rush's expiring contract to New Orleans, who had a trade exception.
However, the league office turned its nose up at the Hornets taking on money in the deal -- you can thank Mark Cuban for that, perhaps -- and the sides ran out of time. Amazingly, neither Indiana nor Memphis stepped up to offer New Orleans cash to offset the relative pittance owed on Rush's contract the rest of the year and complete the deal. Welcome to the world of small-market trades.
(Side note: It appears this wasn't the only technicality, as the trade as reported also wasn't cap-legal. Indy would have had to put another player in the deal, most likely Solomon Jones, and Memphis would have had to cut Rodney Carney and one other player to accommodate the deal.)
Getting back to the Bulls, it's come out that Chicago offered Ronnie Brewer and three draft picks for Mayo. Rumors were that Memphis' Chicago-based owner, Michael Heisley, didn't want to deal with the Bulls, but I also think it wasn't a great deal for Memphis.
It was the best offer Chicago could have made under the cir stances, so we can't blame this on another round of Reinsdorfian dithering, but Memphis was right to turn it down. "Three draft picks" sounds like a great haul, but the pick quality was poor first-rounders from the Bulls and Miami, both of which were likely to be in the late 20s, and a second-rounder. Plus, Indiana's offer came with fewer cash strings -- Brewer is owed $9 million over the next two years, while McRoberts makes the minimum -- and added a big man to the mix in McRoberts.
Memphis shouldn't have much to regret about the Mayo deal falling through. While the wing rotation now looks a bit crowded and the Griz may need to make a move this summer to thin it out, I'm not sure the high-flying McRoberts was really the answer to their frontcourt depth issues -- he's talented, but he's a 4, and what the Griz really need is a defensive-minded 5. Additionally, the Griz have been much less potent offensively this season, ranking only 20th in offensive efficiency, and Mayo's shooting could still reap dividends for them in the stretch run -- particularly since the acquisition of Shane Battier will give them more opportunities to play small.
The other big surprise among last week's non-moves was how many teams failed to move money. Utah and Houston both stayed in the luxury tax when they could have traded themselves out; while both are in the playoff chase, each faces tough odds of actually cracking the West's top eight. Additionally, doing so likely only grants them a brief extension of their season, given the heavyweights that await them in the first round.
Utah, in particular, could have moved Andrei Kirilenko's expiring contract and taken back less expiring money, even if it was dead weight -- for instance, the Jazz could have sent Kirilenko, Francisco Elson and cash to Minnesota for Eddy Curry and Sebastian Telfair, saving themselves a good sum of money; further, the Jazz could have traded Earl Watson or Ronnie Price to a playoff team, which would have got them under the tax and saved more. The fact we didn't hear anything about them even working on such deals suggests they valued owning Kirilenko's Bird rights more; they may well be right, but it was an unusual move for a small-market team to stay in the tax.
In Houston's case, it wasn't as clear-cut. The Rockets did manage to drop their tax exposure, first of all, in the Battier trade. Plus, the amount available in luxury-tax distributions this year will be only $2 million-plus -- a lot for you and I, but what the Rockets have paid for second-round picks in past years. Without a disposable contract to get them under the threshold -- any further money moves would have cut into bone -- they got as close as they could with the Battier trade.
Even the teams that moved money made interesting decisions. Charlotte dealt Gerald Wallace but hung on to Stephen Jackson, which was interesting because Jackson is the older of the two by four years. However, his numbers have held up better this season, and one suspects age will be kinder to his game than to Wallace's.
This was almost certainly an either/or calculation, as the Bobcats knew Gerald Henderson could step into an abandoned wing position in either case, but trading both would leave a gaping wound. (Charlotte, incidentally, is officially the Rasputin of the playoff chase. We thought the Cats were checking out after dealing Wallace, but they're only a half-game behind Indiana and maintain a 32.3 percent chance of making the playoffs; their biggest barrier now, besides not having Wallace, is that Indy owns the tiebreaker).
If so, Charlotte's non-trade of Jackson will be one of many non-deals that teams will reflect upon fondly this spring. Like I said, the trades are what get all the attention, and for good reason. But sometimes it's the ones that aren't made that end up being just as important.
