The best NBA trade deadline that we've ever seen wrapped up on Thursday and I'm still processing all of the drama that went down. So many drastic changes throughout the league makes you wonder who was a winner and who was a loser?
Lets start off with some winners and there are a couple of them. My first team I want to talk about is the Phoenix Suns. The Suns shocked the NBA by trading for Kevin Durant without giving up any of the rest of their original big 3. To acquire a player like KD and not give up any of your best players is pretty unbelievable and a fleece by the Suns front office.
The Suns have struggled a lot this year with injuries and not winning games and adding KD solves all of these problems. When KD is healthy, him pairing with Booker is going to be absolutely lethal. Watch out for the Suns in the west because when they are healthy, it's a whole different ball game.
My next winner is the Dallas Mavericks. The Mavs like the Suns also acquired a superstar in Kyrie Irving to pair with their superstar Luka Doncic. We finally get the opportunity to see how Luka can pair with another superstar by his side.
Throughout Luka's brief career, we have not seen him have much help from his surrounding teammates and acquiring a star like Kyrie Irving makes an instant impact on where this team can go. Kyrie can definitely get the Mavs over the hump and out of the west. Kyrie is exactly what the Mavs needed.
Finally, my biggest winner of the trade deadline has to be the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers didn't acquire any superstars like the Mavs and the Suns did, but they made a lot of beneficial trades that can certainly help their team out this season. Trading away Russell Westbrook and acquiring a new point in D'Angelo Russell was a perfect adjustment to the point guard position for this team.
Also acquiring role players like Malik Beasley, Jarred Vanderbilt, and Mo Bamba will also help this team in the long run. For the past couple of seasons, it has been Anthony Davis and LeBron James doing most of the work, now they get additional help that will lengthen their bench and help their starting lineup out. The Lakers are my biggest winners of the deadline, but can they use these additions to make a run in the playoffs?
Now onto my biggest loser of the trade deadline and it is the Chicago Bulls. The Bulls are in a very bad situation right now with a lot of big names on their roster in Zach LaVine, Demar DeRozan, and Nikola Vucevic, but they sit on the brink of the 11 seed and the play-in. This roster has needed a shake up ever since last season and the Bulls decided to sit on their hands and not make a single move at the deadline.
There were many rumors that the Bulls would move LaVine which they could have gotten back a haul for, but instead he remains on the roster past the deadline. This team needed to make a move or two to get into a better position for the rest of the season and going into next offseason, yet they did absolutely nothing. The Bulls along with the Cavs were the only teams to not make a single move at the deadline.
The NBA is going to look a lot different heading into the late stretch of the season and into the playoffs with all of the new additions these teams have made. The Mavs, Lakers, and Suns are looking like they will be a better team now, while teams like the Bulls are in bad situations and dug themselves into a deep hole that they can't crawl out of anytime soon.
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