Little more than three weeks to the NBA market deadline and the teams, after having spent difficult months putting together rosters made up of replacements due to Covid-19, can focus their efforts on exchanges. During the night, the Denver Nuggets, the Boston Celtics and the San Antonio Spurs concluded one with three teams, which have thus resolved some issues on the sidelines. This is the exchange in detail as reported by ESPN:
- Denver receives: Bryn Forbes
- Boston receives: Bol Bol and PJ Dozier
- San Antonio receives: Juancho Hernangomez and a second pick 2028
The reasons for the exchange for the three teams
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All possible trades for the next few days
As always happens in these cases, there are different reasons that pushed the three teams to agree in this way. Denver is what it has more basketball motivations and it was fifth placed at home on best player of the exchange, adding a 45% three-point shooter down to earth in the last two seasons to the external battery around Nikola Jokic, although the last playoffs played with Milwaukee have shown how much difficult to keep Forbes in the playoffs due to his defensive limitations.
Boston instead, by relinquishing Hernangomez’s contract, he approaches his goal for this deadline, that is evitare la luxury tax (now $ 850,000 above the threshold that triggers the penalty) saving about 3 million dollars, taking two probably unusable players like Dozier (out with an anterior cruciate injury) and Bol (out at least 3 months after undergoing foot surgery). It is possible that their two contracts will be used for other trades between now and February 10, the day of the market deadline, or even in the summer.
Hernangomez at 26 would theoretically be in the middle of his career, but after a good pass to Minnesota in 2019-20 in which he was close to 13 points with 7 rebounds on average he could no longer find space and continuity in the NBA: this year the Celtics has averaged just 5.3 minutes in 18 games, basically only garbage time, with 1.1 points and 1.4 rebounds on average. Who knows what a player with his international experience (gold at the World Cup in China in 2019 and bronze in 2017 with the Spanish national team) cannot revitalize his career in San Antonio, which in the exchange also receives a second choice at Draft 2028.
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