Bring Forth The Trades

It’s NBA Trade Deadline Day, that day basketball fans all get extremely excited about each February despite it reliably sucking shit like six out of any seven years. The trade season already has produced many delights. Kristaps Porzingis to the Mavs, for poop! Otto Porter to the Bulls, for somehow even smellier poop! Tobias Harris to the Sixers, who are going for it! Harrison Barnes to the Kings, a combination of proper nouns that would have seemed engineered as a punchline only a year ago but which now may actually have some bearing on the West playoff hunt! Also several other trades!

Surely these are enough of the trades, you may be thinking. Surely no man can hunger for more trades, when the trade table already has borne such fruits. Surely these trades have exhausted both the trade kitchen, the trade larder, and the trade root cellar, which now must be closed for restocking. To this I raise the scepter, bang it ominously on the floor, and say, in an extremely cool voice: “Bring me the trades.”

Bring them before me! Bring forth the trade platter. I demand the trades. It’s cool when lots of teams make lots of big trades all right around the same time, and I want more of it.

The 76ers still need some athletic oomph for their bench. The Lakers still need an, uh, well, a second actually good NBA player; also everyone on the team is miserable and probably can’t wait to get banished to this or that basketball backwater just to get the hell away from each other. Several teams that began the season with serious postseason ambitions (the Rockets, Jazz, Pacers, Blazers, etc.) have holes and/or weirdnesses in their rotations. The Celtics have like 57 draft picks, an unhappy roster, and can’t trade for the guy they want until they sort out Kyrie Irving’s situation one way or another. The Suns still need anything like a professional-grade point guard who can help their young players get their first experience of what it’s like to run an NBA offense. Kevin Durant is an annoying, aggrieved cheesebutt who thinks it’s the media’s fault that people are curious about where one of the NBA’s best players might like to go in free agency this summer; that doesn’t have much to do with today’s trade deadline action, but I’m mentioning it anyway because fuck him!!!!

Meanwhile, Anthony Davis remains a Pelican. Blake Griffin remains a Piston. Ricky Rubio remains a ... a Jazz? He is a Jazz. And Marc Gasol and Mike Conley remain Grizzlies. The Wizards, Pistons, Cavaliers, Knicks, and Clippers may yet contain some useful parts and medium-term commitments they have not cynically stripped and sold off to save their billionaire owners some money under the guise of “increasing long-term flexibility.” Commence trading, forthwith, I say. Pronto!

The clock is ticking, and I have had it up to here with nobody having made a big blockbuster trade in at least the last hour or so. Bring me the trades. Bring me the damn trades. I will broker these trades my frickin’ self if I have to.

In conclusion: Bring me the trades.