It was an eventful NBA trade deadline and as always there are big winners and some quite big losers.
The big winners post-deadline surely have to be the Houston Rockets. General manager Daryl Morey pulled off the biggest trade just hours before the deadline passed.
The Houston Rockets, Sacramento Kings and New York Knicks agreed to terms that sent Tracy McGrady and Sergio Rodriguez to the Knicks, Kevin Martin, Hilton Armstrong, Jordan Hill and Jarred Jefferies to the Rockets and Carl Landry, Joey Dorsey and Larry Hughes to the Kings.
Houston also has the right to swap first-round draft picks with New York in 2011 and they will also get their 2012 first rounder.
To sum up, Houston received a top quality shooting guard in Kevin Martin, a better 2011 first-round draft pick if New York struggles next year, a 2012 first-round draft pick and they got rid of Tracy McGrady. All for pretty much Carl Landry and an expiring contract.
"This deal is about putting a team together, [adding] players who can help us now and in the future, we're excited about how this sets us up for now and especially in the next year,” Morey said.
The big losers of the day had to be Miami Heat.
Miami had the pieces to make a big trade happen but ultimately they failed. Their primary target was Amar’e Stoudemire but the Phoenix Suns couldn’t be enticed into letting their big man go. It was that or the Heat just didn’t want to give up a first round draft pick.
The Heat then tried to pull off an 11th-hour trade of the Utah Jazz power forward Carlos Boozer, but the Jazz couldn’t be persuaded.
The one upside for Miami is that they will still have enough cap space in the summer to pursue two prize free agents in the summer. But if they fail to do so, they run the risk of losing Dwyane Wade, who will also be a free agent this summer. The Heat are just 28-27 this season and are just the seventh seed in the Eastern Conference, and not adding any players at this point could jeopardise their play-off hopes.
New York could also be losers. Yes they are $30million under the salary cap for next year but consider the fact they might not sign LeBron or Chris Bosh. If that happens it will be a fail of epic proportions, a fail so big the fans may never forgive the club's management.
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