RADIO
The NBA offseason has turned into a matter of days--hours, if you push it--when it comes to player movement. Tampering present or not, the truth is that franchises lose no time in inking their new acquisitions to healthy deals, wheeling and dealing rookies and draft picks left and right, and pulling off trades with other teams around the nation. That's why entering September, pretty much all the dust has already settled leading up to next season.
That was mostly the case earlier this summer when it came to actual free-agent moves. It definitely wasn't the case with trades, as only one true blockbuster (Rudy Gobert from Utah to Minnesota) qualifies as the Kevin Durant and Donovan Mitchell trade sweepstakes have stayed alive for weeks and months on end with varying results.
With virtually all free agents already signed and rookies knowing where they'll start their careers, I will cover some of the trades that took place in the past few weeks to declare fantasy winners and losers involved in them. Let's take a look at some players who changed teams via trade who should find their stock cratering down this season.
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2022-23 Fantasy NBA Preview: Fantasy Losers from Offseason Trades
Dejounte Murray, PG - Atlanta Hawks
Trae Young, PG - Atlanta Hawks
Malik Monk, SG - Sacramento Kings
On one side of the Atlanta-Sacramento-San Antonio three-side affair, you can find Kevin Huerter. On the other one, Malik Monk. It's funny because I had Huerter as a clear aftermath-loser of the Dejounte Murray trade and Monk as a clear winner of his move to the Kings as a free agent... only for Atlanta to flip the now-expendable Huerter to soften the economic impact of landing Murray and the tax implications.
Of course, dumping Huerter's deal on Sacramento in exchange for a couple of minnows is not making Atlanta better while it is, on the other hand, truly bolstering the Kings' depth chart. To the detriment of freshly-inked Monk, of course.
On Atlanta's side of the equation, and while trading Kevin Huerter away softens the blow a bit for Dejounte Murray, the truth is that to my eyes there is still some losing going Murray's and Trae Young's way (if only by collateral damage in the case of the latter).
Huerter is freeing himself from a bona fide ball-hog, shot-taking point guard while Young and Murray will now need to deal with each other as they're (we have to assume) going to share the Hawk's backcourt next season instead of having one for each of themselves like in the earlier years of their careers.
Back to Monk, the former Laker used his one-year prove-it deal in Hollywood to build a strong resume after disappointing in Charlotte during a bunch of middling years. He started half of the 76 games he played, shot the rock with gusto (47.3/39.1/79.5 splits), and finished the year as a top-58 guard and top-126 overall player in the fantasy realm. The line almost read 14-3-3-1 when all was said and done and his efficiency was pretty much league average at 0.89 FP/min on 28+ MPG.
With Huerter in Sacramento and coming off a year in which he started 60 of 74 games, played 29+ MPG, and put up pretty similar shooting splits (45.4/38.9/80.8) and an identical stat line (12-3-3-1) while having nearly a three percentage-point lower USG% than Monk (17.5% to 20.1%) in a starting unit, odds are Huerter ends getting the SG1 gig in Sacramento with Monk, once more coming off the pine.
The knockdown isn't huge, though. This is probably more about what Monk looked to be gaining rather than what he's losing, but it's still a little bump down in terms of his ceiling and what-could-have-been barring other moves by the Kings, which doesn't really look like they're coming for the remainder of the offseason.
Patrick Beverley, PG - Los Angeles Lakers
Russell Westbrook, PG - Los Angeles Lakers
Grizzled veteran Pat Bevs has been around forever and rarely has been the place in which he has not heated the temperature up. After four years with the Clippers in which the L.A. franchise steadily decreased his role year after year, Beverley signed with Minnesota in advance of the 2022 season and definitely hit the jackpot with such a move.
He went on to start 54 of 58 games, played 25+ MPG, and finished the year with an above-average 1.00 FP/min in the fantasy realm that helped him reach a top-150 finish for the first time in the past three seasons when he was starting to be seen as a truly lost cause.
Beverley's season was surprising given his most recent outcomes. The point guard put up a line close to reading 9-4-4-1-1 with barely more than one turnover per game. That is, in fact, his best per-game line since the one he logged in his last year in Houston all the way back in 2017.
The Wolves, as you know, made it to the postseason for the first time in 70 years this past April, Bevs celebrated wildly after beating his former team from L.A. in the play-in tournament, and ultimately got ditched by Minnesota a few days ago as a facilitator for landing Gobert. LOL. Beverley knows very well his position and status in the league these days though, so he just took at the trade for what it is – business – and accepted it, moving on quickly.
Only a few weeks later, Beverley was once more on the move, this time back to Los Angeles (here's hoping he never sold his condo so he found a comfy place to stay at the minute he got traded). Of course, this latest trade is not going to fix whatever was going to happen with Beverley in Utah, mind you.
Beverley was about to become a backup to another veteran in Utah – Mike Conley – and that had not happened to him since the 2019 season. Back then (at 30 years of age), he posted a 7-5-4-1 line. No true point guard other than Trent Forrest appeared in more than 35 games for the Jazz last season and he didn't even play 13 MPG.
He will now change that potential scenario for one that could be even worse for him: backing up stubborn veteran Russell Westbrook, who you know will definitely not give a damn about whoever the hell is trying to usurp him from starting games and getting massive minutes of playing time (as part of the first unit, of course) unless he gets traded.
That last part is the most interesting of this deal. Until Beverley was traded to Los Angeles, there had been rumors of a potential deal being in the works involving Russell Westbrook and maybe some point guard available in the trade market a la Kyrie Irving.
Does this move mean Russ is truly on the move, only one LeBron lever-pull away from getting kicked out of L.A.? Whatever the case, we have to think the Lakers are not trading for Bevs to limit him to five minutes, nor to reroute him elsewhere--the return wouldn't be worth it in most cases.
Westbrook has gone from having Kendrick Nunn as his backup to having a much better, experienced, tried, and tested point guard as his substitute. That'd bring the pressure up, and that could very well mean the Lakers have finally come to their senses in seeing Russ as a non-fit for the LeBron-Davis frontcourt.
Even if everything stays the same and nobody gets traded, Bevs will at least it some part of Russ' pie of touches, opportunities, shots, and most importantly minutes next season, and that doesn't bode well for any of the two veteran point guards.
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