Hypothetical Power Rankings: Boogie and the biggest-ever trades

It was predictable, it was terrible. It will look visionary, it will look foolish. This week’s trade of DeMarcus Cousins to the New Orleans Pelicans had about 20 different layers to it. Some of those layers made sense: Pelicans GM Dell Demps had to take drastic action in order to actually help out Ant Davis. Several layers to this trade also did not make sense: i.e., Vlade Divac’s public speaking.

For years, trade rumors have swirled around DeMarcus Cousins, and said rumors are about as unexpected as seeing the sun rise, seeing the sun set, or seeing DeMarcus Cousins get kicked out of a basketball game. And still there was something completely astonishing about seeing a player as good as Cousins actually get moved, in-season. All of Boogie’s proper statistical comps are Hall-of-Famers. Alongside Cousins, the only players to ever finish a season averaging more than 25 points, 10 rebounds, a steal, and a block per night are: Hakeem Olajuwon, David Robinson, Bob Lanier, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. When you factor in Boogie’s newfound floor-stretching, his 2016-17 season is literally unprecedented: nobody in league history has ever comboed together his stellar per-game averages in assists, blocks, rebounds, and 3-pointers.

Cousins’ thoroughly stuffed box scores easily register him as a top-20 player pretty much no matter which statistic you prefer. His 6.4 Win Shares over his 55 games with the Kings this year was 19th-best in the league at the All-Star Break. Pretty much every player above Cousins on that list is so valuable they are essentially untradeable. Players like Kawhi Leonard, Kevin Durant, Stephen Curry, LeBron James, or Anthony Davis have very much transcended trade rumors — especially in-season trade rumors. The rumors exist to identify the role players who would help these stars the most.

So I wondered: has anybody ever been traded, in the middle of the year, after accumulating more single-season value than Cousins’ 6.4 Win Shares? Using Basketball-Reference’s Play Index, I found that it’s only happened five previous times in league history — and I found that modern front offices are more willing to deal a star than they ever were before:

T-4. Shawn Marion: 6.5 Win Shares
February 6, 2008 – Phoenix Suns to Miami Heat

In what is really the only significant boo-boo of Steve Kerr’s career, the then-Suns GM sent The Matrix to Miami and ushered in The Big Cactus Era, bringing Shaquille O’Neal to Phoenix. Although O’Neal is obviously a much larger name than Marion, and thus the headliner of the deal, Marion was still in his prime and generated far, far greater value than late-thirties Shaq. In fact, Marion’s nightly averages of points, rebounds, blocks, and 3-pointers were unprecedented at the time and have since only been matched by Karl-Anthony Towns and…DeMarcus Cousins. Meantime, O’Neal was doing his usual routine of missing a quarter of the regular season, plus his 17.1 PER that year would end up being the very worst of his entire career.

While giving up Marion helped quickly 86’ed the Suns’ habit of being an annual contender, this trade was also an important bridge from one Miami Heat championship to the next. One year after acquiring Marion, Pat Riley traded him to Toronto in exchange for Jermaine O’Neal and Jermaine O’Neal’s massive contract. When that cap albatross came off the books in the summer of 2010, Riley suddenly had a ton of cap space to entice free agents — free agents like LeBron James and Chris Bosh.

T-4. Clyde Drexler: 6.5 Win Shares
February 14, 1995 – Portland Trail Blazers to Houston Rockets

This is probably the most impactful Trade Deadline deal of all-time: it swung the championship, period. But, it did look like a bad move for a matter of months: after winning the 1994 championship, the Houston Rockets were at an okay 30-17 after the All-Star Break when they shook things up and traded for Clyde the Glide. With Drexler reunited alongside college teammate Hakeem Olajuwon, Houston then finished out the regular season 17-18!

Scuffling into the playoffs as the sixth seed, Houston had to face an astounding gauntlet of teams in order to win the championship: first John Stockton and Karl Malone’s Jazz, then Charles Barkley’s Suns, then David Robinson’s (and Dennis Rodman’s) Spurs, and finally into the Finals against Shaq, Penny Hardaway, and the Magic. It’s hard to imagine the Rockets triumphing over Hall-of-Famers for two straight months without Drexler’s 20 points and 7 assists per night:

The most bizarre thing about this trade, in retrospect, is how little Portland got in return: Otis Thorpe and the 19th overall draft pick four months later. That’s it. In exchange for a Hall of Fame player.

3. Shareef Abdur-Rahim: 6.6 Win Shares
February 9, 2004 – Atlanta Hawks to Portland Trail Blazers

With a career average of 18.1 points per game, Abdur-Rahim is right alongside (or even ahead of) legends like Reggie Miller, Chris Mullin, Kevin McHale, or Kevin Garnett on the all-time scoring average list. But today, Abdur-Rahim only has 2,000 Twitter followers in no small part because the NBA gods dealt him one of the most rotten hands, ever.

As a premiere prospect in the loaded 1996 Draft, Abdur-Rahim had the misfortune of being drafted by the Vancouver Grizzlies, who had existed for only one 15-67 season up until that point. When the Grizzlies traded up to nab a fella named Pau Gasol at the 2001 Draft, it was Abdur-Rahim who was shipped to the Atlanta Hawks, who were just getting started on a nine-year streak of losing seasons. Come February 2004, the best record that Abdur-Rahim experienced in his eight NBA seasons was 35-47. Here he is, a few months before his trade to Portland, hanging 43 on a rookie LeBron James:

Despite the extreme value that Abdur-Rahim generated in near-anonymity, his move to Portland would only be the trade that set up the trade that would swing the NBA Finals. On the other side of the deal for Abdur-Rahim, Rasheed Wallace went from Portland to Atlanta. After an in/famous one-game tenure for the Hawks, Wallace was dealt to the Detroit Pistons, who would go all the way to the championship.

2. Deron Williams: 6.7 Win Shares
February 23, 2011 – Utah Jazz to New Jersey Nets

2010-11 was the year of way, way too many Carmelo Anthony rumors. The Nuggets’ decision to send Anthony to the Knicks on February 22 is certainly one of the splashiest trades of all-time. But even then, Anthony’s name might have outpaced his production: at the time he was moved, Anthony had produced 4.7 Win Shares on the season, which was less than either Danilo Gallinari (4.9) or Chauncey Billups (5.8), who were also moved in the deal.

All season long, it had been a race between the Knicks and the Nets — about to make their big-deal move to Brooklyn — to see who would land Anthony. Within hours of the Nets “losing out,” Utah stepped in with a proposal that came out of the blue but, over time, has proven to be all in Utah’s favor. Six years later, all the Nets have out of the deal is an annual dead cap hit, the size of a capable rotation player, going all the way until 2019-20. The Jazz not only have Derrick Favors, but they still have an incoming first-round pick (from OKC in 2018) that they generated in a subsequent trade.

1. Wilt Chamberlain – 7.5 Win Shares
January 15, 1965 – San Francisco Warriors to Philadelphia 76ers

There is only one in-season trade in league history that is clearly of a different magnitude of this week’s Cousins trade. And it’s so old that the highlights from the first post-trade game don’t even have sound:

Despite having Chamberlain’s 38.9 points per game — plus another future Hall of Famer on the roster — the 1964-65 San Francisco Warriors sat at just 11-33 in January, when they decided to move The Big Dipper. Somehow the move didn’t really change things for the Sixers either, who were 21-22 before the deal and 19-18 after it.

Next: NBA Trade Deadline: GIF grades

Philadelphia would improve over the long haul, though, eventually growing into a 68-13 juggernaut in 1966-67. They would win that year’s Finals over — oops — the San Francisco Warriors:

Although Jimmy Butler’s name appeared in so many rumors before this year’s Trade Deadline passed, the lack of a deal probably shouldn’t be surprising. With 9.2 Win Shares already banked this season, dealing a player of Butler’s mighty two-way stature in the middle of the season is just something that has never happened in league history. Clearly, the Cousins deal registers as one of the most seismic in-season moves we’ve ever seen.