Hardwood Paroxysm presents: NBA trade deadline’s most memorable trades

Did Enes Kanter Learn How to Play Dominoes in Turkey?

By David Ramil (@dramil13)

OKC Thunder general manager Sam Presti is known as a patient administrator, not willing to sacrifice a player or asset in the name of instant gratification; he’s said to see the bigger picture. Still, the writing on the wall this season is spray-painted across every surface of the Chesapeake Energy Arena.

Win now, win big or risk losing Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook to free agency.

With that in mind, Presti’s trade deadline moves to acquire Enes Kanter and Steve Novak from Utah along with D.J. Augustin and Kyle Singler from Detroit have both an immediate and long-term impact. Kanter and Singler are starting for the Thunder, as both Durant and regularly-starting center Steven Adams recover from injury. And while each of these four new acquisitions have already played in just two post-deadline games, Kanter is clearly the centerpiece of the deal.

He’s established an immediate rapport with Westbrook, thriving in pick-and-roll or pick-and-pop sets and providing OKC an array of skills that has the team surging, even in the midst of a win streak. Kanter’s defense and passing (two areas of his game that were lacking with the Jazz) haven’t been a problem with the Thunder and the unexpected speed with which he’s acclimated has the team poised for a legitimate championship run. They’re deeper, more talented and simply better than they’ve ever been (even with the ghost of James Harden still haunting Oklahoma City).

And that’s good, because in 10 years we could be reflecting back at this trade as the move that propelled the Thunder to a title rather than just another trade deadline that came and went like so many before it. It shows Durant that there’s a renewed commitment to building a championship team and that his best option as a free agent is to stay with OKC. Otherwise, in a decade we’d be looking at this season, one marred with injury yet bursting with potential, as yet another nail in the franchise’s coffin. This team lurks perpetually in the shadows – of Harden, of Seattle, of being a professional basketball team in a city obsessed with amateur football – and failing to make a move at the deadline would have kept the Thunder in an inescapable darkness.

Instead, with every Kanter putback and jump hook shot, the team might finally find its way, at long last, into the light.

Next: Michael Carter-Williams and Milwaukee’s Gospel of Length