NBA Trade Deadline 2016: Winners and losers

The 2016 NBA Trade Deadline has come and gone and it was… something.

There is always madness throughout the league in the hours leading up to the actual 3:00 pm ET deadline, and this year was no exception. Unfortunately for casual observers, none of the huge names that were “available” (Dwight Howard, Kevin Love, Al Horford, etc.) were actually moved. That being said, several teams across the NBA made potentially important moves for the future.

Now the the deadline is behind us, it’s time to determine the winners and losers from the final days and hours of trade season.

WINNERS

Detroit Pistons – Stan Van Gundy might be something of a personnel genius. That is (probably) overkill, but the Pistons swung two transactions that, if taken together, certainly improved the team while stopping short of mortgaging the future. The first one was easily the better move, as Detroit pilfered Orlando out of Tobias Harris for the cheap price of Ersan Ilysaova and Brandon Jennings.

Later, Van Gundy sent a 2016 first-round pick (and Joel Anthony) to Houston for Donatas Motiejunas and Marcus Thornton, and while that deal wasn’t nearly as praiseworthy, the composite of the two moves was encouraging for the Pistons. They need to make the playoffs in order to safely convey what is a top-8 protected pick in 2016, but Detroit should do that given their roster when the dust settled on Thursday.

Houston Rockets – There is an argument to be made that the Rockets should have moved on from Dwight Howard. With that out of the way, Daryl Morey and company did very well in the one deal they actually executed. Houston extracted a top-8 protected 2016 first round pick from Detroit in exchange for Donatas Motiejunas and Marcus Thornton, and with Motiejunas staring down the barrel of restricted free agency, that is a coup for the future of the Rockets.

They’ll be rooting for things to go poorly with the Pistons in order to snatch a late lottery pick but, either way, Houston will have a pick in the middle of the first round in exchange for a player that was probably leaving anyway.

Miami Heat – The Heat did nothing of real consequence in terms of their on-court product, but Miami went from paying nearly $25 million (!) in luxury tax to falling below the tax line by the end of the deadline. Parting with the likes of Chris Andersen, Brian Roberts and Jarnell Stokes is a reasonable price to pay when you’re talking about that kind of money, especially for a team that isn’t a legitimate title contender anyway in 2016.

Next: More winners...