OKC Thunder: Grading the Dennis Schröder trade over a year later

Retrospective Trade Grade:

While I can admit that when this trade went down, I was a fan. Even though I knew Schroder’s numbers were inflated by having a high usage rate on a bad team, I was optimistic.

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Towards the end of the season and especially during the playoffs, my disdain for Melo continued to grow. He lost me, I wanted nothing to do with him on the Thunder. You could see by the all-star break that Jerami Grant was a better player than Melo, I simply wanted him gone, and I’d take anything in return.

Looking back at it, this was not a home-run trade that most people were calling it at the time. If anything, I’d say that the Hawks won this trade pretty easily.

Melo and Schroder’s first years in OKC were essentially the same. If you swap Melo’s perimeter shooting for Schroder’s playmaking, you couldn’t tell a difference if you looked at the stats. Both are inefficient, both have defensive issues, and neither of them had one real standout skill at this point in their careers.

Here are Schroder’s and Melo’s grades from their lone season with the Thunder. (via @the_bball_index)

https://twitter.com/ItsInfernoo/status/1164394237913210880?s=20

The Thunder had little leverage in negotiations when trying to trade Melo. They knew they couldn’t take another season of Melo making 27 million a year, and they knew they wouldn’t waive and stretch him for three seasons paying him 9 million each year. They had to trade him away and lower their payroll for the season.

Even worse is that now with Chris Paul and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the mix, you will still be paying your backup point guard 15 million a year over the next two seasons, which isn’t ideal.

In the end, while there may have not been many other options out there for GM Sam Presti, the Thunder got the short end of the stick on this deal.

Grade: C-

Do you agree? let us know in the comments section what your grade would be for the trade.