The NBA Trade Deadline Week is off to a fast start

The NBA Trade Deadline is fastly approaching, as the pencils will be placed down on Thursday afternoon with the NBA Twitter world set to grade every team’s decision, but until then the news is coming fast and furious. From Sunday’s trade which landed Caris LeVert in Cleveland, to Portland just going full rebuild (or retool) mode, and the Sacramento Kings doing Kings things. Oh yeah, and James Harden might be traded mid-season again!

The Oklahoma City Thunder are going to be amid NBA rumors from now until roughly 2038 with the amount of NBA Draft picks they have compiled and how flexible they can be this season with the NBA Salary cap. On top of having a coveted asset in Kenrich Williams, Sam Presti has a lot of tools at his disposal. As I have reported the OKC Thunder are exploring 2-for-1 trades with roughly 23-million dollars to play with to take on bad money in exchange for better assets. This includes facilitating trades and being a third, fourth, or even fifth team involved to get a blockbuster deal done that sends shockwaves through the Association. It is not a shock, the Thunder are the most likely team to complete a trade before the NBA Trade Deadline.

Oklahoma City Thunder watch as NBA Trade Deadline gets off to a fast start, how does this impact OKC?

Portland is getting scary

The Portland Trailblazers are starting to scare me in the race to the bottom of the standings. The Oklahoma City Thunder beat Portland twice last week, have two more contests against the Trailblazers, and are only 3.5 games better (or worse?) in the reverse standings. Now, the Blazers have traded CJ McCollum, Larry Nance Jr, and Tony Snell for Josh Hart, Tomas Satoransky, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, and Didi Louzada. With rumors swirling they might flip Josh Hart before Thursday, the easy ability to shut Damian Lillard down for the rest of the season due to his injury, and the trade last week with the Clippers, Portland has built a tank made of steel.

Kings are going to Kings

One trade that should at worst be a shrug from the OKC Thunder, and at best be a great thing for the Bricktown Boys is the Sacramento Kings swapping their prized young guard Tyrese Haliburton, sharpshooter Buddy Hield, and Tristan Thompson for Domantas Sabonis, Justin Holiday, and Jeremy Lamb.

While giving up Haliburton makes absolutely no sense, this is at worst a lateral move for each franchise, and at best for the OKC Thunder pushing the Kings and Pacers closer to NBA Play-in territory than a bottom three record in the NBA.

Is James Harden on the move again? 

Over the weekend, a possible Ben Simmons for James Harden swap began to pick up steam. With the Nets sending their seemingly disgruntled star for Philly’s disgruntled star. Reports coming out now that the Nets are holding out James Harden from tonight’s contest, could that be due to them wanting to prevent injury ahead of finalizing a deal? While this would be fun for the NBA as a whole, how does it impact the Oklahoma City Thunder? The 76ers are trying to move on from Tobias Harris, shedding his salary is something the OKC Thunder can help the 76ers do by facilitating a blockbuster move. Though, in all likelihood, Sam Presti would demand a ton of assets to take on such a massive and long-term contract.