It’s usually after two rounds of playoff basketball that our collective NBA consciousness can start to take stock of the season’s big-picture lessons. Four teams remain, a small enough number for each of their respective roads to the conference finals to feel significant, but also still a more hearty sample size than the NBA Finals. Hearty enough for the 26 eliminated teams to search for wider trends that might reflect the state of the league.
The trend is pretty easy to spot this year.
Can Denver can do anything with it? Not so easy.
All four teams that outlasted the Nuggets in the 2024 playoffs benefitted from major trades for decorated players within the last two years. Just as importantly, though, is that all four teams made those trades in pursuit of a championship. Not in defense of one.
If it sounds familiar, that’s because it is. Back in 2021, the Nuggets traded two players and a first-round pick for a core starter in Aaron Gordon, who had been a first option in his previous home. Eventually, the aggressive move helped push them across the championship finish line. For either Boston or Dallas in 2024, a big splash (or big splashes) will be commended for helping accomplish the same goal. Even Minnesota and Indiana, both eliminated now, have earned their flowers for exceeding expectations.
Here’s how it all shakes out.
Between the 2023 and 2024 trade deadlines, the Mavericks gave up three first-round picks, two second-round picks and five players to acquire three starters: Kyrie Irving, PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford. The Timberwolves traded four first-round picks, five players and a pick swap for three-time Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert in the 2022 offseason, then added another former All-Star in Mike Conley at the 2023 trade deadline.
The Pacers traded three first-round picks and two players at this year’s deadline for two-time All-NBA honoree Pascal Siakam. And during the 2023 offseason, the Celtics gave up a DPOY, four other players, a first-round pick and a second-round pick to add two critical starters: Kristaps Porzingis and Jrue Holiday.
In total, that’s 40% of the starters in the conference finals acquired by trades since the end of the 2021-22 season, a pretty recent window. Six of those eight players (excluding the younger Washington and Gafford) have combined to make 17 All-Star Games, nine All-NBA teams and 14 All-Defensive teams.
The trades didn’t all pan out instantly — Minnesota was a first-round out last year, and Dallas fell to the lottery after the Irving addition — but neither did Gordon to Denver. It took two years after that trade for the Nuggets to win a title with Gordon as arguably their third-best player. And it required the same exact timeline for the Warriors to win another title with their revamped roster after trading for Andrew Wiggins, who became their second-best player during the 2022 run.
Both of those moves complemented rosters that were already built around a drafted-and-developed superstar (Nikola Jokic and Steph Curry), similarly to most of the trades contributing to this year’s cast of success stories. Holiday and Porzingis are extraordinary players who joined forces with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, without superseding them. Gobert and Conley are in Minnesota to maximize a window made possible by Anthony Edwards. Irving, Washington and Gafford represent a new attempt to surround Luka Doncic with the right support.
This is the NBA’s most expansive Era of Parity in decades. There will be a sixth champion in as many years for the first time since 1980. (All six champions will have benefitted from a major trade, once you throw in Kawhi Leonard to Toronto, Anthony Davis to Los Angeles and Holiday to Milwaukee.) Talent around the league is achieving both an unprecedented ceiling and an unprecedented balance. It’s an outstanding time for the sport, for the product, for the fans. It’s an unforgiving snapshot in history for wannabe dynasties. Especially with the new collective bargaining agreement bearing down.
To put a ring around your finger is to put handcuffs around your wrists and give away the key. More than ever, the rules are designed to compel championship rosters to stay together in the short term while other teams catch up. The same rules are also designed to gradually pull championship rosters apart in the long term. Maybe continuity is the best method for staying at the top. But if courage is the best method for getting to the top, then eventually continuity starts to look like complacency.
And so here we encounter the Nuggets, at an impasse, watching the end of the 2024 playoffs on their televisions. Is there a lesson to take from the four conference finals teams? From Boston or Dallas winning the title? Is this all a sign that Denver should trade Michael Porter Jr. and show a little courage this summer, at the risk of foolishly disassembling a proven core too early? Is it better to adapt if you want to break the cycle of new champions?
Then again, the Bucks’ attempts at courage since 2021 have been calamitous, their blockbuster trade for Damian Lillard a face-plant so far, as if to emphasize the catch-22 Denver faces.
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So is it better, then, to just hold your breath and pray the rest of the league doesn’t catch up quite as comprehensively as it has to the last few champs?
Only now, the Nuggets must simultaneously play catch-up again. To either Dallas or Boston. To the matchup nightmare in Minnesota.
Maybe even to whichever team is emboldened to make the next blockbuster trade after taking notes on the 2024 conference finals.
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