The deadline for NBA trades is close at hand. Why is this such an important day of the year

February is traditionally the hottest month in the NBA. It’s not just the All-Star Game and Michael Jordan’s birthday (and LeBron’s landmark record falls in February this year), but a more pressing sporting event. The NBA transfer window closes in February.after the clock at the NBA’s New York office hits 15:00 (23:00 Moscow time) on February 9, all exchanges between teams will cease for the rest of the season.

Why is the NBA deadline so special?

The window of transitions in the NBA is closed only once, unlike football, where there is a summer and winter one – hence the close attention to the deadline. Even though deals could be made at any time since the beginning of the offseason, however, it is in the middle of the season that many significant transitions are shifted.

There are several reasons for this – firstly, at the start of the season, the clubs are looking at the roster, evaluating the youth from the draft and signed free agents, they believe that the current 16-17 people in the application will help achieve the desired goals and objectives.By the middle of the season, the goals and objectives are adjusted, and for new ones, other players are needed.There are no good free agents anymore, new youth will join the NBA only at the end of June, the only way to strengthen (and sometimes deliberately weaken for the sake of a high position in the draft) is through trades.

Secondly,until the middle of winter, many players are simply not available for trades due to salary cap rules.And it is not at all necessary for such players to be in demand. Example: Kyrie Irving could be traded in the summer, he had no restrictions on the trade, but the Nets traded him (in a non-ideal situation for themselves – after demanding a trade from a player) only on the deadline week.

Why? So it turns out that now it may not be more profitable to exchange it, but it is easier. And we again turn to the rules, or rather, even to the philosophy of transitions in the NBA.

Basketball players, unlike the football, and somewhere even the hockey market, are not bought or sold.Cash and draft picks can compensate for a trade, but only within certain and not very large limits. To get something unnecessary and necessary, you need to give something:receiving in exchange a basketball player with a certain salary, the club is forced to give almost the same salary in the opposite direction.

An NBA club may have a need for a player, a budget for that player, an interest for that player, even the old club’s agreement to trade, but there won’t be the right contracts on the payroll to meet this “wage balance” in the trade. And don’t make a deal. Since many contracts in the NBA are “immovable” until December-January, the club is waiting for this ban to be lifted –in February, there are many more potential buyers and sellers on the market than in autumn.

And at the same time, the deadlines are already running out – before the deadline was on the last Thursday of the month, before the All-Star Game. But one day, Cousins ​​learned about his trade from Sacramento from reporters during an interview at All-Star Weekend, it looked nasty, and the sequence of events was changed: the transfer window closes in the second week of February, the All-Star Game, as before, in the third.

But why is this an important day this year?

Indeed, why? Even Kairi has already been traded, what are you waiting for?

And in general – after all, quite recently this blog published a text that deadlines do not make anyone champions? Something has changed?

Basically, yes, it has changed.

This is the second year in a row we’ve seen a superstar move in Deadline Week (Harden a year ago; Sabonis, Porzingis, McCollum were also traded in the same fiery deadline), but it’s still an unlikely event. Butthe NBA is now on a five-season streak in which a future finalist makes an important trade right on the deadline.