I see Spellman as a stretch-4 with potential who could take off now. Evans is good enough at PG for them, I guess, since they've long been saying they wanted to upgrade there.
Meanwhile, the Clips get expiring player Marcus Morris with the Knicks getting a so-so return in a three team trade, after they got greedy and supposedly wanted Danny Green AND Kyle Kuzma? There's a reason the Knicks are the Knicks.
Not a bad deal for the Clips, for now, shoving in the chips further. Stretch-4 who also has playoff "muscle."
Meanwhile, we're all still digesting the four-team trade from earlier that has, at core, the Rockets dumping Clint Capela and adding Robert Covington. My quick thoughts. I get that D'Lo might have been redundant when Klay came back. But? You ain't rehabbing Wiggins and after dumping Iggy in the offseason to get him, you look like capologist idiots.
Knicks are Knicksing.
Good short-term move for the Clips and not horrible for the long term.
Rockets? Everybody laughed at that at first over the "who's playing center" angle. But the Dubs played Draymond Green regularly in their death lineup at center. B-Ref actually lists him an inch shorter, but 20 pounds heavier.
Now, has Covington actually played center to any degree? No. Did Green play center that much in the playoffs? No. Did he ever face AD? No. OTOH, Mike D'Antoni now has a new chance at playing his eight seconds of hell offense from Suns days. That would then lead to the question: Has AD ever guarded a Covington on the wing for 30 minutes?
Two of these trades are connected, in a disconnected way.
The four-team trade between the Hawks, Rockets, Timberwolves and Nuggets was originally going to have the Warriors as the fourth team, and with Wiggins and Russell reportedly going to be part of that trade. For various reasons, it fell through. The biggest reason is that the Warriors still likely had too big of an ask, and the rest of the league knew it.
Looking more at most the trades? The biggest long-term winner might be the Wolves. They dumped Wiggins, got somebody at PG, can see what they have in D-Lo, and got some depth in the four-team swap. Between the Eastern and Western conferences, there are half a dozen teams no more than four games ahead of them. This upcoming draft year is generally regarded as fairly thin. If the Wolves can rise to No. 10 in the draft, or fall, depending on how you see it, then that draft pick isn't that valuable.
The biggest short-term winner is the Clippers.
Second-biggest long-term winner is the Nuggets, IMO. They got depth, got rid of players competing with Michael Porter, and they're just looking solid. Second-biggest short-term winner is the Heat.
The biggest loser?
I was originally going to say the Dubs, but if the final mix on the Iggy trade put the Grizz over the cap for next year, as Hoops Rumors says, then they're the Biggest Loser both short- and long-term.
This might also make the Heat tied for second-best long term winner. People laughing Thursday at Pat Riley, when the first bare bones were announced on this trade, can stop laughing now.
Anyway, on losers, still, the Dubs are second. They have no short-term focus with their injuries, but I'm still going with the Warriors on the long term. I will give credit for Wiggins upping his shooting percentage, especially on 2-balls, enough this year to have a positive VORP. But doesn't that itself speak volumes? This is the first year he's had a positive VORP, and his defensive metrics still haven't improved.
Here's another way of looking at it, to again tie two trades together with a third from the offseason.
From last summer to now, the Dubs dumped Iggy for cap space plus a draft pick plus Julian Washburn and dumped KD for D-Lo and a lowball draft pick. D-Lo has been traded for Wiggins and those draft picks, but ... at a loss of cap space.
But what do I know? I'm not a serf-pay sports blogging genyus like Fansiders saying Dubs fans should kiss the ring of Bob Myers for delivering Wiggins. (This nutter site has since doubled, tripled and quadrupled down on a Wiggins bromance. I didn't click links after the first.)
