T10YL - One Week in the NBA Summer Transaction Factory
Featuring several good NBA players, but starring Scotty Hopson and Sofoklis Schortsanitis.
July is an active time in the NBA trade calendar the same way that Christmas is a busy time in the garbage dump calendar. The crown jewels of the July “transaction season” are the free agents, with teams lining up to award players millions of guaranteed dollars in exchange for the promise of an otherwise free talent infusion. In 2014, teams were allowed to contact free agents as soon as July 1, but were not allowed to finalize contracts until July 10.
This post details the nine trades made in the week starting on July 10. Four were part of a sign-and-trade and really just free agent contracts in disguise. The remainder (and even some of the sign-and-trades) were financial engineering exercises where teams “traded players” to balance a checkbook. These are “transactions” in the way that lawyers talk about transactions, even if they look and act like “transactions” in the way that sports fans talk about them.
July 10, 2014
The Names: Brooklyn Nets receive: Jarrett Jack and Sergey Karasev (from Cleveland). Boston Celtics receive: Marcus Thornton (from Nets), Tyler Zeller and 2016 1st round pick (from Cleveland) (#28, Skal Labissiere selected). Cleveland Cavaliers receive: Theoretical Edin Bavcic, Theoretical Ilkan Karaman.
The Team Context: After four years and two championships in Miami, LeBron James was a free agent once again. Any team in the NBA would be willing to turn their roster over for a chance to acquire James, none more so than his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers. LeBron’s 2010 exit from Cleveland featured fans burning their jerseys and a scorched-earth letter from Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert, but both sides seemed willing to look past previous acrimony if a reunion were possible.
The Player Context: Jarrett Jack signed a four-year, $25 million contract with the Cavaliers in the summer of 2013. Jack was 29 when he signed, but Cleveland was already his sixth NBA city. He was traded on his draft night in 2005, then traded again in 2008 (from Portland to Indiana). Jack joined the Raptors as a free agent in 2009, spending about 1.2 seasons in Toronto before he was flipped to New Orleans and then onward to Golden State 1.8 seasons later. “I’m excited to be part of another journey,” Jack said about his signing with Cleveland. “I have no clue,” he said when asked about his expected role with the team. Surely, he knew better than to expect that he’d actually play out his four-year deal.
Along with Jack, the Cavaliers dumped the rookie contracts of a couple recent first round picks. Tyler Zeller was the 17th pick in 2012, playing his rookie season in Cleveland while his older brother Luke played a few games for Phoenix. Luke was out of the NBA by the next season, but younger brother Cody had been drafted 4th overall by Charlotte, firmly establishing Tyler as a core member of “the Zeller family.” Sergey Karasev was the 19th pick in 2013, playing just 156 minutes for the Cavaliers and showing very few NBA skills in the process.
We wrote about Marcus Thornton extensively to commemorate his 2014 deadline trade from Sacramento to Brooklyn. We’re going to write about him next deadline, too. Another returner from our deadline coverage is Theoretical Edin Bavcic, whose rights had just been traded to Brooklyn in exchange for a real NBA player. Our last new entrant is Ilkan Karaman, who had been drafted 57th overall in 2012. Karaman had most recently missed an entire season in the Turkish league after undergoing arthroscopic knees surgery (intentionally plural; it was both knees) to relieve chronic patellar tendinitis. “As everyone knows, my biggest goal is to one day play in the NBA. After riding out a full rehabilitation from my injuries I will continue to make efforts to target that goal,” Karaman said in December 2013. As it stood, he had just been released by Fenerbahce and did not have a contract for the 2014-15 season with any basketball team.
The Trade: The purpose of this trade was for Cleveland to open up more salary cap space. Jarrett Jack’s contract was sent to Brooklyn, who in turn got to add Karasev and send Marcus Thornton’s remaining contract to Boston. Boston was compensated with Zeller and a pick in exchange for taking on Thornton. Cleveland sent out three NBA players, all of whom earned some sort of salary, and received only two theoretical NBA players in exchange, neither of whom had to be paid by an NBA team.
The Results: The first-round pick that Boston received was traded again and eventually used to select Skal Labissiere for the Sacramento Kings. Labissiere had been the number 2 recruit in the high school class of 2015 and was in consideration for the number 1 overall NBA draft pick in too-early 2016 mock drafts. His one season of college went poorly enough that he ended up as the #28 overall pick instead, and his NBA career went poorly enough that he was traded midway through his rookie contract and hasn’t played since 2019 (just barely – his last game was on December 28).
Jarrett Jack spent the next two seasons in Brooklyn before he was waived ahead of 2016 free agency. Sergey Karasev spent the next two seasons in Brooklyn, featuring a devastating knee injury in March of 2015, and entirely disappeared from the NBA landscape when his rookie contract expired. The Celtics kept Marcus Thornton around for a year, used him for ten games in the only playoff series he would play in during his career, and then traded him (along with that Skal Labissiere pick) for Isaiah Thomas (who we’ll discuss later in this post). Tyler Zeller took the biggest step forward, starting 59 games for the Celtics in his first season after the trade and sticking with the team for two more seasons after that.
None of the Theoretical players that Cleveland traded for made it to the NBA, but that was sort of the point.
The Aftermath: Ilkan Karaman returned to basketball for the 2015-16 season and has played in Turkish domestic leagues since then, with brief detours in 2019-20 to play for French teams and in 2023 to play for Formosa Taishin Dreamers in Taiwan. Sergey Karasev has played in Russia since leaving the NBA, with all time except a 2019-2021 stint with BC Khimki spent with Zenit Saint Petersburg. Tyler Zeller hopped around NBA teams on short term contracts between 2017 and 2020 before moving to North Carolina and becoming an assistant basketball coach at Northwood High School. Jarrett Jack joined the Pistons’ coaching staff last year, but that one year went as horribly as possible and resulted in the head coach being fired with $65 million in dead money. That didn’t stop Jarrett Jack from sticking around; he is now serving as head coach for the Pistons’ Summer League team.
July 11, 2014
The Names: New Orleans Pelicans receive: Alonzo Gee. Cleveland Cavaliers receive: future draft considerations (a protected 2016 2nd-round pick that did not convey).
The Team Context: On July 11, LeBron James announced via a Sports Illustrated story that he would be returning to Cleveland.
The Player Context: Alonzo Gee was no stranger to career turbulence. He had never been traded, but who would want to trade for him? Gee went undrafted in the 2009 NBA Draft, playing in the D-League and winning Rookie of the Year in that league before receiving a 10-day contract from the Washington Wizards and then a contract with the San Antonio Spurs. Gee eventually made his way to the Cavaliers and found a bit of a role there, earning a 3-year contract worth $9.75 million ahead of the 2012-13 season and then starting every game for Cleveland that year.
Of course, Gee generally played small forward, and the Cavs were about to fill that position with the greatest player in franchise history. He had one year left on the contract he signed with Cleveland and the final year was non-guaranteed.
The Trade: All that got reported is that the Cavaliers were sending Gee to New Orleans; nobody bothered to figure out what the return would be. Eventually, it was revealed that Cleveland would receive a top-55 protected 2nd-round pick in 2016. There are 60 picks in the NBA Draft, so Cleveland was “receiving a pick” that would only be sent if New Orleans was one of the 5 best NBA teams in 2014-15 (in which case, the pick would be one of the 5 worst picks in the draft).
This is another mechanism that teams use to orchestrate fake trades when they’re short on Theoretical Players. As everybody expected, the pick did not convey and the Cavaliers ended up sending Gee away for nothing.
The Results: Reports suggested that the Pelicans would immediately waive Alonzo Gee. Instead, they’d end up trading him a few days later, which we’ll get to momentarily.
The Aftermath: Gee never got back to the stability of a multi-year NBA contract; he’d play games for Denver, Portland, and New Orleans in the remainder of his NBA career. Despite the fact that he was being traded to New Orleans right now, he’d have to wait another year to play for them (at which point he would play 73 games and start 38).
July 12, 2014
The Names: Charlotte Hornets receive: Scotty Hopson, cash. Cleveland Cavaliers receive: Brendan Haywood, draft rights to Dwight Powell.
The Team Context: On July 12, the Cavaliers officially signed free agent forward LeBron James.
While Cleveland was working on creating salary cap space for the most obvious reason possible, Charlotte was also hoping to open up cap room. They would eventually use this cap room to sign Lance Stephenson and Marvin Williams to big free agent deals. This is a much less compelling reason to open up salary cap space than signing LeBron James.
The Player Context: Dwight Powell had just been drafted with the 45th overall pick out of Stanford. He was Canadian and that was about all that was definitively relevant about him.
Brendan Haywood was drafted in 2001 and starred as a center for the Washington Wizards over many years. In 2010, Haywood signed a huge contract with the Mavericks for six years and $55 million (the final season and $10.5 million of which were non-guaranteed), which immediately proved to be regrettable. The Mavericks released Haywood through the amnesty clause in 2012, an arcane CBA provision that gives each team one opportunity to release a player and remove the amount from salary cap calculations (the organization still pays the player every dollar they’re owed, it just doesn’t count for salary cap purposes). When a player is amnestied, the remaining NBA teams have an opportunity to bid on how much of the player’s contract they’d be willing to take on over the remaining seasons. Charlotte ended up winning the Haywood sweepstakes with a $6.15M bid, resulting in their acquisition of Haywood on essentially a 3-year contract for that total salary.
Haywood played for Charlotte in 2012-13, but broke his foot and missed the entirety of the 2013-14 season. His remaining contract, from the perspective of an acquiring team, was now a bizarre 1-year/$2M followed by another non-guaranteed year at $10.5 million. Obviously, nobody was going to pay Haywood that $10.5 million in this universe. But thanks to the NBA’s salary-matching rules for trades, Haywood’s inflated paper salary for 2015-16 could be useful to help the Cavaliers negotiate another trade for a player who was actually worth a large salary.
In short, because Haywood’s performance wasn’t expected to be worth the $2 million he was owed, Charlotte wanted to get rid of him. But because Haywood technically had the potential to earn $10.5 million, Cleveland wanted to acquire him.
The guy who was going to go from Cleveland to Charlotte was originally Alonzo Gee, but this was scuttled for unknown reasons. Scotty Hopson, who had just signed with the Cavs on March 31, was the next man up. Hopson went undrafted out of the University of Tennessee in 2011 and played in Greece, Israel, and Turkey before making it to Cleveland. He played two games for the Cavaliers, totaling seven minutes of action and missing all four field goals he attempted.
The Trade: This trade acts as a testament to the value of “non-guaranteed contracts” in the NBA. Despite having his value plummet even further from the point where he had already been amnestied due to his plummeting value, Brendan Haywood was a worthwhile trade piece thanks to his hefty non-guaranteed contract year. Scotty Hopson was only a viable trade piece due to his own non-guaranteed contract, which arose from Cleveland paying $1.35 million for his seven minutes of NBA action.
The Results: This one actually seems like a pretty clear lose-lose trade. The Hornets opened up cap space to overpay players. The Cavaliers got 119 minutes from Brendan Haywood, but failed to orchestrate a megatrade with his non-guaranteed contract and ended up shipping him off to Portland just before the $10.5 million became guaranteed.
The Aftermath: Before the season began, the Cavaliers traded Dwight Powell away to Boston. He began his NBA career there, but was sent to Dallas by December as part of the Rajon Rondo trade. Powell proceeded to enjoy more stability than any NBA player I’ve ever written about, playing all of his career up to this point as a regular member of the Mavericks rotation. He continues to be Canadian and will compete for their Olympics team in Paris this summer.
Brendan Haywood never played basketball again after leaving the Cavaliers. His last meaningful game action came in a late-season victory over the Wizards, where LeBron was inactive and all the starters played under twenty minutes. Haywood had five points and two blocks in about 15 minutes of action.
Scotty Hopson has played a total of four NBA games in his career. Two were the aforementioned games with Cleveland in 2013-14, one was with Dallas in 2017-18, and one was with Oklahoma City in 2021-22. He’s still playing in the G League and has beaten absurd odds to make it to the NBA on three separate occasions; let’s not count him out yet.
The Names: Phoenix Suns receive: Isaiah Thomas (sign and trade). Sacramento Kings receive: Draft rights to Theoretical Alex Oriakhi.
The Team Context: When an NBA player becomes a “restricted free agent” (typically just after the completion of their rookie contract), they aren’t really a free agent. The “restricted” status is earned with a one-year “qualifying offer” that players can either sign to return to the team or reject to enter restricted free agency. While there, the player can agree to a contract with another team, but that contract is called an “offer sheet” and can be matched by the player’s existing team.
If a team really doesn’t want to lose a restricted free agent, there are mechanisms in place to ensure they won’t. But there are also mechanisms in place for the two sides to agree to a contract extension well before the words “free” and “agent” get used in the same sentence — typically, if a player makes it to restricted free agency, it suggests a slight disconnect in what the team and player think is a fair contract.
The Player Context: Isaiah Thomas was the very last selection of the 2011 NBA Draft. Thomas had three successful years at the University of Washington, with All-Pac-10 selections in the final two, but it didn’t take long to figure out why he fell in the draft. Thomas is listed at 5’9” and that sure seems like an exaggeration. Even as Thomas demonstrates unbelievable ability to dribble and score in his college highlights, he’s easiest to spot as the guy who’s a head shorter than the second-shortest guy on the court. It was fair to question how he would succeed in a league where every team had a 7-footer sitting around on their bench.
Nevertheless, Thomas was the starting point guard for the Kings by February of his rookie season. He was named the NBA’s Rookie of the Month for February and March, feats which had never been accomplished by the last pick in the NBA Draft. He was a 20 point-per-game scorer by 2013-14, a season which also produced Thomas’s first triple-double and made him the shortest player to record a triple-double in the NBA.
But he was still 5’9”, which is very short for a professional basketball player. Thomas was a fan favorite in Sacramento, but the Kings didn’t see him as a long-term starter at point guard and reportedly valued him closer to $5 million per year. He went to restricted free agency and stood to profit if another team placed a higher value on him.
Alex Oriakhi is the rare Theoretical player who was born and raised in the United States. Oriakhi was the Player of the Year for New Hampshire in his senior season of high school (is New Hampshire the least impressive state to be the basketball player of the year for?) and played at UConn before he transferred to Missouri for his senior season. Oriakhi was selected with the 57th pick in 2013 and signed contracts in Europe before joining the D-League and making the All-Rookie team. He still hadn’t signed an NBA contract and he wasn’t going to now, either.
The Trade: The Suns already had Goran Dragic and Eric Bledsoe at the point guard position, but couldn’t pass up on the chance to add Thomas on a four-year, $28 million contract. The Kings were happy to let him go at that price and orchestrated a sign-and-trade to pick up a trade exception and the rights to Oriakhi. In the words of Matt Moore at CBS Sports, “whatever Sacramento is doing, it’s inexplicable to the rest of the planet.”
The Results: Thomas only played 46 games in Phoenix before he was traded to Boston in the aforementioned Marcus Thornton trade. Once in Boston, he broke out to become one of the league’s best players, then got traded for Kyrie Irving and had his career derailed with a hip injury. That’s the best I can do to oversimplify a career that deserves more words than it’s getting, but we’ll probably devote like 75,000 words to that Irving/Thomas swap anyways.
The Aftermath: Isaiah Thomas quietly established a second act as an NBA journeyman and has played for ten different franchises. His most recent return to the NBA brought him back to Phoenix, where he came off the bench for six regular season games and one playoff game in 2024. He made three shots across those seven games and had three assists. He’s currently on the job hunt for next season, and said he “want[s] to play a year or two more” on Sunday.
Alex Oriakhi never made it to the NBA but has played on a litany of teams in Europe and Latin America (I don’t think any other catchall term would include all of the Puerto Rican, Mexican, and Uruguayan basketball leagues). He is one of two unsigned players whose draft rights are currently held by the Kings (along with Ilkan Karaman).
July 13, 2014
The Names: Los Angeles Lakers receive: Jeremy Lin, 2015 1st round pick (#27, Larry Nance Jr. selected), future 2nd round pick (did not convey). Houston Rockets receive: Theoretical Sergei Lishouk.
The Team Context: At the time they agreed to this trade, the Rockets “believe[d] they will have a commitment ‘soon’ from Chris Bosh to sign with the team.” With the Big Three in Miami officially broken up by LeBron’s departure, Bosh would have the opportunity to form a new trio with the ascendant James Harden and recently-arrived Dwight Howard.
The Lakers were a bad team for the first time in recent memory and a worse team than in any memory. The team finished 27-55 in 2013-14, setting a franchise record for most losses in a season (the Minneapolis Lakers went 19-53 in 1957-58, finishing with fewer losses but a worse winning percentage due to playing 72 instead of 82 games).
The Player Context: The below chart shows Google searches for “Jeremy Lin” from 2004 to the present day:
In February 2012, “Linsanity” took over the New York Knicks when the undrafted and unheralded Lin took over the starting point guard role with six straight 20-point games (all Knicks victories). The first of these was on February 4. On March 4, the Knicks kicked off a six game losing streak. The Linsanity phenomenon was ultimately short-lived, but the novelty of an Asian-American guy who played college basketball at Harvard was salient and resonant enough for Lin to enter restricted free agency with massive expectations. The Knicks were surely going to match any offer sheet Lin received, with reports that they’d match offers “up to $1 billion.” But the Rockets structured a three-year, $25 million contract that included a “poison pill” by loading about $14 million of Lin’s salary into the third year. For a high-salary team paying the luxury tax, the increased penalties on the third year would make the contract prohibitively expensive. To everyone’s surprise, this had the intended effect; the Knicks failed to match the offer and Lin became a Rocket.
The Rockets were now something like a dog that had caught the chased car. Jeremy Lin was their franchise centerpiece for a few weeks before they traded for actual franchise centerpiece James Harden. Harden and Lin didn’t exactly have complementary skillsets and Lin was pushed to the periphery by his second season in Houston. By the time summer rolled around, the Rockets wanted to sign players like Chris Bosh and the cute accounting gimmick that landed Jeremy Lin was about to cost them more than $14 million.
Sergei Lishouk (using the NBA spelling instead of Wikipedia’s “Serhiy Lishchuk”) was a Ukrainian center drafted 49th overall in 2004. At the time of this trade, he had just won his second EuroCup playing for Valencia, where he had been since 2009. There were two years left in his professional basketball career. This was the third time his rights had been traded since he was drafted and they would be traded three more times in the next year and a half.
The Trade: The Lakers weren’t going to be good next season, but wanted to have salary cap space in the future. They were bereft of first-round picks after trades to acquire Steve Nash and Dwight Howard, so were happy to get back into the 2015 first round.
By the time this trade was agreed, Bosh had stated his intention to return to Miami. Former Rocket Chandler Parsons had recently signed a huge offer sheet with the Dallas Mavericks that the Rockets intended to match in a scenario where they signed Bosh. But suddenly, “their plans [were] now up in the air.”
The Results: The draft pick sent to Los Angeles was used to select Larry Nance Jr. 27th overall. Despite his selection late in the first round, Nance immediately carved out a solid NBA role as a big man well-suited for the evolving “smallball” style. He spent almost his entire rookie contract with the Lakers before he was sent to Cleveland for Isaiah Thomas in the first of four trades (and counting) in Nance’s NBA career.
Jeremy Lin was moved to the Lakers’ bench after the team started the season 5-15. He would return to the starting lineup by the end of the season, but generally watched his value crater on a Lakers team that broke the one-year-old record for worst season in franchise history (21-61, with a worse winning percentage than even the 1957-58 Minneapolis Lakers). After the season, Lin signed a two-year contract with Charlotte that paid just $4.3 million.
The Aftermath: Lin was revitalized as a backup point guard in his one Charlotte season, bouncing back to opt out of the cheap second year and instead sign a three-year, $36 million contract with Brooklyn in the summer of 2016. His first Brooklyn season was injury-plagued and allowed for just 36 games. His second Brooklyn season was really injury-plagued and allowed for just 25 minutes until he tore his patellar tendon in the season opener. Lin was traded to the Hawks ahead of the third season, then waived midway through the year to join the Toronto Raptors. I believe he’s the first person we’ve discussed whose last NBA game took place during an NBA Finals that they won; Lin played for 51 seconds in Game 3 and won a ring with the Raptors.
Lin briefly played in the G League, thanks to a rule that was dubbed the “Jeremy Lin rule.” Mutual interest emerged in December 2020 between Lin and the Santa Cruz Warriors, but got bogged down in legal complications until the NBA instituted a new rule allowing clubs to fill one roster spot with an NBA veteran with at least five years of service time. Even though they named the rule after him, that stint only lasted nine games; otherwise, Lin has spent his time playing either in China’s CBA or Taiwan’s P. League+ (this is apparently pronounced “Plus League”). He most recently played for the New Taipei Kings, where he was teammates with his brother and Byron Mullens (as we’ve already discussed in February).
July 14, 2014
The Names: Dallas Mavericks receive: Greg Smith. Chicago Bulls receive: Theoretical Tadija Dragicevic.
The Player Context: Greg Smith went undrafted in 2011, but worked his way onto the Houston Rockets roster. He suffered knee injuries in the 2013-14 season and was waived by the Rockets on April 10. The Bulls acquired Smith off waivers on April 14, but he was hurt, so he missed the remaining two games of the season (and the playoffs, but they weren’t going to give him minutes in the playoffs anyways).
Tadija Dragicevic was the 53rd overall pick in 2008. In 2014, he had rejoined Crvena zvezda and won his second Serbian Cup with the team. Crvena zvezda is also known as Red Star Belgrade, but that name seems to be used more for the soccer team. Whenever it’s written as Crvena zvezda, the z doesn’t get capitalized. Not sure why.
The Trade: The deal was initially reported as the Mavericks acquiring Greg Smith for “nothing.” It was puzzling that the Mavericks were trading anything for somebody they could’ve acquired on waivers three months and zero games ago. But it was also puzzling that the Bulls acquired an injured player and were now dumping him to clear “about $400,000 in cap space.” Probably best not to think about this transaction too much.
The Results: Greg Smith played 42 games for Dallas in his one season with the team and took 49 shots (making 30 of them). Only one player has worn his number 4 for the Mavericks since he left the team, while nine different guys have worn the number 3 — possibly coincidence, possibly a sign of respect for Smith’s great legacy in Dallas.
The Aftermath: Smith’s NBA career consisted of 18 more games in Minnesota. From 2016-2020, he played in Turkey, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and Mexico. Here’s a box score of a PBA Commissioners Cup game where Smith’s “Blackwater Bossings” (then known as “Blackwater Elite”) defeated “Rain or Shine Elasto Painters” by a score of 100-96. Smith scored 31 points on just 15 shots and had 18 rebounds.
The Names: Orlando Magic receive: Anthony Randolph, 2015 2nd-round pick (#51, Tyler Harvey selected), 2016 2nd-round pick (#47, Jake Layman selected), cash. Chicago Bulls receive: Theoretical Milovan Rakovic.
The Team Context: The Bulls had just acquired Anthony Randolph on draft night; we previewed this transaction a few weeks back.
The Player Context: Anthony Randolph was the 14th pick in the 2008 NBA Draft, but his NBA career was currently in the process of ending. There was one year left on a contract he had signed with Denver in 2012 and the Bulls didn’t want to pay it.
Milovan Rakovic was the final selection of the 2007 NBA Draft. By 2011, he was being “loaned to Zalgiris Kaunas in Lithuania” for a season, which doesn’t sound like a thing that happens to you if you’re a transcendent basketball talent.
The Trade: Anthony Randolph made about $1.8 million in 2014-15, so the two second round picks that were sent along with his contract had an approximate value of $900,000 (we’re disregarding the cash sent along with Randolph for now since it only helps the point). That’s what happened to Chicago’s 2nd-round picks in 2015 and 2016.
But Chicago had some extra 2nd-round picks due to their previous Luol Deng trade with Cleveland. They were eventually able to sell a 2017 pick to the Golden State Warriors (who selected Jordan Bell) for $3.5 million, suggesting that they gave away the picks in this trade at about a 75% discount.
The Results: The 2015 2nd-round pick was used to draft Tyler Harvey, who never played in the NBA. The 2016 2nd-round pick was used to draft Jake Layman, then sold by the Magic on draft night to the Trail Blazers for $1.2 million in cash and a 2019 2nd-round pick. So the Magic recouped all but $600,000 of their investment on a cash basis (again, ignoring the cash that was sent along with Randolph) AND snagged another 2nd-round pick. They used THAT pick to select Jaylen Hands, who never played in the NBA. It may not have yielded any useful basketball talent, but the Magic still win this trade on the basis of clever maneuvering.
The Aftermath: We discussed Anthony Randolph’s post-NBA career in the prior post, so let’s just re-emphasize that he is a Slovenian citizen now.
The Names: New Orleans Pelicans receive: Scotty Hopson. Charlotte Hornets receive: Cash.
The Trade: It’s just important to establish that this happened at some point, since otherwise it won’t be clear how the Pelicans were able to trade Scotty Hopson away tomorrow.
July 15, 2014
The Names: Atlanta Hawks receive: Thabo Sefolosha (sign and trade), Theoretical Georgios Printezis, cash. Oklahoma City Thunder receive: Theoretical Sofoklis Schortsanitis, trade exception.
The Team Context: We recently discussed the Hawks’ desire to open up salary cap space in the summer of 2014 to add talent to a roster that was expected to bounce back in 2014-15. That talent ended up being Thabo Sefolosha.
The Player Context: Sefolosha was the first NBA player born in Switzerland. There have now been four, all of whom (Sefolosha plus Clint Capela, Enes Freedom, and Nikola Vucevic) have enjoyed 10 year (and counting) NBA careers. I suppose that also means there have been no new Swiss players entering the league in the past ten years.
Thabo Sefolosha was the “prototypical 3 and D guy” and would seem to fit in well as an ancillary piece on any contending team. His 3-point shooting percentage had declined the prior season in Oklahoma City, but any return to form would make him a great fit with a sweet-shooting Hawks team.
I don’t know why the Hawks insisted on also receiving a fake player in the sign and trade for Sefolosha, but they also got Georgios Printezis, the 58th pick of the 2007 NBA Draft. Since then, he had created a legendary EuroLeague moment when he made a game-winning shot with 0.7 seconds left on the clock to win the 2012 championship for Olympiacos. Printezis’s draft rights had also been traded five times, first from San Antonio to Toronto (on draft night), then from Toronto to Dallas, from Dallas to New York (in the first Tyson Chandler trade), from New York to Portland, and from Portland to Oklahoma City.
The star of this show was really Sofoklis Schortsanitis. Schortsanitis was drafted 34th overall in 2003 at a listed height of 6’10” and a listed weight of 345 pounds. According to uncited Wikipedia claims, his playing weight in Europe was 380 pounds, which passes the eye test. I cannot recommend this video of him dunking a basketball highly enough.
It’s really a travesty that we’re not getting to the 380 pound basketball player named Sofoklis Schortsanitis until 5,000 words into this post. He’s the only one of these guys we should care about. His nicknames were “Baby Shaq” and “Big Sofo.” Here’s a video of Greek fans going nuts as he walks onto the court post-retirement. Here’s more photos of him looking gigantic. I wish we could stay in the Sofoklis Schortsanitis section of this post forever. Alas,
The Trade: The Hawks had the salary cap space to just sign Thabo Sefolosha; there was no need for this transaction to be structured as a trade of non-NBA Greek basketball players. But completing the transaction as a trade allowed the Thunder to generate a trade exception, which was nice for them. Presumably, the amount of cash that Oklahoma City sent to Atlanta would tell us roughly how NBA teams valued a $4.5 million trade exception in 2014.
The Results: Sefolosha performed basically to expectations in Atlanta, but ended up missing much of the 2014-15 season with injuries. The first of these (a strained right calf) was pretty normal. The second (a fractured tibia) was among the more bizarre injuries in recent NBA history. In the early morning on April 8, 2015, Chris Copeland of the Indiana Pacers (in town to play the Knicks) was stabbed in the abdomen outside 1OAK nightclub in New York. Sefolosha and Pero Antic of the Hawks (in town to play the Nets) had an altercation with NYPD as they investigated the crime scene outside of the club that resulted in Sefolosha’s leg being broken by a police officer. Accounts differed on the nature of the altercation; Sefolosha and Antic were initially charged with crimes and portrayed as aggressors in the conflict. But that didn’t end up holding up in court; Antic’s charges were dropped and Sefolosha was found not guilty on all three misdemeanor counts he faced. Sefolosha then countersued the city of New York and the individual police officers for $50 million, eventually receiving a $4 million settlement from the city.
Sefolosha actually played better in the final two seasons of his contract than he had in the first season, so the broken leg incident wasn’t a total calamity from the Hawks’ perspective. Really bad for the New York Police Department, but fine for the Hawks.
The Aftermath: After Sefolosha’s contract expired, he joined Utah and then Houston for the final years of his NBA career. Sefolosha did not join the Rockets in the Disney bubble (which I will continue linking whenever possible), so his final NBA game was on March 8, 2020. Bizarrely, I was actually in attendance at this game and can tell you all about it. It was the first (and last) sporting event I attended at the pandemic onset and the only health and safety precaution is that the ushers weren’t allowed to touch our phones to take a picture. There was some sort of event where several different youth cheerleading groups were in attendance, so the upper decks were shaking with well-orchestrated cheers from young girls. This contrasted with the game itself, which featured the Rockets quickly going down 27-16 and never getting the deficit back beneath 10 points. Thabo Sefolosha played the final 8:13 of that game, entering with the Rockets trailing by 30. I don’t remember anything about his performance (one missed shot and one turnover), but there’s good odds we had already left by then.
In 2023, Thabo Sefolosha ran for president of the Swiss basketball federation, but came in second place with 18 votes (winner Andrew Siviero received 36 votes). Also in 2023, Sofoklis Schortsanitis ran for regional councilor in South Athens. He came in 6th place with 6,210 votes. I am positive he would be electable for any office in the United States if he had gotten even one NBA minute.
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The Names: Washington Wizards receive: Melvin Ely (from New Orleans). New Orleans Pelicans receive: Omer Asik, Omri Casspi, and cash (from Houston). Houston Rockets receive: Trevor Ariza (sign and trade, from Washington); Alonzo Gee, Scotty Hopson, and 2015 1st-round pick (#18, Sam Dekker selected) from New Orleans.
The Team Context: Having failed to sign Chris Bosh or retain Chandler Parsons, the Rockets were pivoting.
The Player Context: Melvin Ely would seem to have played his final NBA game in 2011. After spending a year in Puerto Rico and another in the D-League, he made it back to the NBA for two games with the Pelicans at the end of the 2014 season. This came with a non-guaranteed contract for the next season, making him obvious trade fodder.
Alonzo Gee and Scotty Hopson had arrived in New Orleans several hours ago. Besides the pick, this was all New Orleans traded away.
Omri Casspi had just signed a two-year contract with the Rockets in the summer of 2013. In reality, this contract was a one-year deal with a team option that put Casspi in the same boat as Melvin Ely, Scotty Hopson, and the other guys who were valued only for the salary cap dollar amount that they wouldn’t actually be paid.
The big names in this trade were Omer Asik and Trevor Ariza. Asik was a strong defensive center who had started 82 games for the Rockets in 2012-13 before being crowded out by the arrival of Dwight Howard. He was still a valuable NBA contributor with one year left on his contract, but there was mutual interest from player and team to get Asik to a better situation. Trevor Ariza was even more of an archetypal “3 and D” guy than Thabo Sefolosha. He was getting ready for his 10th NBA season and was making a return to Houston after playing one season there in 2009-10.
The Trade: The New Orleans Pelicans had agreed to acquire Omer Asik from the Rockets for a 2015 1st-round pick many weeks ago. Zach Harper had graded the trade on June 26, which is one of the best arguments for Trades Ten Years Later I could conjure. The rush to analyze the trade was so profound that it was graded three weeks before it was finalized and all the analysis is about the Rockets potentially getting Lebron James or Carmelo Anthony.
Presumably, the Rockets dragged their feet on submitting paperwork until they could work out a three-team trade and there was nothing New Orleans could do to make the ball roll any faster. As the Rockets figured out what they were doing, New Orleans acquired Scotty Hopson and Alonzo Gee for nothing to help make the numbers work. Everything built into this convoluted 3-team scenario that ultimately yielded a large trade exception for Washington.
The Results: With the 18th pick in the 2015 Draft, the Rockets selected Sam Dekker out of Wisconsin. I really thought Sam Dekker was going to be a great NBA player. He was not, and ended up getting traded to the Clippers in 2017 as part of the Chris Paul megatrade.
Trevor Ariza was one of the Rocket’s most essential players during his four-year run with the team from 2014-2018, which also coincided with the franchise’s best stretch of the 21st century. He made 35% of the 2,478 3-pointers he attempted as a Rocket. Unfortunately, he missed all 9 of the 3-pointers he attempted in Game 7 of the 2018 Western Conference Finals as one of the leading culprits behind the legendarily cold shooting that cost Houston a championship opportunity.
Omer Asik returned to his starter role in New Orleans, playing well enough on defense to re-sign on a 5-year, $60 million contract. Even though this was really only a 4-year, $45 million contract (with a hefty non-guaranteed 5th year), it was clearly too much money to pay Asik given his totally moribund offensive game. An already bad contract aged terribly when Asik began missing time with injuries and he was eventually traded to Chicago during the 2017-18 season.
Melvin Ely and Omri Casspi got waived by their acquiring teams. Scotty Hopson and Alonzo Gee would have one more trade in their immediate future before they could receive the sweet release of being released.
The Aftermath: Omri Casspi went to Sacramento after being waived by New Orleans and played a few seasons there. In 2016-17, he made a triumphant return to the Pelicans as part of the DeMarcus Cousins trade, which lasted one game before he suffered a thumb injury and was waived.
After leaving the Rockets, Ariza squeezed in four new NBA teams and made returns to each of the Lakers and Wizards. He ended his 18-year career having played for 10 NBA teams, three of which he played for on two separate occasions.
Omer Asik was on the way out of his NBA career by the time he was traded to Chicago, but it ended permanently when he was diagnosed with inflammatory arthritis.
Melvin Ely began a coaching career after his playing career ended, getting his first shot as an assistant in something called the “AmeriLeague” in Las Vegas. You probably haven’t heard of the AmeriLeague, which was established in 2015 as a competitor to the D-League. Well, almost established. The AmeriLeague signed 60 players and was preparing for the draft that would divide its roster among the ten competing teams, but league actions were derailed after it was revealed that Founder and CEO Cerruti Brown was actually Glendon Alexander, who was using a false identity to hide that he was a con man with multiple felony convictions. This revelation hurt the launch of the AmeriLeague, which ended up folding before beginning play and before anyone got the money they were contractually obligated to receive.
July 16, 2014
The Names: Washington Wizards receive: DeJuan Blair (sign and trade). Dallas Mavericks receive: Theoretical Emir Preldzic.
The Team Context: Immaterial. Let’s just get this over with.
The Player Context: DeJuan Blair started his career in San Antonio after he was drafted 37th overall in 2009. Blair played in all 82 games of his rookie season and made the 2nd-team All Rookie team, which would seem to be a great start to one’s NBA career. But as Boris Diaw and Tiago Splitter took larger roles on the Spurs, Blair ended up being squeezed out of the rotation. He signed a one year minimum contract with Dallas in 2013-14, playing well enough to earn consideration on a multi-year contract the next summer.
Emir Preldzic was drafted twenty spots after Blair in 2009. Preldzic was born in Zenica, Yugoslavia, which had become Bosnia and Herzegovina by the time Preldzic started his basketball career. When he was drafted in 2009, Preldzic played for the Slovenia national team after acquiring citizenship during his early years playing in the country. He was rumored to switch his international affiliation to Bosnia by 2011, but ended up playing for Turkey instead after establishing his professional career in that country. Like the rest of the foreign players mentioned today (except Thabo Sefolosha), Preldzic obviously did not have an NBA future.
The Trade: This was a three-year, $6M contract with a team option on the third year, a pretty substantial raise on what Blair had made in his last crack at free agency. Observers noted that, while Dallas didn’t have room for Blair following the acquisitions of Tyson Chandler and Greg Smith, Washington had been prolifically acquiring backup big men and may not have room for Blair either.
The Results: Blair was a fringe roster piece for his entire time in Washington. He got into three of Washington’s first 14 games with him on the roster and played a total of 10:37 across those games. All told, his contributions in Washington consisted of 398 minutes before he was salary dumped at the 2016 trade deadline.
The Aftermath: Blair spent time in the D-League and overseas, but his basketball career ended when he received a two-year suspension from FIBA for “violation of their anti-doping rules.” The connotation with anti-doping is “steroids,” but Blair tested positive for oxymorphone-oxycodone, an opioid painkiller that had been removed from the U.S. market.
There are a couple other similar NBA trades in July that we may or may not cover; they’re all essentially accounting moves. There are a couple of real NBA trades in August and the intermittent roster tinkering will continue for the rest of the calendar year – unlike the MLB and NBA, we aren’t going to hit a trade deadline in 2024.