Trade (Deadline) Ten Years Later - Tyshawn Taylor for Theoretical Edin Bavcic
If two NBA teams trade for players who never play in the NBA, does it make a sound?
The NBA Trade Deadline was on February 21, 2014. We will have a post each weekday until then looking at the NBA trades that were made in the month leading up to the deadline (most of which happened in the 24 hours beforehand). A schedule for the upcoming week can be found at the end of this post. Obviously it’s subject to minor adjustment (Happy Sunday!)
The Names: Pelicans receive: Tyshawn Taylor, cash considerations Nets receive: Draft rights to Edin Bavcic.
The Team Context: This was one of two trades that the Nets made on January 21. I discussed the other trade (Tornike Shengelia for Marquis Teague) recently and the Brooklyn team context is, naturally, identical.
The Pelicans, much like the Nets, were very early into a newly-found identity. In 1987, a North Carolina man named George Shinn succeeded in getting an expansion NBA team in his hometown of Charlotte. The Hornets were a mediocre but popular team in their early years, but then became a bad and unpopular team by the late 1990s as Shinn attracted increasing controversy in the city, first for his business practices and then when he was accused of sexual assault in a case that eventually resulted in a prolonged and televised trial. Shinn was not found to be liable in court, but the court of public opinion had a lower burden of proof. Charlotte was unwilling to fund a new arena for a team owned by Shinn and so he suggested he’d relocate the team, ultimately carrying the threat out when the team moved to New Orleans in 2002. The team had barely arrived in New Orleans when Hurricane Katrina devastated the city, forcing the team to play 36 of their 41 2005-2006 home games in Oklahoma City as the New Orleans/Oklahoma City Hornets.
By 2010, Shinn was strapped for cash and looked to sell the team to Gary Chouest, a minority owner in the franchise. The sale failed to go through, perhaps because Chouest preferred to name tugboats after himself, and Shinn couldn’t find another buyer. Seeking to avoid another relocation for an unbelievably churned franchise, the NBA stepped in to purchase the team for approximately $300 million, then sold it a couple years later to neighborhood billionaire Tom Benson, who contemporaneously announced that he hoped to change the team name from Hornets to something “that means New Orleans, LA.” In announcing the team’s new mascot, Benson said that the Hornets name “didn’t mean anything to this community,” but that “the pelican represents New Orleans … they have incredible resolve. If they can do that, the team can do the same.” The brown pelican is the state bird of Louisiana and, as the article reminds me, “images of the pelicans covered with oil were plentiful after the [2010 BP] oil spill.” When New Orleans freed up the Hornets name, the 2004 expansion team Charlotte Bobcats reclaimed the Hornets name, and the NBA record books were rewritten such that, officially, the New Orleans Pelicans are a 2002 expansion team and the Charlotte Hornets suspended operations from 2002-2004.
Anyways, the newly-named Pelicans were mediocre in their first year under the moniker. They hovered around .500 most of the year until January, when they faded to slightly below .500.
The Player Context: Tyshawn Taylor was the only NBA player involved in this trade, and he wouldn’t be retaining that identity for much longer. He was born in New Jersey and starred for St. Anthony’s High School before he was recruited to Kansas, where he started all four years of college. Taylor had highlights at Kansas in his senior year, when he won a national championship, and in his junior year, when he was suspended for unspecified violations of team rules. After four years at Kansas, he was drafted with the 41st overall pick by the Portland Trail Blazers, sticking with the franchise for one day before he was traded to the Nets for cash.
Events took place during Tyshawn Taylor’s career, but not many of them were on-court. As part of what seems to have been rookie hazing, he was allegedly tied up with ropes by Kevin Garnett and thrown into the shower. In a slightly closer-to-court incident, Taylor allegedly bumped into Jason Kidd’s arm on purpose in a late-game scenario where the Nets were out of time outs - the collision caused Kidd to spill his drink onto the court, causing a delay while the mess was cleaned up before the Nets went on to lose 99-94. Taylor’s best career game was on November 29, 2013, when his Nets lost 114-95 to the Houston Rockets to fall to 4-12 on the season. Kidd rested his starters for the second half, giving Taylor a team-leading 36:15 of gametime in which he put up career-highs with sixteen points and twelve assists. Following this career pinnacle, Taylor was interviewed by the New York Times and gave the quote “every time we step on the court, we’re losing - and it’s not just losing, we’re getting killed.” Congratulations on the great game Tyshawn!
Edin Bavcic had a distinguished career in Europe, beginning in his native Bosnia when he signed with Sarajevo’s KK Bosna at the age of 19. In America, he had a similarly distinguished career as a theoretical basketball player. The second-round 2006 draft pick that was ultimately used to select Bavcic once belonged to the Miami Heat and was traded to Boston in 2005 in a 5-team, 13-player trade. Boston sent that pick to New Orleans and New Orleans sent it to Toronto before the draft, and Toronto selected Bavcic at #56 overall. Immediately thereafter, Toronto sold Bavcic’s draft rights to the Philadelphia 76ers. Thanks to NBA Summer League, there is actual proof that Bavcic was a 76er at some point. Here’s a 2008 roster that includes Bavcic as well as Marreese Speights and Thaddeus Young. Here’s a link to a webpage with a photo (I’m not playing Getty’s image licensing games) of Bavcic playing in a 2007 game, even if the picture looks like it was taken in 1991. Notably, none of these appearances led to Bavcic signing an NBA contract.
It would be unseemly, and perhaps illegal under the CBA, to trade a player away for literally nothing. Despite that, the NBA’s salary cap regularly creates a class of players whose contracts make them beyond valueless to their team. It sure would be awesome if they could just disappear entirely. Theoretical Edin Bavcic provides the perfect solution! Edin Bavcic obviously exists if you turn your attention to Europe. Here he is in Turkey as a member of Antalya Kepez Belediyesi! Whoops, now he’s in Germany as a Koln 99er! Wow, he’s playing well for Slovenia’s Union Olimpija! But to an NBA team, the drafted and unsigned Bavcic represents someone you can trade for without ever paying any money. The “draft rights to Edin Bavcic” are very different than any “contractual obligations owed to Edin Bavcic,” and oftentimes preferable to the “contractual obligations owed to an actual NBA player.”
In 2012, Philadelphia traded Theoretical Edin Bavcic to New Orleans in a three-team trade where they acquired Dorell Wright from the Golden State Warriors and Darryl Watkins from the New Orleans Basketball Team (who also sent Jarrett Jack to Golden State). Golden State executed a normal player-for-player basketball trade, but Theoretical Edin Bavcic allowed for a transaction structure where Philadelphia acquired a useful player (Wright) while giving up nothing from their team and New Orleans sent away two contracts (belonging to Watkins and Jack) without taking any players back in exchange. Bavcic was likely too busy globetrotting to concern himself with the difference between Philadelphia and New Orleans - he spent the prior two seasons playing in Greece, Italy, Ukraine, and then signed in France a month after being traded.
The Trade: As we’ve discussed, this was a money-saving move for Brooklyn, but it also turned out to be a money-saving move for New Orleans. Tyshawn Taylor was on an expiring second-round contract with about $400,000 in salary left for the season. But Taylor was traded along with roughly $1 million in cash considerations. While that math seems tricky to reconcile, it’s easy once you remember that the Nets were in unprecedented luxury tax hell and each dollar they spent on salary was costing them about four times as much. This is the type of straightforward yet graceful financial maneuvering that thawed the hearts of whichever former investment bankers staffed the Nets and Pelicans front office. Theoretical Edin Bavcic played an instrumental role in making this transaction look like “financial maneuvering” rather than “money laundering.”
The Reaction: The trade was announced by the Pelicans on a Tuesday morning. On Tuesday evening, Pelicans coach Monty Williams gave perhaps the least inspiring quote you could imagine from your new boss. “Once I get more information, I’ve known about it for a couple of days, but we’ll get more information if there is a role to be played.” The use of “if” there is a role to be played and the fact that the head coach needed to get “more information” on a trade he had already known about for a couple of days suggested that Tyshawn Taylor would not have much of a future in New Orleans.
For a more optimistic view, we have to turn to Lawrence, Kansas, where KU Sports staff encouraged readers excited by the reunion of Tyshawn Taylor and Jeff Withey to “run out to the store and buy all the Pelicans gear you can.” Pointing out that the two will be playing on the same court where they played in the 2012 Final Four, the section concludes with “it’s safe to assume Taylor will spend more time on the floor than his old buddy, Withey, who is averaging 6.0 minutes a game.”
The Results: Two days after the trade was completed and before he played any games, the Pelicans waived Tyshawn Taylor and he never played another NBA minute. Hopefully there weren’t too many Jayhawks fans who bought all the Pelicans gear they could. Edin Bavcic never came to the NBA. Now that’s meaningless!
The Aftermath: Fortunately for the Nets, they were able to trade Theoretical Edin Bavcic one more time in a July 2014 three-teamer between Brooklyn, Cleveland, and Boston. Despite involving an entirely different set of three teams than the 2012 Bavcic three-teamer, Jarrett Jack was involved with this one too, traveling from Cleveland to Brooklyn. Apparently draft rights don’t go away and Theoretical Edin Bavcic is still a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers. Actual Edin Bavcic added passport stamps in the basketball leagues of Kosovo, Hungary, and Austria before retiring in June 2022. I see no reason why this would prevent him from being involved in future NBA trades as Theoretical Edin Bavcic.
With Tyshawn Taylor unceremoniously dumped from the NBA, he joined the D-League’s Maine Red Claws for about two weeks before realizing that he was born to globetrot. Taylor had already signed with Atleticos de San German in Puerto Rico by the time the NBA trade deadline rolled around, then had stints with Dynamo Moscow (Russia), Indios de Mayaguez (also in Puerto Rico), Maccabi Kiryat Gat (Israel), Ankara DSI and Samsun BSB Anakent (Turkey), Auxulium Torino (Italy) and the Saigon Heat (Vietnam’s representative in the ASEAN Basketball League) before retiring. He got more stateside basketball action in The Basketball Tournament, competing for Team FOE (coached by the Kansas alum Morris twins and named after the Family Over Everything foundation they’ve founded). Team FOE had its most successful year in 2017, when they advanced to the East Regional Final before losing to Boeheim’s Army, a team composed entirely of former Syracuse players. In typical Tyshawn Taylor fashion, he also had an off-court incident in America, when he was arrested for trying to cash a fake money order at a supermarket. He was hosting the Timeout Podcast with Tyshawn Taylor but the Twitter account hasn’t posted any updates since Episode 4 with Mario Chalmers dropped on October 11, 2022. Taylor’s final NBA game was a 17-point victory over the Hawks where he and the Tokomotive checked in for the final 8 minutes of garbage time, cutting the lead from 28 to 17 in that span.
February 5, 2024:
Sacramento Kings receive: Reggie Evans, Jason Terry
Brooklyn Nets receive: Marcus Thornton
February 6, 2024:
Los Angeles Lakers receive: MarShon Brooks, Kent Bazemore
Golden State Warriors receive: Steve Blake
February 7, 2024:
Atlanta Hawks receive: Antawn Jamison
Los Angeles Clippers receive: Draft rights to Cenk Aykol
February 8, 2024:
Philadelphia 76ers receive: Byron Mullens, conditional 2nd round pick
Los Angeles Clippers receive: Future 2nd round pick