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Trade Deadline Marathon: Day 5
- Nikola Cuvalo
- Jan 10, 2019
- 2 min read
TOR receives: Bradley Beal, Markieff Morrismor
WAS receives: Serge Ibaka, Norman Powell, Delon Wright, OG Anunoby , Toronto's 2021 first round pick
Are the Wizards ready? Truly ready? Ready to move on from a roster filled with talent but destined by bad chemistry to perpetually compete for a fringe playoff spot in the NBA’s junior conference? If so, perhaps they can stomach this trade for their most movable player, Bradley Beal. Landing the following pieces from the Raptors would also go a long way towards building trade capital to move John Wall and potentially Otto Porter Jr. The Wizards have to do something, and this trade would definitely qualify as ‘something’.
The Raptors essentially convince Washington to swap Morris’ much lighter contract and perhaps slightly worse overall level of play for the resurgent Serge Ibaka, and then snake-charm them into taking the long-awaited leap: trading Bradley Beal for Norman Powell + OG Anunoby + Delon Wright + all the draft picks it takes to make this happen.
Washington gets a boatload of picks and three very nice, relatively young pieces (ages being 25, 21, and 26, respectively) to jumpstart their roster rebuild; clearly quite necessary as evidenced by this dumpster fire of a season. The Wizards get to remain competitive enough to not full-on tank, as their front office clearly has a distaste for unsightly (albeit necessary) process, while still guaranteeing themselves lottery-range picks.
The Raptors could roll out a starting lineup of Lowry-Beal-Green-Leonard-Siakam. The needle might burst out of the speedometer in that offense. They sacrifice numerous young potential building blocks but make their intent on winning this season abundantly clear to the rest of the NBA (and to one resident superstar with one foot out the door).
Beal is the piece that would make the Raptors the clear favorite to emerge from the East in the Finals. That nugget of wisdom alone should have Masai Ujiri pondering some permutation of this trade with great interest.
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