Training camps open across the NBA in a matter of days, and that is when the trade machine actually starts running. Injuries happen. Camp battles get lost. Extension deadlines arrive and pass without signatures.
Every team has a theoretical trade candidate. Three of them are more than theoretical.
Brandon Ingram Is The Obvious One
Ingram has two years and $82 million remaining with a player option, and that contract structure is exactly what makes him movable and complicated at the same time.
He is a legitimate shot creator who has never quite found the right ecosystem. The money is large enough that a rebuilding team would want draft compensation to absorb it and a contender would need to send back real salary. That narrows the list of matches considerably.
The player option is the wildcard. A team trading for him is trading for two years or for one, and it will not know which until Ingram decides.
Jalen Green In Phoenix
Green landing in Phoenix was always going to be an experiment, and experiments get abandoned when they do not produce wins quickly.
He is young enough to still carry upside value around the league, which is the crucial part. Teams do not trade for reclamation projects on big money, but they absolutely trade for former lottery picks in their mid-20s who scored 20 a game somewhere else. The Suns have a roster that needs coherence more than it needs another high-usage guard.
Sabonis Was Already On The Block
The Kings openly shopped Domantas Sabonis at last season’s deadline. Nothing about Sacramento’s situation has improved enough to take him off the market.
Sabonis is one of the best rebounders and passing bigs in the sport, and he is also a defensive liability in exactly the postseason environments contenders are trying to survive. That contradiction has kept the market cooler than his production suggests it should be.
A team that plays him next to a rim protector gets enormous value. A team that asks him to anchor a defense gets a problem.
The Landscape Behind Them
The offseason already reshaped the league. Giannis Antetokounmpo went to Miami. LeBron James left the Lakers for Philadelphia. Kawhi Leonard is in Toronto. Klay Thompson took a buyout and followed Giannis to Miami.
When that much star movement happens in one summer, the follow-on trades come from teams realizing mid-November that their new construction does not work.
What To Watch For
Extension deadlines are the real trigger. A player who does not sign becomes an expiring asset, and expiring assets get moved. Watch which young players leave camp without new deals, because that list is the deadline market in advance.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.