Three Way, Again!

Two years ago we had our first three way trade in SlamNation ever, an eleven player monster that involved Snack Bears, Fob Stars, and Funk Coalition. A little secret though, that was actually technically two one-on-one trades. However, now we have our first real deal three-way trade, between Squirtle Squad, Sour Snails, and Funk (again)! Let’s take a look at what went down. And also with a quick recap of some minor trades from earlier in the season.

Trade ID#95:

• Squirtle Squad receive Tobias Harris, Lou Williams
• Sour Snails receive Zach LaVine, Squirtle Squad 2020 RD3
• Funk Coalition receive Evan Fournier, Marcus Smart, Nemanja Bjelica

After the loss of Caris LeVert to near season ending surgery, Sour Snails had been working hard for a replacement at shooting guard. Well, Trieu finally got his solution by trading away Tobias Harris and re-arming Snails' potent backcourt offense.

As for Squirtle, after a few missed games early, Zach LaVine has returned to power the Bulls and frankly, he looks a lot like Harris statistically. Seriously, check out their numbers, it’s very similar with mostly offense and no defense for both. This was basically a perfect positional switch trade and works great to dilute Snails’ glut of power forwards while filling in Squirtles’ frontline spot that was being manned by a combination of Jae Crowder and Jeff Green.

• Harris: 21.1 PTS, 8.0 REB, 2.2 AST, 0.8 STL, 0.4 BLK, 1.9 3PT, 2.0 TO, 50.3 FG%, 88.7 FT%
• LaVine: 23.6 PTS, 4.4 REB, 4.4 AST, 0.9 STL, 0.5 BLK, 1.8 3PT, 3.6 TO, 46.1 FG%, 87.0 FT%

It’s perhaps rare to see trades between two teams atop the same conference — Squirtles and Sour are #1-2 right now in Chamberlain — but the move strengthened both teams so it had to be done. Win-win!

Along with the main course, Squirtles also gave up Evan Fournier and a 2020 RD3 to acquire Lou Williams, which is a slight upgrade for the shooting guard slot. Sweet Lou is at 19.8 PTS, 5.4 AST on 46.5 FG% for the past month, and he averages a sneaky 7.3 FTA on 83.8 FT%. We'll dig into what the two acquisitions do for Squirtles overall in a later piece.

For Trieu, sending out Smart and Bjelica in return for a future draft pick recoups the 2020 RD3 they’ll send to Fob Stars from the Damian Lillard trade. That means, in sum, Snails moved Lillard (plus a potential RD2 position swap with Fob) for Kemba Walker, Zach LaVine, and a 2020 RD4. Pretty nice!

Trade ID#93:

• Funk Coalition receive Zach Collins
• Sour Snails receive Funk Coalition 2020 RD6, or RD5 if Zach Collins becomes a 2020 keeper

Trade ID#94:

• Funk Coalition receive Jonathan Isaac, Fob Stars 2020 RD3
• Fob Stars receive Rudy Gay, Funk Coalition 2020 RD2

Trade ID#96:

• Funk Coalition receive Bogdan Bogdanovic and Kent Bazemore
• Fat Jubas receive Trevor Ariza, Jerami Grant

And now to look at Funk Coalition, who has made at least one trade in every month of the season so far. It's safe to say Jon will retain the title of "most willing trade partner" title for awhile. Jumping back to November, Funk moved a late round pick for the upside of Zach Collins (just cut), and two weeks ago acquired the upside of Jonathan Isaac for Rudy Gay. There's been nine trades in SlamNation this season and Funk has been involved in seven of them. Doesn't anyone else want to trade?!

Funk followed that up the Collins acquisition with another two trades, the three-way and then one right after, in total exchanging Lou Williams, Trevor Ariza, and Jerami Grant for five new pieces. We’ll see how the new bench mob shakes out but so far this season Funk has traded away seven players while acquiring eleven, so that’s like a brand new team! Jon loves his rebuilds, doesn’t he?

For Fat Jubas, the additions of Ariza and Grant should bolster their defense a little bit, as Ariza has been getting a ton of minutes in Washington while Jerami is at a nice 1/1/1 the past month. Word on the street is that Jubas have decided to lean into their defense to further their chase up the ranks of Russell Conference and it looks to be perfect timing as Chunky Monkeys are down a LeBron and Team Thien is missing a Wall.