Pre-Draft Trades: 2024

A blistering nine total trades before the 2024 season even starts! That's so exciting. Eight trades were made pre-draft--four by SOUR--and one more mid-draft. Let's take a look at some of the highlights shall we? We're off to a very thrilling campaign already!

Trade ID#149

• CHMK receive Jamal Murray
• UFOS receive Nic Claxton, Jabari Smith Jr, and Jordan Poole

Our first ever pre-dispersal trade was a doozy! We’ve never had to encounter this situation before but new GM Victor leveraged his current player base—the former FOBS roster—to shake things up before he even got to pick over the carcasses of the rest of the non-keepers.

Jamal Murray and his championship pedigree was moved to CHMK for a trio of excellent young pieces. It’ll be quite a haul for UFOS. The twenty-four year old Claxton was the second leading blocker in the NBA last year, as he had a breakout season. And the ex-future of the Splish Splash Warriors, Jordan Poole, will now get to shoot as many shots as he wants for the Wizards.

And then last year’s first overall pick, 2023 RD1.1 Jabari Smith Jr., won’t even get to hit the keeper roster for CHMK before being moved along. Is this the fastest a former number one draft selection has been dumped by his team? Hope Smith rented and didn’t buy in Chunkyland!

This trade came as a result of Monkey’s ultra-successful—and fast—rebuild as GM Evan had too many keeper-level assets on his roster heading into 2024. We’ll cover that their keepers later in our keeper article but for now, congrats to both teams for making history!

Note: We instituted a new rule that a pre-dispersal team is allowed to trade players off their current roster, but then must take/keep an equal number of players traded off that roster into the dispersal process. “One for one rule” or let’s get Fullmetal and call it the “Law of Equivalent Exchange.”

Example: UFOS traded away one player, so they must keeper designate at least one player off the pre-dispersal roster before dispersing—and then selecting their next five players.

This rule closes the loophole of a pre-dispersal team trading off all their current assets for future draft picks and then using the dispersal to take six new players.

Trade ID#147

• SOUR receive Lauri Markannen
• MELO receive Pascal Siakam

Trade ID#148

• TRUO receive De’Aaron Fox and Austin Reaves
• SOUR receive Scottie Barnes and RJ Barrett

Trade ID#150

• FJUB receive Jerami Grant
• SOUR receive Mark Williams

Trade ID#152

• UFOS receive RJ Barrett and SOUR 2024 RD4.3
• SOUR receive Keldon Johnson and UFOS 2024 RD6.16

What’s an offseason without a sprinkle of drama? Defending champions SOUR has already revamped more than half his title winning roster before the 2024 season even started! The first move was a slightly eyebrow-raising trade off of coffeepreneur Jimmy Butler for Lauri Markannen—fresh off completing his mandatory Finnish military service. (Who knew BTS and Markannen had so much in common?) The eyebrow-raising wasn’t due to Butler’s exorbitant coffee prices but rather his age: thirty-four. That makes Butler eight years older than Markannen. And while Himmy is still at the peak of his (playoff) powers, thirty-four is thirty-four and Butler averages about 60+ regular season games per year since 2017.

While no formal complaints were lodged, the first potential move of 2024 did undergo a round of social media inquiry. In the end, the trade terms were adjusted as SOUR sent Pascal Siakam over to MELO for Markannen instead of Butler, closing the age-gap and soothing those pundits who had their eyebrow raised. It’s hard to be the champs! 👑 The bad news for the rest of SlamNation is that every time Butler has joined or re-joined the SOUR roster, they have won a ring the same year. So since Butler was technically off this team for a day, this might have been yet another genius move by GM Trieu.

Two more trades for SOUR moved out De’Aaron Fox, 2023 SlamNation Finals hero Austin Reaves, and Jerami Grant in exchange for Scottie Barnes, RJ Barrett, and Mark Williams. The Fox for Barnes swap is fascinating as Barnes was once drafted as a rookie by SOUR two seasons ago (2022 RD1.5), and will make his homecoming. And then in another follow-up move, SOUR shipped off the Barrett to our newest franchise, UFOS, for Keldon Johnson, along with swapping 2024 RD4 and RD6 picks. All in all, Trieu turned over the entire keeper roster around Steph Curry, which will make SOUR’s ring night quite the lonely celebration, but could portend a new and exciting title defense. Four trades before the season even started, incredible stuff Trieu!

Trade ID#151

• SCRM receive Giannis Antetokounmpo
• SQSQ receive Anthony Davis, DeMar DeRozan, SCRM 2024 RD2.2, and SCRM 2025 RD1

And lest we think the fireworks died down after SOUR’s moves, we had a mega-deal that came out of nowhere. Two franchise level players were exchanged in Antetokounmpo and Davis. That’s two former NBA champions and cornerstones for their teams. After spending nine seasons with SQSQ—he was drafted in 2014 RD4—there was little warning that Antetokounmpo would be on the way out. The twenty-nine year old is still in his prime and despite some fantasy flaws—namely FT%—Giannis is still an incredible fantasy asset. The swap for Davis, an injury-prone thirty-one year old, could pay great dividends as SCRM pushes hard for a title. (We’re a little curious why SCRM didn’t go get LeBron James off SQSQ too, but maybe that’ll come in a later deal.)

As for SQSQ, turning Giannis into Anthony Davis and DeMar DeRozan will boost productivity in the short run. Davis does get hurt quite a bit when but he plays, he can still be a dominating fantasy force. And there’s also two picks attached here, a 2025 RD1 and this recent draft’s RD2.2 (Buddy Hield) which could help even out the trade. We applaud such bold moves from both franchises and am excited to see what Antetokounmpo and Davis can achieve in their new homes.

Some other trade tidbits:

ID150: FJUB acquired a small forward, Jerami Grant, by moving off Mark Williams, which was a nice piece of work for a possible non-keeper.

ID152: UFOS acquired a free RD4.3 (Deni Avdija) basically from the flip with SOUR of RJ Barrett and Keldon Johnson. Note that UFOS didn’t actually keeper Barrett in the end.

ID153/154: ILCN sold off extra keeper assets in Walker Kessler and Bradley Beal, recouping future 2025 RD2 and 2025 RD3, respectively.

ID155: During the draft, CHMK and SBUK did a direct positional exchange of Jalen Brunson for Desmond Bane, which was about as even a one-on-one positional swap as we’ve seen in awhile!