2024 NBA Trade Deadline Disaster Scenarios this could….

Anything’s possible before the NBA trade deadline.

Rumors and speculation lend themselves to hopeful reform and/or improvement. Sputtering teams can carve out a direction with the right move. Fringe contenders can try pushing themselves over the top. Organically bad squads can move more freely and openly into structured losing, exchanging players who don’t fit their timeline for picks and prospects that potentially move the longer-term needle as subsequent trade assets or eventual participants.

Franchises on the brink, meanwhile, are forced into action. Or at least, they should be. There’s no more waiting out turned corners and resurrections. If your core is wilting in the face of immediately lofty aspirations, it’s on the front office to end the suffering and choose between doubling down on now or expediting the closing of a competitive window in favor of a more discernible bigger picture.

And yet, just because anything feels possible amid the unknown doesn’t mean every squad will do nearly enough to explore those possibilities.

Inaction isn’t the end of the world for many, even if it would be disappointing. In the case of plucky upstarts (Orlando, Houston), new contenders on the block (Oklahoma City, Minnesota), second-tier playoff squads that need a very specific infusion to reach the next level (Sacramento, Philadelphia), a decision to stand pat or indulge the minor is far from unforgivable.

Passive deadlines from those at an organizational crossroads are far less explicable. And even worse are the franchises who so clearly need to do one thing—or series of things—and elect to do something else entirely, often at steep and irreversible opportunity costs.

Teams embroiled in this existential tug-of-war will populate our trade deadline disaster scenarios.