Teams that are old and have poor records are favorable trade partners. These can be determined quantitatively. First, I've ranked the teams by +/- and by age using basketballreference.com: Team : Rank by +/- : Rank by age GS 1 25 sas 2 29 hou 3 20 cleveland 4 27 utah 5 17 toronto 6 14 lac 7 30 boston 8 13 memphis 9 28 washington 10 12 OKC 11 2 Charlotte 12 18 Detroit 13 6 Milwaukee 14 8 atlanta 15 24 minny 16 1 heat 17 16 denver 18 5 bulls 19 22 dallas 20 23 indy 21 19 blazers 22 4 kings 23 26 nop 24 7 nyk 25 21 lal 26 11 suns 27 10 76ers 28 3 orlando 29 9 nets 30 15 The results, shown in the graph below, can be viewed as 4 quadrants: Lower Left Quadrant: Young and Good Upper Left Quadrant: Old and Good Lower Right Quadrant: Young and Bad Upper Right Quadrant: Old and Bad (teams that should consider rebuilding) Note: there are a number of assumptions, which are basically unimportant. The idea is to identify an initial list for discussion of possible trade partners. "Old" = bottom half of league in average age. "Bad" = bottom half of league in +/-. The Blazers are "4". The number next the data points are the team's average age. The teams squarely in the 4th quadrant are 19, 21, 22, 23, 26. These are Indy (19), NYK (21), Bulls (22), Dallas (23), Kings (26) What do you think of these teams as trade partners?
Theory worked. The last 3 teams made trades to get younger. Indy considered it for a long time. NYK probably should have!
and now Indy and NYK are going young, too. So, Indy (19), NYK (21), Bulls (22), Dallas (23), Kings (26) are all still viable trade partners (they were bottom half in both +/- and age at the break). So, they should be looking for young players, and we have that, in addition to draft picks.
