Trade Targets Part II: Zig While Others Zag

When you are a small market competing with 29 other teams, you need to find market inefficiencies. Either anticipate where the game is going next and/or grab up undervalued pieces while your opponents have their eye on another prize. The former is hard to do in a market with so many smart executives, but the latter is possible.This summer, teams are avoiding giving two years or more to non-superstars like the plague. Everyone wants to be players in the supposedly stacked 2019 free agent market, so they aren’t giving out multi-year deals in free agency and won’t take on multiple years in trades. 20+ teams will attempt to be players in the 2019 free agent market. Maybe 2-3 will succeed. And spoiler alert… the Pelicans won’t be one of those teams if they try. Klay isn’t coming here, either is Jimmy Butler or Kyrie. They will go to bigger markets and/or team up, and/or sign bigger deals than the Pels can offer with their current teams.

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