Thunder, Rockets make most inconsequential eight-player trade in NBA history

There's many memorable names involved in this trade. Derrick Favors was the No. 3 pick in the draft. Trey Burke was the National Player of the Year at Michigan in 2013. Marquese Chriss was a lottery pick, Ty Jerome won a national title at Virginia in 2019, Moe Harkless started for four playoff teams in Portland and was part of the trade that sent Dwight Howard to the Lakers, and Sterling Brown got $750K in a police brutality settlement in Milwaukee (Police tased Brown for parking illegally).

But most of the players traded will never play for their new teams, and the stakes are ridiculously low. Oklahoma City saves about a million dollars in the deal and gains two trade exceptions. Houston receives a 2026 second-rounder with complicated protection for taking on the extra money: It's the second-least-favorable among the second-round picks of the Thunder, Mavericks, and 76ers, four years from now.

The simplest way to look at this deal is that both the Rockets and Thunder had too many players on their rosters. Houston specifically traded three of the four veterans it got from Dallas in the Christian Wood trade. Instead of simply waving the players themselves, they swapped the players, got some mutually beneficial financial assets, and left the other team to waive most of those guys instead. They're minor financial assets, but they're assets. One side effect of loading up on future picks, which both these teams have done, is that young players don't get much time to secure their spots before new young players arrive every summer.

Ultimately all eight players involved will likely be waived or bought out, but for tanking teams like the Thunder and Rockets, these kind of transactions are their version of the playoffs they won't be participating in this season.