Everybody has the opportunity every year of trading draft picks and/or players before and during the NBA Draft, but most often all of the rumors never come to fruition.

If I had to make a guess on this year, however, I would guess that there will be lots of trading.

Call it a gut instinct, but it doesn’t seem that anyone this year is happy where they are drafting.

The Toronto Raptors seemed like it would be plenty happy picking 5th since the guy they wanted to pick would be available with the 5th pick.  Suddenly awarded the 1st pick in the lottery, Toronto doesn’t seem any too happy to have the pick.  They don’t want to pick Bargnani at #1, but they really don’t want to pick anybody else but Bargnani.  You’d think they would be in an enviable position, but it seems like now they have more choices than they want and if they go with their gut, their #1 pick could go down in the history books as one of the worst #1 picks.  Add to that the fact that high picks are more pressured (e.g. Kwame Brown, Darko Milicic) to perform right away, and Toronto seems like they are in a hurry to trade back down to where they wanted to pick to begin with.  Unfortunately, but they also don’t want the deal to go down in history as a poor choice trading down (e.g. Portland trading away the pick that could have gotten them Chris Paul).

Most other teams seem to be in similar boats.

The Boston Celtics realize that they need to get a little more experience, and adding another youngster is hardly the way to do that.  None of their guys are developing very well because none of them have any role models, except for Paul Pierce.

The Chicago Bulls are in the same boat, with too many youngsters, but they just don’t realize it.  And two picks in the top 16 certainly isn’t going to help them get more experienced.  I think they do actually realize it, but, like Toronto, they have a similarly difficult time justifying trading the #2 pick away.

I don’t know what the Portland Trailblazers should really do.  Drafting the ‘stache probably won’t save them, but what they really need to do, cutting and/or trading every player on the team, probably isn’t feasible.  Can they get Adam Morrison with the fourth pick?  Maybe.  Will he sell tickets?  Probably.  Will they be able to save the team?  Not without some significant off-season trading and free agent signings.  I’m glad the Portland fans are riled up about the draft because without significant changes, the current team isn’t going very far.

All the other lottery teams, lumped together, seem like they are collectively uneasy with their picks as well.

Teams selecting players in the top seven want to trade into the 8 to 14 range, perhaps to save themselves from having to pick from the crapshoot at the top.  At least, in the 8 to 14 range or 8 to 20 range, a bad pick would be excusable.  Another obvious reason would be that those teams have been picking in the lottery for the past decade anyway, and the last thing that some of those teams need is another talented 20 year old with no one to teach them.
People in the 8 to 20 range are trying to get into the 1 to 7 range, because those players at the top fit more of what they need.  They also know that those top 7 players are unlikely to drop much below 10 because even though they don’t know who to pick, they have to pick somebody and they won’t dare pick someone too out of the norm (e.g. Charlie Villanueva ended up being a great pick, but Toronto was hounded about it for the whole summer).
The teams beyond 20 know that they really can’t get anything that will help them right away (if ever) and hate to even have a guaranteed first round contract if they really don’t want to pick from among those players to begin with.  Most of those teams have multiple picks beyond 20, which makes it even worse.  Add to that the fact that NEXT year’s draft promises to be a real winner, and you see a bunch of teams hoping to translate their pick into one at the same spot in the next year.  To solve that dilemma they are trying to trade out of the first round, out of this year, or into the lottery.
Pile on all of the big names rumored to be on the trading block, and I think this draft promises to be one of the more noteworthy drafts in recent memory, if only for the trades.

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