NBA Draft: 5 predictions for a potentially crazy night

The 2018 NBA Draft might be crazy … and, of course, it might not. Here are five bold predictions as we cross our fingers and hope it’s the former.

On average, there seems to be about one trade involving a starting-caliber, veteran player on NBA draft night.

We can hope for that, as well as teams that are good for at least one boneheaded move a year showing up for the party, and players rocketing up the draft order. And there’s the likes of San Antonio, Golden State, Houston, and others who always seem to ace the latter portions of the draft, buying picks from others and creatively filling out their rosters.

Last year, of course, Jimmy Butler was traded from Chicago to Minnesota in exchange for Jimmy Butler, Kris Dunn while the Bulls and Timberwolves also swapped draft selections. Two years ago, Serge Ibaka went from Oklahoma City to Toronto. Three years ago, it was more a smattering of rotation players, such as Mason Plumlee, Tim Hardaway Jr., and Jon Leuer, among others. The year before that, Arron Afflalo changed teams.

While the top pick is all but a sure thing and the No. 2 selection is starting to look that way as well, that doesn’t mean we can’t go out on a few only moderately sturdy limbs in examining what will take place this evening.

Let’s take a stab at a few fun predictions.

The Grizzlies will trade Chandler Parsons and No. 4 draft pick

There have been plenty of rumors swirling regarding the Memphis Grizzlies and their desire to shed the two years and $29 million left on Chandler Parson’s contract.

In order to convince another team to take on the albatross of a deal, the No. 4 pick in the draft would surely need to be involved. The Dallas Mavericks are one of the teams thought to be in the lead for completing this deal; it would of course be a homecoming for Parsons, who played in Dallas prior to signing his massive deal in Memphis.

According to ESPN’s Jonathan Givony, the Grizzlies have been reluctant to complete a trade thus far.

The guess here is that there are plenty of teams prepared with their best offer that they’ll throw Memphis’ way depending on how the first three picks of the draft shake out. If a coveted player drops, whether it’s Luka Doncic, Marvin Bagley III, or Jaren Jackson Jr., there will no doubt be a team lined up as a suitor that is saving its best offer for the last moment.

Late on Wednesday, less than 24 hours prior to the draft, Givony named a list of suitors for the No. 4 pick, all of whom are surely expecting to take Parsons and his contract back.

And while it is a lot of money for a team to willingly take on, Parsons is still a useful role player when healthy — which, of course, isn’t often. He’s a 37.7 percent 3-point shooter but has played just 70 games total over the past two years.

No matter which way you slice it, Parsons still carries a massive weight in the form of his contract, but I’m betting that the Grizzlies are confident enough in their ability to rebuild on the fly that they’d rather have the cap relief than make a pick at No. 4.

The San Antonio Spurs will not trade Kawhi Leonard

Kawhi Leonard has reportedly asked the San Antonio Spurs to trade him, preferably to Los Angeles. That has led to a flood of speculative trade pieces, such as this one from ESPN — to be expected when one of the best four or five players in the NBA hits the trading block.

If the reports are to be believed, Leonard could be introduced in the purple and gold (or, perhaps, the red, white and blue of the Clippers) sometime in the next week. But I’m here to speculate that it simply won’t happen. Or, at least not that quickly.

The Spurs aren’t exactly an organization that makes rash decisions. While they’ve surely known just how discontent Leonard has been for some time, the trade request seems to have been more recent, and I’m not sure that R.C. Buford and Gregg Popovich are going to be forced into something quicker than they’d like.

Moving a superstar of Leonard’s caliber is extremely complicated. The Lakers don’t have enough future picks and likely don’t have the young talent level to send back to the Spurs to make a trade work.

The Boston Celtics would seem to be an intriguing destination, and especially if the Celtics think that they’re going to be in a situation when Kyrie Irving may want to explore free agency in 12 months.

At any rate, it seems as though too much would have to come together quickly for a trade of this magnitude to go down on draft night.

Trae Young’s mock draft slide stops and he gets drafted in the top 5

At one point during last year’s NCAA season, Trae Young was thought of as a surefire top-three or four pick in the draft.

Times have changed, of course, and Young has experienced a pretty significant slide down many of the mock draft boards. He’s typically being mocked between No. 8 and No. 12, and there are plenty of folks that think that his low floor could be enough to push him down even lower if a draft night slide begins.

But he’s also the kind of player that a team could fall in love with. All it takes is one, of course, and there are enough other question marks in the likely top-10 that there could be some surprises. Between Michael Porter Jr.’s injury issues to some apparent skepticism from at least Phoenix and Sacramento when it comes to Luka Doncic’s eventual transition to the NBA that things could change rapidly.

If any teams truly believe that Young could be anything resembling Stephen Curry on offense, then there’s a real chance he goes earlier than anyone is expecting at this point in the process.

Of course, Young wasn’t exactly the same caliber shooter in his single year at the University of Oklahoma as Curry was in his three years at Davidson. He is a fantastic passer, and many of his turnover issues were due to the lack of talent around him and the amount of pressure placed on Young down the stretch of the Sooner’s season.

Don’t be shocked if someone falls in love with the idea of having the latest version of Steph Curry on their squad and he ends up being drafted in the top five picks.

More than 15 trades will take place on draft night

There were 14 trades completed on draft night a year ago, and you’d have to go back to 2013 to find the last time that there were 15 trades.

This year, however, it seems as though there are plenty of teams attempting to do some cap gymnastics ahead of free agency and the summer trading season. Plus, while the draft seems to be short on generational, high-ceiling talent compared to recent years, it also appears to be an extremely deep draft. Potential starters should be drafted into the 20s, and that means that those picks could be hot commodities, both among teams trying to move up into the first round and those that may be willing to move back and pick up assets along the way.

The one thing that could suppress the number of trades is that the smart teams — the Houstons, Golden States, and San Antonios — will swap cash for a pick/player that they desperately want, and you can bet that teams weren’t thrilled to see the Warriors pick up Jordan Bell for cash last year and then have Bell play a key role in the Warriors’ championship run. Competitiveness will take over, and teams may not simply take a couple million in exchange for a pick from a playoff team.

All that said, it seems unlikely that very many of these trades will be major. But that doesn’t matter, a trade is a trade, and it always adds excitement to the night.

One of the Conference Finals teams will trade up in the lottery

Of the four teams that appeared in the conference finals — Houston, Golden State, Cleveland, and Boston — one will trade up in (or into) the lottery during the draft.

Cleveland already holds the No. 8 pick (originally Brooklyn’s pick, conveyed via Boston due to last summer’s Kyrie Irving trade), so if they were to move it would be a trade-up, which seems difficult due to their overall lack of assets, but certainly not impossible. If there’s a prospect that they’ve fallen in love with, combined with what they may see as writing on the wall regarding LeBron James‘ future, they may go all-in on trading up.

Houston does not have a first round pick; theirs was moved to the Clippers in the Chris Paul trade and is now owned by Atlanta. They’re easily the least likely conference finals team to move all the way up the draft order.

Golden State drafts at No. 28, and while it certainly seems unlikely that they’ll move up to the lottery, you never know what they could have up their sleeve — especially with the “don’t trade with the Warriors” talk that’s out there. It almost feels like it would fit their M.O. for them to make an unexpected splash to jump up and take a high-upside talent that they feel fits their team.

Lastly, we have the Boston Celtics, who for the first time in seemingly forever don’t have a high pick (or two). Sitting at No. 27, the Celtics would have to give something of significance up if they’re to vault into the lottery. But remember, with Gordon Hayward returning from injury, Boston has somewhat of a wing surplus with both Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum existing as tantalizing assets.

While it would be a surprise to see the Celtics fork over one of their talented young sure-things for, quite literally, a lottery ticket, front office boss Danny Ainge is always a wild card on draft night and throughout the offseason.

Next: The complete and final 2018 NBA Mock Draft

Here’s hoping that we’re in for a wild ride throughout the evening.