The NBA trade rumors are heating up and according to league experts, teams are getting impatient and would not even wait for the deadline.
It's still two months to the February deadline but some teams would like to position themselves as contenders. However, they still lack a key piece to take the next step as Kevin O' Connor of The Ringer elaborated.
"That attitude could create an interesting trade environment without clearly defined buyers and sellers," O'Connor said, noting that even the worst teams still have a shot to make the playoffs.
One of the interesting positions to watch is power forward. O'Connor stated that the Los Angeles Clippers may be amenable to trading Blake Griffin. He noted that "teams across the league are swapping post-up monsters with skilled shooters and losing virtually no firepower on offense" and that the Clippers are actually 44-27 without Blake.
Griffin is a free agent at the end of the season and the longer the Clippers hold on to him, his trade value diminishes. The same applies for Paul Millsap of the Atlanta Hawks.
The Hawks have been named as a team that lacks direction in this ESPN Insider piece. While they are not a team that should tank (as opposed to the Dallas Mavericks and Miami Heat), Kevin Arnovitz noted that they need to make a decision and that Paul Millsap is on his way out in the summer.
While Millsap and Griffin have similar contract situations, their team situations are poles apart. The Clippers are in the top four of a fiercely competitive Western Conference while the Hawks took sidesteps to a complete rebuild-and may be forced to ply that road this summer.
For this reason, it is more likely that the Atlanta Hawks trade Paul Millsap before the Clippers, specifically Doc Rivers decides to swap Griffin. The Clippers still have a fighting chance to re-sign Griffin. It is rumored that he loves LA and there aren't a lot of situations that could offer a better scenario for him than the Clippers.
The other power forward in this question, Kevin Love, was once the staple of NBA trade rumors. Now, he is possibly the safest among the three. He has seamlessly fit in with the Cleveland Cavaliers and that has led them to be the undisputed Kings of the East, capping off with a win against Golden State on Christmas.
Millsap is probably the one to be traded and Griffin is a long shot. The Cleveland Cavaliers still have a void at center but it's unlikely they use Love as the bait to fill that.