Skip to content Skip to footer

NBA Twitter comes for everyone after wild trade deadline day moves

Oh man.

The NBA trade deadline came and went today at 3 pm and after a quiet couple days leading up to the deadline, at about noon today everything went wild, starting with the Cavs trading Isaiah Thomas and Channing Frye to the Lakers for Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr.

The Cavs have struggled mightily of late and Isaiah Thomas was talking rather spicily about the team’s struggles, openly calling out head coach Ty Lue and questioning the passion of his teammates.

Isaiah Thomas was the cornerstone of this summer’s Kyrie Irving trade. In the end, IT only played 15 games for the Cavs and may have cost himself millions of dollars when his contract is up this summer. This is a dude who averaged over 29 points a game last season and now finds himself on the bench behind a rookie for a 22-win team.

As a Celtics fan, I loved what IT did for Boston and when he was traded away for Kyrie this summer I was pretty conflicted. I also could not have imagined how disastrously it would play out in Cleveland.

Regardless, after dumping IT, the Cavaliers traded… their entire team.

In the end, the Cavs got rid of some serious deadwood in Rose, IT, Frye, Shumpert, Crowder, and Dwyane Wade and got young, athletic, multi-positional players in Clarkson, Hood, and Nance. They also got George Hill, so there’s that.

As ESPN’s Brian Windhorst pointed out, the Cavs also laid the groundwork for the Lakers to land LeBron in free agency in the summer.

Besides the Cavs doing all the stuff, there weren’t many other notable trades. The Knicks did a thing, other teams did things, but when the players involved are Emmanuel Mudiay, Noah Vonleh, and Milovan Rakovic, well… yeah.

As we all know, the real narrative in the NBA comes from Basketball Twitter, the greatest collection of minds and creativity across the modern zeitgeist. Without further ado, I present to you the greatest tweets of NBA trade deadline day.

“LeBron handing over IT to Magic”

https://twitter.com/MikeOxafloppin2/status/961656321287380992


This SI tribute video to IT’s time in Cleveland is… I’m conflicted about it.


Bomani Jones brings up the lack of bag in IT’s future

NBA Twitter rallied around their patron saint J.R. Smith during the Cavs’ yard sale. The J.R. content did not disappoint.

https://twitter.com/ACNeenan/status/961663583913480193


You knew the J.R. confused face was coming out


But in the end, J.R. avoided being traded


Obviously the LeBron content was in full force as well.

https://twitter.com/World_Wide_Wob/status/961666981232611328


It’ll be kind of nice to see D Wade in Miami again

https://twitter.com/World_Wide_Wob/status/961688119400714251


As for Kyrie…

https://twitter.com/netw3rk/status/961657391820423169


Agreed, Joel.

Adrian Wojnarowski, the most plugged-in figure in NBA media, is always first to every breaking story in the league and NBA Twitter showed their appreciation.


Even players watching Woj’s timeline


Some pointed out Woj’s superiority to other journalists, including The Vertical’s Shams Charania

As our planet slowly melts away and our country descends into chaos, at least we have the NBA to entertain us.