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Welcome to the after-party, everyone! You thought the party ended with the trade deadline? Guess again! Actually, it’s just beginning, as now we get into the buyout market. Grab a kazoo and an umbrella drink and have a seat; this fiesta is going to run until early March. The way the buyout market typically works…

The perfect tanking storm has come to the NBA’s shores, and it’s arriving in the face of league scrutiny regarding both gambling and its own competition balance concerns. That was my immediate takeaway from the chaos of this year’s trade deadline. Over the next two months, a race to the bottom will ensue, the likes…

The Bounce Newsletter  | This is The Athletic’s daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox. Let’s make a Super Bowl prediction for this weekend! I’ll go with the Seattle Seahawks winning 23-21, with Kenneth Walker III as the Super Bowl MVP. I also expect to eat 30 wings, a few slices…

The NBA trade deadline was a head rush. Among the swarm of players dealt this week: 1 MVP — James Harden 1 Defensive Player of the Year — Jaren Jackson Jr. 2 All-NBA — Anthony Davis and Harden 6 All-Stars: Nikola Vučević, Kristaps Porziņģis and Darius Garland, plus Harden, Davis and JJJ Oh, four more…

The Chicago Bulls return home Saturday to play the Denver Nuggets, and you get the feeling Nikola Jokić could mess around and get a triple-double while riding around in a Rascal scooter. I think the new-look, small-ball Bulls are going to be in trouble pretty much the rest of the season, and if that happens,…

First, the medal ceremony: The Cleveland Cavaliers were the biggest winners of this trade deadline. They were unable to get out of the second apron, but they shed significant tax penalties and improved their roster with a dynamic, impactful star.  James Harden has his warts, and they’ve all been well-documented. Still, since Giannis Antetokounmpo is…

The trade scene had been quiet. Too quiet. We should have known it wouldn’t stay that way. NBA front offices tend to figure out their environments. For most of this season, conversation around the league pointed to a potentially uneventful trade deadline. The latest collective bargaining agreement is more restrictive than its previous iterations. More…

Jose Alvarado called into practice Thursday at his old high school, Christ the King in Queens, and jokingly told his coach that he would soon return, as the newest member of the Knicks, to beat all current players and former doubters in games of one-on-one. Joe Arbitello was laughing over the phone after the Knicks…

NBA trade deadline week is over, and if that felt like a whirlwind, I can’t argue. But it was more like a weirdwind, too. In so many ways, this was an unorthodox, atypical deadline. After having just one trade the entire season up until the end of January, the NBA cooked up 28 in the…

LOS ANGELES — Just as the Lakers took one forceful step forward, the team took one hobbled step back. On the night Austin Reaves sprinted in the paint past the Philadelphia 76ers defense, Lakers guard Luka Dončić limped off to the back with a hamstring injury — the hope that the Lakers would be healthy…