2021 Trade Deadline: Spurs news, rumors, and opinions
The NBA trade deadline is set for Thursday, March 25 at 2PM CST. The Spurs’ most recent in-season trade was the 2014 blockbuster that sent Nando De Colo to the Toronto Raptors for Austin Daye. To be fair, the perennial championship-contending Spurs of the past two decades never had any real need to dabble in the trade market.
This iteration of the Spurs is different. Gone are the surefire hall-of-famers who defined the franchise for so long. Even with the inevitable retirement of these players, the Spurs have done a great job of staying relevant in the highly-competitive Western Conference while rebuilding through the draft. That said, realistically the Spurs are a fringe playoff team with a number of veterans on expiring deals who could help other teams in their push for the playoffs.
I think it’s pretty safe to say that this trade deadline could be unlike any that Spurs’ fans have seen before…or exactly the same.
What we know
Everything is a rumor in my eyes unless the news comes from PATFO, the player directly, Woj (maybe), or until the trade is official. Keeping that in mind, the only thing we as Spurs fans know for sure is that LaMarcus Aldridge and the Spurs have mutually agreed to part ways.
Aldridge has battled injuries and ineffectiveness for much of the season, which resulted in him being supplanted by Jakob Poeltl in the starting lineup. While this is just speculation on my part, the timing of Aldridge being benched and the news of him and the Spurs agreeing to part ways leads me to believe Aldridge was not in favor of such a change in the rotation.
What we think we know
All things were quiet on the Spurs’ trading front heading into Tuesday morning (not surprising), but then news broke that the Spurs were making the majority of their veterans available for trade.
