Wild NBA Trade Deadline Featured Many, Many Second-Round Picks

The NBA trade deadline was at 3 p.m. ET on Thursday and it was a freaking whirlwind. There were nearly 20 trades in the 36 hours leading up to the deadline. Almost every team in the league was involved in a transaction of some type. It was the most active trade deadline in years and one that will have both short- and long-term ramifications for the entire league.

One weird quirk about this deadline that allowed for so many transactions to occur is that everybody was throwing around second-round picks with great enthusiasm. So many second-round picks that it stands out. Looking at the full list of transactions, it appears that something like 30 second-round picks were traded just today. Over the course of the last few days, it seems to be over 50 second-round picks.

Fifty!

NBA teams usually do not value second-round picks very much, even in great quantities, because it is so hard to find even a passable player in the second round of the draft. For every Draymond Green-type player that comes out of the second round and turns out good there are thousands of players whose names you've never heard of. Teams will still use the picks if they have them because ultimately drafting prospects is a bit of a crapshoot anyway and the more darts to throw at the dartboard the better. But no front office perceives second-round picks as valuable in trade discussions.

Which is why it's so weird this year! Teams were throwing around, like, five second-round picks to get a guy like Jae Crowder. It's almost as if the sellers at the deadline accepted they weren't going to get any first-round picks for their players so they demanded an insane amount of second-round picks instead.

A very unusual deadline for all sorts of reasons.