Four Corners: What moves do we want to see made by the NBA's trade deadline?

We’ve already seen Kyle Korver shipped to Cleveland, Serge Ibaka head up north, Lou Williams move to Houston and, in the non-flat-Earth-focused highlight of All-Star Weekend, DeMarcus Cousins jettisoned to the Big Easy. Add in comparatively smaller deals like the ones completed by the Milwaukee Bucks and Charlotte Hornets, and Denver Nuggets and Portland Trail Blazers, and we’ve already seen quite a bit of action ahead of Thursday’s 3 p.m. ET trade deadline.

And yet, our thirst for transactional titillation is not slaked. We demand more.

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The topic for this week’s Four Corners roundtable: What one move would you most like to see happen by the trade deadline? Here are our picks. Let’s hear yours in the comments.

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Take these All-Star wings and learn to fly again

I want Jimmy Butler on the Boston Celtics. Or Paul George. Either one.

Partly because I’ll be watching every playoff game in Boston from the TD Garden. But mostly because it’ll give the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed a legitimate chance to keep LeBron James from embarrassing them.

Arguably the league’s best wing defenders not named Kawhi Leonard, Butler and George are also capable of matching a significant percentage of LeBron’s offensive production. God love Jae Crowder — a willing defender, improved shooter and all-around gritty player — but he can’t quite grab a game by the you-know-whats down the stretch, at least not opposite James.

The Celtics would have to part ways with at least one of their two coveted Brooklyn picks, Crowder and a third piece, whether it be one of their many later first-round picks or one of their plethora of guards (Avery Bradley, Marcus Smart or Terry Rozier). But Boston general manager/president of basketball operations Danny Ainge openly admits he’s stockpiled his assets to acquire star talents, and Butler or George certainly qualify.

George is the superior shooter and might fit more seamlessly into an offense that features Isaiah Thomas so prominently, but those two would both be due max paydays in 2018. Butler, on the other hand, is signed to an affordable deal through 2019. Both George and Butler will finish the season at age 27, which is why the Pacers and Bulls probably won’t be trading them.

Sure, Thomas, Butler or George and Al Horford might be a poor man’s Kyrie Irving, LeBron and Kevin Love, but Love’s injury and Boston’s depth make a playoff matchup more interesting. And in an Eastern Conference that’s been all but decided in LeBron’s favor for the past six seasons, that side of the bracket could use a little intrigue. It’s the same reason I wouldn’t have minded seeing Paul Millsap in Toronto instead of Ibaka, and would’ve liked to see the Washington Wizards add Lou Williams to bolster their bench. Selfishly, though, my commute to Boston is an easier one. — Ben Rohrbach

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Four-team chaos, two times over

I do not care for the trade deadline. In years past, it was a frustrating distraction placed during an otherwise sensible week’s worth of games following the All-Star break. Now, with the league’s decision to pass on scheduling games for four days after the All-Star Game, the emphasis on the league’s transaction cutoff has moved on to greater, ever more annoying heights.

If I’m not happy, working for nearly a week with no actual games to watch, then the rest of the league should have to share in my frustration. This is why I hand the NBA a pair of deals that absolutely nobody will like.

Up first:

The New York Knicks send Brandon Jennings to the Milwaukee Bucks, who will ship Jabari Parker to the Golden State Warriors. The Knicks will also deal Lance Thomas to the Warriors, who will ship Andre Iguodala to the Denver Nuggets. The Nuggets will send Danilo Gallinari to the Knicks.

In this deal, Gallinari will be wrested from his role as the dutiful do-anything forward for the playoff-obsessed Nuggets, replaced by the more streamlined Iguodala — a Nugget during the 2012-13 season, to great acclaim. Gallinari, who was cast aside by New York back in 2011 in the Carmelo Anthony deal, probably won’t be keen on the move back to his old team, and neither will Jennings — the big city-loving Los Angeles native fled Milwaukee as a free agent in a sign-and-trade back in 2013.

The Warriors won’t receive any immediate relief from Parker, but the injured forward could work his way into an Iguodala replacement during his rehab stints in a year where the Warriors don’t really need to rely on an Iguodala-type (even though LeBron looms in the NBA Finals) with Kevin Durant around. Meanwhile, the W’s get a Dre holdover in Thomas, the Bucks get another ball-handler in Jennings, and New York takes in a triangle-ready sponge of a contributor in Gallinari.

We’re not through yet. Here’s our second transaction:

The Phoenix Suns send Brandon Knight to the Detroit Pistons. The Knicks acquire Ricky Rubio, Nikola Pekovic and Jon Leuer. The Minnesota Timberwolves receive Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah. The Suns, for their troubles, acquire Nemanja Bjelica.

Knight, the former Piston, will try to work his way back into the league’s good graces in a second turn with the team that drafted him back in 2011. Minnesota probably still thinks it has a good thing going in “Derrick Rose and Joakim Noah,” and while Rose will be happy to get out of a big city and Noah might possibly be slightly chuffed to meet coach Tom Thibodeau again, that charmed reunion will last for but a week until the old frustrations (with Noah and Rose on their last legs, due partially to Thibodeau’s stylings as their coach in Chicago) re-emerge.

The Knicks make out here in losing Noah’s contract while acquiring Leuer and Rubio (alongside Pekovic’s contract). The Suns take in a solid piece in Bjelica just for contributing to the misery.

For more tales of deadening woe, be sure to tune in again around the time of June’s NBA draft. With Magic Johnson now running the Lakers …

… we’ll have plenty to create. — Kelly Dwyer

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Ricky Rubio for Derrick Rose, because New York needs fun

This rumor was reported by ESPN’s Ian Begley on Tuesday, and I have little faith that it will become a real trade. Phil Jackson and the Knicks are prone to questionable decisions, but dealing Rose’s massive $21.3 million expiring contract for Rubio and his two remaining seasons would seem to make no sense for a lottery team with an outside chance of drafting a high-potential point guard in June. The deal would be fine for the Wolves, who seem perfectly ready to make Kris Dunn the full-time starter, but one side doesn’t make a trade.

Whatever. I don’t care. Some trades should happen just because they’d be fun.

For the Wolves, trading Rubio would allow for a clean break with the lost dreams of the Kevin Love era and allow Tom Thibodeau to reshape the franchise in his image. It’s hard to imagine Rose lasting more than a few months in Minnesota, but a reunion with Thibs and perhaps a demotion to the bench could help him to remake his career as a shoot-whenever sixth man.

But this hypothetical trade is really about Rubio, who would be an incredibly enjoyable Knick.

That doesn’t mean he’d be a transformative presence. The Knicks could use Rubio’s willingness to pass on a team that has been troubled by shot selection and balance issues all year, but his lack of a jumper won’t fix the spacing problems and backward offensive ideas most responsible for New York’s offensive inconsistencies. Similarly, his somehow still-underrated defense isn’t going to change the Knicks’ woes at that end, when point guards can only do so much in this era.

The big positive of Rubio on the Knicks would be altogether less statistically tangible. Simply put, this team has given fans little reason to cheer for several seasons, a real shame considering how Madison Square Garden fans warm to players who give them the slightest reason to celebrate. Even Rubio’s biggest detractors concede that he’s fun — he throws great passes, works hard, and generally just makes plays that other players don’t think to make. Knicks fans would eat him up despite (or maybe sometimes because of) his obvious deficiencies.

Worry about building a contender later. For now, let’s just make the Knicks watchable. — Eric Freeman

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Let us help John Wall and Bradley Beal pursue greatness

The Washington Wizards have hit their stride, winning 21 of their last 26 games to vault into the No. 3 spot in the Eastern Conference. They’ve got an All-Star point guard in playmaking magician John Wall, a probably-should-have-been-All-Star in sniper shooting guard Bradley Beal, and a dynamite starting five featuring Otto Porter, Marcin Gortat and Markieff Morris that has outscored opponents by 13 points per 100 possessions this season, and by a stellar 17.3 points-per-100 since Christmas.

The only problem, one month removed from pushing the defending NBA champion Cleveland Cavaliers to the limit: that starting five has been far and away the most frequently used unit in the league this season, logging 965 minutes together, nearly 100 more than the No. 2 lineup (the Timberwolves’ starters with the now-lost-for-the-season Zach LaVine).

On one hand, that speaks to both how effective Scott Brooks’ starters have been, and how healthy they’ve remained over the first two-thirds of the season. On the other, it lays bare just how ineffective the Wizards’ reserves have been, as Brooks has tightened up his rotation to go eight (or maybe nine) deep most nights, and leaned on young swingman Kelly Oubre Jr. to bring energy, scoring and shooting as his primary wing off the pine.

The hope in D.C. is that the Wizards’ primary free-agent acquisition, center Ian Mahinmi, will start picking up steam after finally making his season debut following nearly four months on the shelf rehabilitating from surgery to repair a torn meniscus in his left knee. Even if the big Frenchman is able to give Washington a frontcourt boost, though, the Wizards could still use some versatility and punch on the wing. So let’s get them some.

The Wizards also throw in their lottery-protected 2017 first-round pick (kind of a pointless protection, given their position in the East, but still).

ESPN’s Chris Haynes reported in December that the Wizards were kicking the tires on Will Barton. The Baltimore native finished fourth in Sixth Man of the Year voting last season, and has turned in another strong campaign this year, averaging 13.9 points, 4.7 rebounds and 3.4 assists in 29.1 minutes per game for Denver while shooting a career-best 44.6 percent from the field and 38.1 percent from 3-point range.

ESPN’s Zach Lowe reported Tuesday that the Nuggets are “seeking a lottery-protected first-round pick and swap rights on another pick” for veteran forward Wilson Chandler, who has been productive this season — 15.6 points, 6.7 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 30.9 minutes per game — but who has made rumblings about wanting a change of scenery and in whose minutes Denver has been outscored by 3.1 points per 100 possessions since the return of Nikola Jokic to the starting lineup on Dec. 15, compared to a +4.3-per-100 net rating in more than 600 minutes with Chandler on the bench over that span. Maybe Wizards personnel chief Ernie Grunfeld’s able to avoid offering the second part of that pick proposal through the inclusion of another young asset who’d fit in with Denver’s developing high-energy core.

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Given the emergence of Jokic as a foundational star, the bounty of enticing young guards and wings on Denver’s roster, and the presence of Kenneth Faried and Danilo Gallinari in the frontcourt mix, maybe Nuggets general manager Tim Connolly believes his squad’s got the goods to win the eighth seed without Chandler or Barton. With this deal, he recoups the first-round pick the Nuggets sent to Portland to pay Jusuf Nurkic’s freight in the deal that brought back Mason Plumlee, while also getting another intriguing wing in Oubre, who is just 21 years old and has taken strides in his second season in D.C. Denver has to eat the remaining three years and $19.9 million of what looks like a bummerific deal for Andrew Nicholson, but gets two low-cost assets and Trey Burke’s expiring contract (he’s got a $4.59 million qualifying offer for next season that the Nuggets can decline) to soften the blow.

It hurts the Wiz to give up a first-rounder and a 21-year-old with potential, but in return, they get a significant infusion of new talent for their reserve corps, insurance against an injury to one of their starters, and two players who can handle a variety of different roles and assignments on the floor.

Chandler can slot in comfortably slot in at the three or four spots alongside just about any Washington big on either end of the floor. Barton’s a capable supplementary playmaker who’s shown in the past he can run a team for stretches, can wreak havoc in transition, can slash to the rim and can knock down outside shots. They provide an instant upgrade over the perimeter talent in Washington’s reserve corps, helping stabilize a clear area of weakness, while also introducing a wild-card element of potential combustion off the bench that could help tilt a postseason game, or even series, in Washington’s favor.

Smaller variations on the theme would also work — say, Barton for a protected first, Burke’s expiring and Nicholson’s contract, or Chandler for the first, Oubre and Nicholson — if neither side has an appetite for quite as big a deal. Whichever formulation you prefer, it seems like there’s a match to be made here. The Wiz need help on the wing to stand a serious chance of pushing for the Eastern finals, and the Nuggets don’t appear to need all the veteran help they’ve got to keep up their charge for the No. 8 spot while still setting themselves up for the future. So let’s make a deal. — Dan Devine

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