Unpossiblog: NBA Trade Deadline Approaching

Only Pat Riley knows where Jason Williams will be going. (credit ESPN.com)

I hope everyone had a great Christmas. We saw some great games, with the Cavs prevailing over the Heat, the Lakers over the Suns, and the Blazers winning their 11th(!) in a row by beating Seattle. The next time each of these teams play each other they could look very different, as the Cavs, Lakers, and Heat are involved in just about all the trade stories out there.

There is no question that the trade rumors in the NBA are really starting to heat up. Within the last few days names like Jason Williams, Ben Wallace, Pau Gasol, Jason Kidd, Kobe Bryant, Andre Miller, Mike Miller, and Larry Hughes have surfaced (or re-surfaced) as players that could potentially be on the move. That's a lot of big names, and the list is going to continue to grow as we get closer and closer to the February trade deadline.

Unfortunately, a lot of the rumors are just that...rumors. Most start off as someone coming up with an idea and posting it somewhere online, or on a sports radio show, or some other public forum. From there the information gets passed along from one source to another, and before you know it you have a major trade rumor that major media sources are talking about ad nauseum.

And what's wrong with that? After all, trades are fun. Sports radio stations will spend hours upon hours dissecting trades, newspapers will write about them, fans will be abuzz waiting for the official word that their team just landed some extra help.

The problem is that the forgotten piece to the puzzle is the players themselves. What effect do trade rumors have on the players? The standard response from NBA players when their name comes up in a trade rumor goes something like this: "I love it in (insert city here). I don't ever want to leave. At the same time though, this is a business, and if something happens, it happens."

It's a very safe and smart response, after all. The player can't risk alienating teammates and fans by saying that he wants to leave, nor can he lower his trade value to his own team by saying that he would refuse to go. But is this what they really think?

Miami Heat guard Jason Williams, never one hold back, colorfully shed some light on the thoughts of the player when their name comes up in a trade.

"The thing about it is how it affects your family... We're like some high-paid prostitutes anyway in this league," he said. "They just use and get rid of us whenever they want."

That certainly doesn't sound like a guy who just sees the game as a business with no emotional attachment. And he brings up a great point: most of these guys have families. Every time they are traded their family is uprooted and moved to a new city. Every time a trade rumor comes up their kids have to go to school knowing that every day they could be seeing their classmates for the last time. The only alternative is for the player to move to his new destination and leave his family behind, which means they have to spend 6 months out of the year away from their wives and children. Neither option is very appealing.

Yes, there are millions of people in the country who have it much rougher than NBA players do. For example, men and women in the armed forces go a lot longer without seeing their families, yet somehow they manage to get by.

Still, it's a bit unsettling that so many people today look at the approaching trade deadline as a positive thing, when so many players see it in such a negative light. In some situations, like Jason Williams, the player doesn't even feel like a part of their team. They are just a contract to be moved when the right deal comes along. Is that how a team wants its starting point guard to feel?

So while fans scream and cry for their least favorite player to be shipped out, don't forget that these players are human beings. Alonzo Mourning showed us that even though these guys can do super-human things on the court, they are still just as vulnerable as everyone else.

And for those fans aching for their team to improve, sometimes having the assurance that their jobs are secure and they won't be traded can produce better players and a better team than a trade can. Just look at the Chicago Bulls and what the Kobe rumors did to them. With just about every Bulls player involved in the deal at some point, the Bulls couldn't focus and have started the season looking like one of the leagues biggest disappointments. A big part of this game is chemistry. Everyone sees what Boston did and thinks "Why not us?", but not every team is going to land a KG-type player at the deadline. Even fewer teams will actually have the chemistry that Boston has shown after making a major trade.

So, while to the fans the grass is always greener on the other side, try not to be too disappointed if your favorite team stands pat this season. Sometimes the best move for all parties involved (fans included) is no move at all.