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Smallwood: Calm down about Sixers trade rumors

    by John Smallwood
    Published 
If you are a Sixers fan whose blood pressure tends to get a little elevated, you should probably avoid reading stories about the team for the next few weeks.
The new NBA season does not begin until July 1 and although it’s been shortened to five days, there is still a moratorium period where no transactions are allowed while the league calculates revenue to set the salary cap for the 2016-17 season.
While there will always be handshake-agreements, free agent signings and trades cannot be finalized until July 7.
In a nutshell, that means all of these trade rumors surrounding the Sixers are exactly that – rumors.
They are fun to discuss, speculate about, praise or be repulsed by – but they are not definitive.
So if you are having a conniption over Thursday’s “hot” trade rumor from Yahoo! Sports that the Sixers were in discussions with the Atlanta Hawks to trade third-year center Nerlens Noel for veteran All-Star point guard Jeff Teague, exhale.
Is it likely that those conversations have taken place? Certainly, and if they have not, they should begin.
The Sixers are coming off a 10-72 season; no player should be immune from trade talk if the right deal can be made.
New Sixers President of Basketball Operations Bryan Colangelo would be derelict in his duties if he did not explore every trade proposal out there if he thinks it can improve the team.
Still, remember that most trade talks don’t actually result in trades being made.
It’s just unnecessary stress to believe that Colangelo is going to blow up all of the “assets” the Sixers have. He has yet to make his first player-personnel transaction.
Right now, it’s just talk, the kind that’s happening all over the league.
Much of it starts with a writer throwing out an idea and then that idea evolving into something that becomes considered as stone-cold fact – especially with the way things work on social media.
I Googled the words "NBA trade rumors" Friday morning and besides Noel to Atlanta, another intriguing one that popped up on several different sites was the Los Angeles Lakers trading the 2016 No. 2 overall pick and D’Angelo Russell (the 2015 No. 2 overall pick) to the Utah Jazz for Gordon Hayward and Derrick Favors.
That would be the last two No. 2 overall picks for two guys who haven’t made the playoffs or an All-Star team since entering the league in 2010.
On the surface, it would seem that the Lakers would be crazy for entertaining an idea like that. They probably would be if they actually had.
The columnist at bleachereport.com who initially presented the Lakers/Jazz swap, however, had explicitly stated that it was one of several hypotheticals he had come up with to “grab your imagination hats.”
That’s different from the Yahoo! story about Noel to the Hawks that cited league sources – even if they were unnamed – as saying the talks had happened.  Inquirer Sixers writer Keith Pompey got confirmation of the talks from one of his sources.
This is the way hot stove talk goes.
Because no one is going to officially say what is going on during possible trade negotiations, the line between legitimate smoke and smokescreens can easily get blurred.
Taken for what they are, trade rumors are fun discussions to go back and forth on.
If you want a definitive answer as to what the Sixers have done in the early trade market, be patient for a few more weeks until the moratorium is lifted and deals can be officially finalized and announced. ​
    JS
    John Smallwood
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