The craziest week of the NBA season

The craziest week of the NBA season

Ashton Mineo, Reporter

This week will go down in the history books as one of the most eventful in NBA history. Thursday’s deadline prompted a plethora of trades, some of which provided star players with new homes. At times it seemed as if you blinked, you missed a trade.  The deadline certainly created a lot of buzz and excitement around the NBA. In addition to the historic deadline, on Tuesday night, LeBron James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to breaking the NBA scoring record that stood for nearly 39 years.

Despite the crazy trades that went on ahead of Thursday’s deadline, the most significant event that went down in the NBA this week was LeBron James becoming the NBA’s all time leading scorer with 38,390 points accumulated over 20 years of dominance. It is something that should be recognized and celebrated all throughout the sports world. LeBron has a few more years of excellence forthcoming and with that being said,  I don’t think that this record will ever be broken again.

There were a lot of big names and celebrities in attendance on Tuesday night. LeBron also had a lot of personal friends and family at the game, including his wife and kids. LeBron needed 36 points to break the record on Tuesday, and he had his mind set to do just that. LeBron finished with 38 points in just three quarters of action. When LeBron scored his 36th point, the game was stopped and a tribute was presented towards LeBron. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was in attendance to complete the proverbial passing of the torch. I was glad that I could experience such a historic moment live and see all of LeBron’s hard work pay off.

The trade deadline was out of this world this season. The first domino to fall was the Nets granting star guard Kyrie Irving’s trade request and shipping him off to the Dallas Mavericks. Pairing newly  acquired Irving with Luka Doncic gives Dallas arguably the best back court in the NBA. The Nets were far from done.

At 1 a.m. on Thursday morning, superstar Kevin Durant was dealt to the Phoenix Suns for Mikal Bridges, Cam Johnson, Jae Crowder, and four first rounds picks. The Nets decided to blow it up, and they got an absolutely massive haul in return. The Suns have decided to go all in and try to capitalize on their championship window. There were 19 total trades this week, making for possibly the most eventful trade deadline in NBA history. In addition to these blockbuster trades, the Lakers and Warriors made a couple of moves to put themselves in a better position to contend, and popular players such as Russell Westbrook, Patrick Beverley, John Wall, Mo Bamba, and D’angelo Russell all found new homes.

This week was absolutely bananas around the association and we still have All Star weekend right around the corner to look forward to. A lot of teams look very different and for many the postseason push is officially on. The NBA has a new all-time leading scorer and he is going to continue to blow that record out of the water. I cannot wait to see how the rest of this crazy season plays out.