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It’s already been an eventful off-season in that seven trades went down before the NBA’s draft, and most of those trades involved players with sizable impacts in fantasy and/or real life. Let’s take a look at each trade and break down the expected ramifications for the affected teams and players. A reminder that you can view updated team depth charts here.

Phoenix trades Shaquille O’Neal to Cleveland for Ben Wallace, Sasha Pavlovic, 2010 second-round pick, and cash
Cleveland moves spare parts for Shaq, pairing two of the most physically dominating players in the game at an uprecedented level. The details need to be worked out – issue No.1 being how Zydrunas Ilgauskas adjusts to life as a reserve – but you can’t blame them for making the move at this price. The Cavs were already in the league’s bottom-third in terms of pace, so it’s not quite the adjustment the Suns had to make – even though I expect LeBron James’ usage to fall slightly, he remains my second overall pick (after Chris Paul). As for Shaq, he’ll get more planned games off this coming season and will dip under 30 minutes, but he should post a similar per-game impact.

The Suns will once again let the reigns go under Alvin Gentry, so you can hand out upgrades across the board. Steve Nash has a few “very good” seasons left in him and you can’t help but love Amar’e Stoudemire if his eye injury heals completely and he doesn’t get traded. Where things get interesting is after the two headliners. As it stands now, there will be plenty of stats to go around for the following group of players: Jason Richardson, Leandro Barbosa, Earl Clark, Jared Dudley, Robin Lopez, Louis Amundson, Goran Dragic, Taylor Griffin, and Sasha Pavlovic. You know J-Rich and Barbosa are ready, but fantasy difference-makers could also emerge from further down the list.

Orlando trades Rafer Alston, Courtney Lee, and Tony Battie to New Jersey for Vince Carter and Ryan Anderson
The Nets have now made a clean break from the past and move forward with a nice young core that includes Devin Harris, Brook Lopez, Lee, Chris Douglas-Roberts, and Terrence Williams, and Yi Jianlian. The Magic are likely hoping that Carter can fill the hole that would be created if Hedo Turkoglu does not return. While you can argue that Carter is a finer individual talent, I don’t believe his positive impact within the Magic gameplan will be as substantial as Hedo’s was. Michael Pietrus is the obvious upgrade at this point, as he’ll likely take over as the starting small forward. One thing to not expect with VC around is Dwight Howard’s offensive touches rising exponentially. Anderson immediately becomes a deep sleeper – his inside/outside game should fit in well in Orlando and he’s the first (and only) big off the bench as it stands.

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Thursday night’s draft was, in a word, eventful. Although we didn’t see quite as many trades in the early going as were expected, there was not a shortage of picks that elicited some kind of reaction when they were announced. The depth charts page has been updated to include drafted players. In the days to follow, I will break down the fantasy prospects of this year’s rookie crop and also the fantasy implications of the major trades leading up to the draft. For now, here’s a sampling of reaction from the draft from all over the web.

• Chad Ford’s team grades

• RealGM draft review

• NBADraft.net pick-by-pick analysis and team grades

• Ball Don’t Lie best and worst dressed and team grades

• Ricky Rubio (not) in Minnesota: Ball Don’t Lie, TrueHoop, and CBSSports

• Dan Wetzel’s winners and losers

• Spurs “never dreamed” they’d get Blair at 37

• Bill Simmons draft diary

Here are some useful links for Draft Day discussion and nostalgia:

Draft Express: mock draft, pre-draft measurements (current and historical), live blog, and a well-done article comparing this year’s PG crop

RealGM: draft home (mock draft, recent news/rumors, live blog)

Yahoo!: draft home (mock draft, prospect rankings, live blog)

NBADraft.net: mock draft

ESPN: internet radio stream

Basketball-Reference.com: draft index and draft slot breakdown

The NBA Draft will take place on Thursday, June 25, giving us some time to put together a consensus mock of our own. We’ll assume everyone agrees that Blake Griffin should/will go first overall and start things off with Memphis’ pick No.2.

You can use the Updated Mock Drafts post for reference, as well as prospect rankings lists and profile info here, here, and here. For our purposes we have to assume that no picks will be traded, although that isn’t likely to be the case. You can find the results of closed polls on the “Polls Archive” page.

Mock Draft Results
1. LAC – Blake Griffin (age 20, PF – Oklahoma)
2. MEM – Hasheem Thabeet (22, C – Connecticut)
3. OKC – James Harden (19, SG – Arizona State)
4. SAC – Ricky Rubio (18, PG – Spain)
5. WAS – Jordan Hill (21, PF – Arizona)
6. MIN – Tyreke Evans (19, SG – Memphis)
7. GSW – Stephen Curry (21, PG – Davidson)
8. NYK – Jonny Flynn (20, PG – Syracuse)

Here are updated mocks from four sources: DraftExpress, NBADraft.net, RealGM, and ESPN. The deadline has passed for players to withdraw their names from consideration, so the player pool you see now is the same as what will be there on draft day in one week (Thursday, June 25). An asterisk (*) denotes the highest projected draft slot for the player.

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After just over two months of voting and spirited discussion, we have arrived at a top 50 consensus keeper rankings list. While I won’t argue that league settings and team scenarios don’t ultimately dictate individual keeper decisions, we’ve compiled a pretty solid list in my estimation.

Take a look at the full list and comment now that we’ve got some hindsight. What stands out? Are Devin Harris and Andrew Bynum ranked too high? Are Andrea Bargnani and Gilbert Arenas ranked too low?

Rankings List
1. LeBron James (age 24, CLE – SF)
2. Chris Paul (24, NOR – PG)
3. Dwyane Wade (27, MIA – PG,SG)
4. Kevin Durant (20, OKC – SG,SF)
5. Danny Granger (25, IND – SG,SF)
6. Dwight Howard (23, ORL – C)
7. Kobe Bryant (30, LAL – SG)
8. Deron Williams (24, UTH – PG)
9. Brandon Roy (24, POR – PG,SG)
10. Al Jefferson (24, MIN – PF,C)
11. Amar’e Stoudemire (26, PHO – PF,C)
12. Chris Bosh (25, TOR – PF,C)
13. Dirk Nowitzki (30, DAL – PF)
14. Devin Harris (26, NJN – PG)
15. Pau Gasol (28, LAL – PF,C) (more…)

I’ve added a new page with updated team depth charts – you can navigate to the page by clicking the “NBA Depth Charts” link in the left pane. Players with options (team/player/early termination) are listed among the team’s positional depth, while free agents (restricted/unrestricted) are listed seperately. I’ll add or remove players or update accordingly as transactions occur on a dynamic basis – if you see something that needs updating, feel free to post at the bottom of the page.

Keep in mind that I’d prefer to wait for actionable items to update the page instead of speculation – news that a player actually filed the paperwork to exercise his option versus a blurb by a beat reporter that it’s assumed to be the case. I’ll delete the comments as updates are made.

• Chris Bosh strongly intimated today that he will not look to sign an extension with the Raptors this summer, but rather stick to his “goal” of testing free agent waters after next season.  It puts the team in quite a bind, as his desire to avoid an extension at this time should serve to effectively limit trade interest. Not a lot of teams are going to be looking to bring him in as a one-year rental. The writer of this piece asked (a few days ago) if it made sense for the team to extend Bosh if they actually could, as he has been at an “almost dead flat numerical plateau” for the past four seasons while consistently missing games, and a new contract would be almost guaranteed to command at least 30 percent of the team’s cap.

• Amar’e Stoudamire says there’s “no doubt” that he’s better than Bosh. He also doesn’t seem overly-interested in a future in Phoenix, but he does “love D.C.” and will be “totally serious” about considering the Knicks in 2010.

• Eddie Jordan plans to install a Princeton-style, read-and-react motion offense in Philadelphia that involves all five players on the floor. That bodes well for fantasy impacts and means Elton Brand, a competent passer, makes sense as the team’s starting center and Samuel Dalembert… not so much. Jordan had this to say of Dalembert: “If he’s in the locker room, we’ll do our best to get him involved in the offense … If he can’t accept that, then there are other alternatives.”

• Ben Wallace is contemplating retirement on the heels of an injury-plagued season and limited effectiveness when he did play. If he were to retire, he’d be walking away from a guaranteed $14 million next season and would bring a whole new dimension to the Cavs’ salary-cap situation.

“I’ve got to sit down and talk with my family and see what I feel,” Wallace said. “It isn’t getting any easier for me. It is tough going out there every night with something hurting and not being able to give the effort you want to give. I love the game and respect the game too much to be going out there half-hearted … I was never into it for the money and if it comes down to it to where I feel I can’t be productive on the floor, I’m not going to come back and try to hold this team hostage because I have another year on this contract. That isn’t me, I’m bigger than that.”

Click the link to the Wallace story and you’ll also find that Anderson Varejao will opt out of the last year of his deal ($6.2M), while Zydrunas Ilgauskas remain a Cav and be paid $11.5 million in salary.

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My thanks to those of you that submitted your top 25 for 2009-10 with head-to-head scoring and the standard nine categories assumed. A total of 55 players were named on the ballots, and only 12 players appeared on every list. Only a few people submitted lists for roto, so we’ll save those rankings for another time – for now, let’s get to the h2h consensus list and then my personal picks.

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