2022 NBA trade deadline buyers guide: Lakers, Nets all-in to win now; Bulls, Suns among more flexible teams

The NBA is overloaded with buyers: Who are they, what are they trying to accomplish and how are they going to do it?

One of the prevailing narratives of the 2022 NBA trade deadline is that the newly formed play-in round is causing a glut of buyers and a dearth of sellers. There might be some truth to this, at least on the seller side, but it tells a fairly incomplete story because it paints all buyers in the same light. What's so fascinating about this year's deadline is that quite a few teams are fighting for many of the same players for very different reasons.

We certainly don't lack the traditional sort of buyers. There's no clear championship favorite, and that is going to empower aggressive general managers. There are plenty of teams that might really be one move away from the title. But what makes the 2022 deadline so interesting are a few trends that have been burbling under the surface of the NBA's roster-building landscape for the past few years.

As the league has drifted more and more toward extending contracts before free agency, player movement is getting increasingly restricted to trades rather than free agency. The pitiful 2022 free-agent class is only going to further that trend. Rebuilding through the draft is also proving more difficult than ever. The flattened lottery odds disincentivizing tanking have played a part in that, but there's more to it. So many teams owe picks that committing to a multiyear draft-based rebuild leaves too much to chance. Even the teams that have their own picks are operating at a disadvantage compared to the few teams that have accumulated historic amounts of draft capital during the trading boom of the past few seasons. Would you like your chances of out-drafting the Thunder when they have three times as many picks?