Power Rankings: When GMs bet on their teams, we all hit jackpot

Updated Feb. 23

In the endless coast-to-coast analysis of the trade-deadline flurry last week, it seems perhaps the biggest winners of all have consistently been omitted from the discussion.

You.

And me.

Tracy McGrady might not even be in New York when the Knicks are fighting to win their gamble. (Getty Images)

And all NBA fans. Heck, all fans in all professional sports.

You see, Feb. 18, 2010, will go down in history as an industry-changing day thanks to two forward-thinking men -- Daryl Morey and John Hammond.

These general managers bet on their teams last Thursday. Or maybe it was they bet against their trade partners. Either way, what they accomplished in the somewhat fine print of seemingly ordinary trades was to change the way the game -- or games, when you consider other sports -- will be played in future years.

It definitely will impact the way the Knicks play next season, you can rest assured of that.

As part of the three-team trade that sent Tracy McGrady to New York, Morey got the star-gazing Knicks to agree to exchange next year's first-round picks, should the Knicks finish below the Rockets in the standings and not land the No. 1 overall selection.

Think about that for a second. Morey not only strengthened his team moving forward by acquiring a couple of Knicks bench players -- Jared Jeffries and Jordan Hill -- and New York's first-round pick in 2012, he also created a season-long head-to-head for next season with one of this year's weakest clubs.

Even if the Rockets fail to make the playoffs 14 months from now, that'll be OK as long as the Knicks flop even worse in the East.

If nothing else, what this does is force the Knicks to do something next season they haven't done in a couple of years: Try to win. They hope to do that with LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, or perhaps Ray Allen and Chris Bosh.

But if not ... there's no turning back. They can't afford a poor season in 2010-11, because that will mean their reconstruction leader, Donnie Walsh, will have lost his bet with Morey. And the stakes are huge.

Clearly, the Rockets don't think James is going to New York this summer. Maybe not Wade or Bosh, either. And if they don't, Morey will have taken advantage of Walsh's optimism to produce another Yao Ming-type draft choice.

Hammond, the Bucks' GM, attached the same stipulation to his trade with the Bulls. Except the race for the better record is this season.

The logic is the same: With the Bulls (like the Knicks) selling assets in an attempt to bolster their chances this summer, the Bucks believe the acquisition of John Salmons will push them up in the standings as much as it will pull the Bulls down.

They were separated by just 3½ games at the time of the deal. If the Bucks (27-28) catch the Bulls (29-27) by season's end, it will mean flip-flopping draft positions -- an added bonus to a deal in which Milwaukee already believes it is getting the better end.

This isn't the first time teams have worked a potential exchange of picks into a trade. It's just that, particularly in the case of the Rockets-Knicks deal, it never has had such a monstrous potential impact.

In fact, you have to wonder if David Stern even likes such deals. It is, after all, glorified betting -- I think my team will win more games than yours, and I'm willing to stake my first-round pick on it.

Given the tradition, in all sports, of teams having bloated expectations on the eve of a season, you would think more GMs would have attempted to bet against a rival by offering a pick swap. Maybe now, enlightened by Morey and Hammond, they will.

If I were Stern, I would try to capitalize on this new type of incentive. I would look at the concept as a means of getting rid of the NBA Draft Lottery.

Imagine if, before each season, the previous year's 14 lottery teams drew names out of a hat, creating seven pairs. Each, by rule, had to agree to swap picks with its created partner if it finished with a worse record.

Suddenly, the race at the bottom of the standings would be as meaningful as the one at the top, and for all the right reasons.

Stern's worst fear -- teams going into a Nets-like nosedive in order to get the best odds at the grossly unfair lottery -- would be gone. If, say, New Jersey were partnered with the Timberwolves, you would have two teams waging a playoff-type battle for the better record, rather than seeing who could do worse.

Bet on your team. It's going to be the rage in sports in the next decade, something fans are going to love. You heard it here first.

Three consecutive losses by Cleveland have ... nope, can't do it. The Lakers' narrow defeat Thursday at the hands of the Celtics prevents them from overtaking the slumping Cavaliers in my weekly CBSSports.com NBA Power Rankings.

This week, I give each team a thumbs-up or thumbs-down for its activity (or lack thereof) at the trade deadline.