DeMarcus vs. Nerlens: Did Kings or Sixers make worse trade?

As you might have heard, two blue-chip Kentucky big men were traded in the last week, in deals that were largely unsatisfying to most NBA fans - particularly those from Sacramento and Philadelphia. At the end of All-Star Sunday, the Kings traded DeMarcus Cousins for Buddy Hield, Tyreke Evans, Langston Galloway, a top-three protected first-round pick, and and a Philly-owed 2017 second-rounder, and then three days later, the Sixers traded Nerlens Noel for Justin Anderson, Andrew Bogut, and an impossibly protected 2018 first-rounder. The trades have left a whole lot of questions for a puzzled NBA fanbase - namely, why? - with few immediate answers on the horizon.

Here's one of those questions: Which one of these trades was worse? Obviously the dimensions of the two trades are slightly different, but at their core, both of them saw a beloved, if occasionally controversial player of considerable two-way upside dealt seemingly in a panic - largely due to a number of economic and cultural factors - for returns not exactly commiserate with the talents of the players discarded.

Which one of the deals was the more unconscionable? Let's break it down.

Best Player Lost

The shortest debate to be had here, of course. Noel is a defensively brilliant big man with an offensive game in the midst of a major third-year leap. He still has considerable upside to reach, but even that ceiling likely falls short of what Cousins - easily the most offensively prodigious big man in the game right now, and an able-when-willing defensive player - already is. DeMarcus is one of the dozen or so best players in the game, Nerlens isn't even the best big man on his own team. No point discussing this any further.

Major Advantage: Kings

Worst Best Asset

Assuming the Pelicans don't crash into the top 10 of the draft this year (they won't) and that the Mavericks don't miraculously climb their way out of their first-rounder's top-18 protection (they definitely won't), the best assets going back to the home teams on this one are probably lottery-pick shooting guard Hield and talented-but-buried swingman Anderson. Pick your poison between these two at the moment - Hield has the higher pedigree, Anderson has been slightly more productive in his limited PT, both are pretty old for their NBA age - but at least Kings owner Vivek Ranadive thinks Hield has all-world potential. If we find out tomorrow that Bryan Colangelo believes Anderson is the next Tracy McGrady, then we may have to readjust, but for now ...

Slight Advantage: 76ers

Worst Timing

The Cousins trade is perplexing because it happened a full year-and-a-half before he became an unrestricted free agent - which in theory should be when you move a player to get optimal return, only if this was the optimal return, it's hard to imagine why it was worth dealing him at all. The Noel trade was puzzling because the Sixers could've re-signed him as a restricted free agent this summer - and because he and Joel Embiid only ever shared eight minutes together on the court, not nearly enough time to determine if or how the two could've potentially thrived alongside one another. However, the edge has to go to the Kings trade because at least the Sixers waited until Wednesday, while the Kings trade was a buzzer-beater hoisted three days before the shot clock expired.

Advantage: Kings

Worst Behind-the-Scenes Maneuvering

Both franchises undoubtedly played themselves with this trade - Vlade Divac outright admitted that the Kings had lost out on a superior offer a couple days earlier to the one they ended up accepting, while reports on the Sixers' side say they passed on a better package from Boston for Noel than the Dallas leftovers plate they ended up getting. But at least the Kings' dealings only ever involved Boogie and took place over the course of one night's incredulous escalation. The Sixers attempted a bait-and-switch for weeks with alleged fellow big-man prospect (and real-life dud) Jahlil Okafor, which has now embarrassingly blown up in the franchise's faces as the team instead traded Noel while Okafor - who, lest we forget, actually sat out two games with a trade presumed imminent - continues to lie in his bed will his pillow over his head, just hoping someone texts when it's all over.

Major advantage: Sixers

Worse Tanking Position

The hidden factor in all this is, of course, that both teams likely hope to be made worse enough by this trade to fall all the way to the top of this historic draft - something that should be much easier for both squads, with the safety net behind Embiid (now out the next four games, by the way) pulled without Noel, and with the Kings only really having the one offensive hub to begin with. The Kings' win-loss will undoubtedly be affected more in the long- and medium-term by their deal, and they'll almost certainly tank their way out of owing the Bulls their top-10-protected 2017 first-rounder - but then again, slipping too far might not do them much good, since the pickswap rights from the now-ancient Nik Stauskas deal means if they out-tank the Sixers, they'll have to hand the pick over to them on draft night. Comes out about a draw here.

Advantage: Even

More Insulting Justification for Deal

For the Sixers, the insult here is a half-implied one, to fans' general intelligence: The idea that the Sixers had to make a deal for one of Noel or Okafor to clear up their big-man glut, and if they couldn't trade Jahlil for the return they sought, that meant it was incumbent on them to trade Noel instead. In reality, the problem was an irrelevant one: Okafor was a defensive sinkhole whose offensive contributions did not compensate for his defensive shortcomings - and his bench-riding was just as much due to him not earning NBA minutes as it was to the positional logjam ahead of him - while Noel was an ideal backup center who functioned as the ideal handicap to Embiid for his not-infrequent absences. The suggestion that Okafor's presence made Nerlens even slightly redundant is beyond ridiculous.

All that said, the insult in the Kings trade was a more malicious one, and one more directly applied to Cousins himself: Divac, partly explicating the trade with the assertion that "character matters," when the team had trumpeted Boogie's charity efforts over the years (and still had Darren Collison and Matt Barnes on the roster). Hard to compete with that.

Advantage: Kings

Greater General Franchise Dysfunction

The Sixers are certainly creeping up the rankings here, as THEIR misleading info about the injury situations of Embiid and Ben Simmons has alienated media, fans, and even the players themselves, while the Okafor-Noel mess dragged out far longer than it should have and had close to the worst resolution possible. But, of course, there's no competing with Sactown here, who still owes the Sixers not only a pickswap this year but an unprotected first-rounder in 2019, whose best player at the moment is likely Collison, who still had to trade for a high-upside shooting guard after drafting high-upside shooting guards in three of the last six drafts, and who still hasn't made the playoffs since 2006. The Kangz stay the Kangz.

Advantage: Kings

WORSE TRADE: COUSINS TO NEW ORLEANS, 5-3