Five trades that shook the NBA at the trade deadline

	Th Suns' acquisition of Kevin Johnson in 1988 paid big dividends. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images

The year was 1992. Another NBA trade deadline day was in full swing. My phone rang every five minutes with another rumor, some fantastical and others with an element of truth. A few calls came from people inside the league who had very good information, and others were from my basketball fanatic friends, who had absolutely no information, but plenty of imagination.

I was busy working myself into a frenzy, imagining historically important trades that would tilt the balance of power in the league for years to come. The names of so many huge stars were being bandied about, I was sure big things were in store.

After a long day and night of anticipation, the big announcement came down: New York had acquired aging backup center James Donaldson from Dallas for reserve forward Brian Quinnett.

I had expected the basketball equivalent of crashing cymbals; instead, I got the sound of one hand clapping.

But not every trade deadline day is so uneventful. Sometimes, blockbuster trades do happen, ones that catapult good teams into contention for the championship. Occasionally, a big trade at the deadline signals a philosophical change from an organization -- that they are charging full speed ahead into a rebuilding mode by shipping out all their veterans, or that they are pulling out all the stops to acquire that one player who will provide the missing ingredient needed for championship chemistry.

With the trade deadline looming at 3 p.m. ET Thursday, NBA general managers find themselves at a serious sleep deficit this week. The catch phrase you will hear in the next few days is "due diligence," which means that each GM feels he must talk to every other GM just to see who is available, even though one (or both) GMs may have no intention at all of making a trade.

Too often in recent years, trade deadline deals, including some with a large cast of players, are like Shakespeare's line from Macbeth: "Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Take this four-team, nine-player trade from last year's trade deadline: