By John Rammas/ irammas@eurohoops.net
Signing a contract is one way of showing where you want to be. A trade demand is another one. And Jimmy Butler no longer wants to be in the Timberwolves and he made that clear over the last hours.
Eurohoops picked up on it and presents the five most unexpected trade demands since last summer.
PAUL GEORGE | SF | 1990
Was: Pacers 2010-17
Went: Thunder 2017-today
Trades: Victor Oladipo, Domantas Sabonis
They’d been together since 2010, when they had selected him with the 10th overall pick. But the consecutive failures (back-to-back… -to-back knockouts in the first round of the playoffs) had become even more unbearable because of his longing to play for the Lakers. In the end, in July of 2017, he found himself playing for the Thunder, only to be knocked out in the first round once again, this time in the Western Conference. Even though he was a free agent a summer later, since he still didn’t manage to become a Laker, he returned to Oklahoma with a $136.900.000 contract. Just as long as he’s not playing for the Pacers…
ERIC BLEDSOE | PG | 1989
Was: Suns 2013-17
Went: Bucks 2017-today
Trades: Greg Monroe
The season had just gotten underway. But he hadn’t, as he was posting on Twitter “I don’t wanna be here” on October 22. The tweet couldn’t have been clearer and the first 3 games were his last with the Suns. After he paid a $10.000 fine for that tweet, he paid for the plane tickets bound for Milwaukee and wasn’t seen in Phoenix again. At least as a player for the Suns, since in his first return as an opponent, he made sure he showed (30 points, 6 rebounds, 7 assists, 2 steals and 7 turnovers in the 107-113 win in overtime) what a great time he’s having with the Bucks. The power of social media…
KYRIE IRVING | PG | 1992
Was: Cavaliers 2011-17
Went: Celtics 2017-today
Trades: Isaiah Thomas, Jae Crowder, Ante Zizic
They selected him with the 1st overall pick in 2011 and they’d just completed 6 years together. He had scored the deciding three-pointer in Game 7 against the Warriors in Oakland a year earlier. He had other plans for himself… As LeBron James had overshadowed his role as a leader in the Cavaliers, his decision in July of 2017 to request a trade shocked everyone in Cleveland but also the entire NBA. Despite King James’s efforts to prevent the calamity, a month later he was a player for the Celtics, with whom he reached the conference finals, only to be knocked out by his former team (3-4 by the Cavs). Games of fate…
KAWHI LEONARD | SF | 1991
Was: Spurs 2011-18
Went: Raptors 2018-today
Trades (+ Danny Green): DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl
He had started the season with an injury (right quadriceps), while the Spurs and the rest of the world hadn’t seen him on the court since January 13, after only 9 appearances up to that point. They never saw him again. After several months of unsolved mystery regarding his situation – with Gregg Popovich avoiding to provide a timeframe for his return and Tony Parker saying, on the one hand, that he’s close to coming back and, on the other, characterizing an older injury of his own as worse than his teammate’s, satisfying his request for a trade last July was going to put an end to all of it. The fact that the Raptors included DeMar DeRozan in the trade made it all even more unexpected.