The Giannis Trade Drama Has Now Reached The Point Where Jay Williams Is Blatantly Lying On TV That Jaylen Brown Has Unfollowed The Celtics On Social Media
Brian Fluharty. Getty Images.I can't lie, I find myself already EXHAUSTED when it comes to the Giannis Trade nonsense. Not in the sense that I am in denial around the idea that Jaylen Brown has been offered in a potential trade, the math is the math. There are really only 2 ways the Celtics could pull something like this off, and a non-Jaylen type offer feels like it has a 0.0000000001% chance of being real, which means there's only one other way to execute the deal while having the best offer.
My exhaustion comes from the fact that nobody knows a goddamn thing, and in turn we get some of the most insane takes or "reports" you'll ever see as everyone continues to speculate. Just today, we're hearing about how people around the league "think" that Miami "thinks" the Celtics are in the lead.
We're getting reports that Brad Stevens isn't offering Jaylen Brown, despite that not really following much logic considering the salary structure/CBA rules etc barring something absolutely bonkers
We have Heat reporters saying he's going to Boston, and we have Boston reporters saying he won't be a Celtic. Up is down and down is up, and we're at the stage where as a fan you're really only putting stock into the reporting that aligns with what you want to happen. I get it's a huge trade that could potentially alter the league and now that the Finals are over people need shit to talk about, but this entire thing is getting out of hand. Bill Simmons and Marc Stein were pretty adamant that an offer had been made (which I believe), and now guys like Chris Mannix are saying no offer has been made
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When you lay out everything we've been told, none of it really makes sense
And how do you know we're at the height of all of this bullshit? We now also have Jay Williams going on national television and straight-up lying when it comes to Jaylen Brown.
It takes 2.2 seconds to verify something like this, which of course, isn't true
So what happened here? Pretty simple. This was a fake rumor that floated around NBA Twitter yesterday. Chances are, either Jay Williams himself or a producer for that show saw it, and now here we are. It's being spoken about as fact on national television to help spread some sort of narrative that doesn't even exist!
Funny enough, this is largely Jaylen Brown's ENTIRE POINT when he talks about media and narratives while on his stream.
Personally? I cannot imagine we live in a world where the Celtics are going to be able to pull off a potential Giannis trade without including Jaylen. I believe Brad Stevens is the greatest to ever do it, but even that feels like a bit of a stretch. I'm also wary that the new ownership group is going to foot the bill for 3 different players making 34-35% of the cap, something we haven't seen since the Suns tried it. Technically it can be possible to do something like that and add talent with the $20Mish of space the Celtics would have before the 1st apron (since they'd be hard capped if they used the NTP-MLE or $27M TPE), but the whole point of this season was to reset the repeater tax, so that's a bit of an issue unless ownership just says fuck it for another 2 year window to take a swing. Possible? Sure. Likely? I'll have to see it to believe it.
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Add in this new era of social media where Elon is now paying people for engagement, it makes things even worse. Nobody knows shit, but as long as you put out the same teams and names, you'll get engagement and in turn, money. As hard as it is, we really do just have to wait for the official Shams bomb, whenever that happens. Given the Bucks seem to want this sorted ahead of the Draft next week, that could happen at any moment.
Just prepare yourself for an influx of bullshit, because that's what we're dealing with now. Reporters are "reporting" about what people think teams think, talking heads are flat out lying on national tv, the whole thing is exhausting.
Also, are we sure Giannis isn't going to just take the Bucks' extension? There's been absolutely zero reporting about how that conversation is going, by the way. Then again, it's probably just easier to check NBA Twitter and see what goes viral and run with that.