Bojan Bogdanovic is a pretty extreme rarity in the NBA: A player who pays zero attention to trade deadline rumors by virtue of simply not being on social media.
“I don’t read anything, so I don’t know if my name is mentioned or not,” the Utah Jazz forward told reporters after Monday’s shootaround. “… I don’t have Twitter, so I’m really out of [the loop] on every post, whatever they’re writing about me.”
Joe Ingles is an even rarer kind of anomaly: A player who not only admits he hears all the peripheral noise about his future, but also one who actually acknowledges that yes, in fact, it does bother him.
Speaking to the media last Friday after suffering a season-ending ACL tear, the veteran forward conceded that the past few months have provided “a bit of stress,” as the combination of his downturn in play and his expiring contract put him in trade rumors for the first time — “to my knowledge, anyway,” he quickly amended.
Whereas most players choose to claim that they don’t pay any attention, though, Ingles straightforwardly admitted that the rumors burrowed inside his brain.
“It’s probably more on my mind now than it has been before. I’ve got a lot of time to just sit there and think about a lot of things,” he said. “The part of it that’s different is that I never really had to think about it. I’d been pretty confident that I was going to be here through deadlines every other year. There was obviously a lot more talk this year — whether that be the way I was playing, or the contract, or whatever.
“Does it weigh on you? Of course.”
Ingles was indeed traded this week, part of a reported three-way deal with Portland and San Antonio. And with the NBA trade deadline set for Thursday at 1 p.m. MT, the prospect of being moved is weighing on plenty of other players at the moment.
Jordan Clarkson, the Jazz player whose name seems to emerge most often after Ingles’ in trade speculation, is not new to the process.
His rights were traded by the Wizards to the Lakers on the night he was drafted in 2014. At the trade deadline in 2018, he was shipped from the Lakers to Cleveland. In Dec. 2019, the Jazz got him from the Cavs. And now, a little over a year since signing a multi-season deal to stay with in Utah, he could be on the move again.
Asked how he deals with the uncertainty of the deadline, Clarkson suggested that while it remains an unpleasant prospect, it’s at least one he’s familiar with by now.
“S---, I don’t know. It’s kind of been the same for me. I don’t even like to be thinking about it, to be honest with you,” he said. “If I get a call, I’ve been traded before, it’s not something new for me. It is what it is.”
Those are not the words of a player who would be thrilled to be changing situations again.
Coach Quin Snyder said trade rumors are not something that coaches typically address with players except in rare situations, because “it’s presumptuous on either side to say one thing or the other.” He noted that players go in well-aware of the business component to the NBA. And yet, “there’s a personal component to the business.”
Ingles said the considerations of how a trade would impact his family were particularly worrisome to him.
Now that the Aussie is injured and can’t play for a new team, and so wouldn’t even have to bother reporting to whichever franchise might acquire him, it’s a bit easier. But when he was still healthy and active and facing the prospect of leaving Salt Lake City, he had concerns about how it would all work out.
“There’s a lot more [to it] than me just packing up and saying, ‘Thanks guys, I’ll see you on the road,’ or whatever. It’s pulling kids out of school, finding somewhere for [son] Jacob [who has autism] — a lot more goes into it,” Ingles said. “… Renae’s got friends here, and a really good group of people around her now. Not that I would ever say Utah is ‘home,’ but it’s been ‘home’ for us the last eight years.”
He added that it got extremely annoying with wife Renae “getting texts from people, saying, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you’re moving to X, Y, or Z,’ and it’s like, ‘Holy s---. … Nothing’s even happened yet!’”
Mike Conley was traded to the Jazz during the summer of 2019, and famously — or infamously — had trouble acclimating to his new team given all the upheaval of adjusting to a completely different team and having to move his wife and kids across the country. And that was with the benefit of several months of downtime before the season to get used to it.
So he said he empathizes with players dealing with trade rumors, noting that unless you go the Bogey route, they’re pretty much unavoidable.
“We always talk. It’s hard to dodge the madness at this time of the year,” Conley said. “We all know what’s out there.”
In fact, he revealed after the Jazz’s win over the Knicks on Monday night that, in the lead-up to the deadline during his final year in Memphis, he was told by the organization he was going to be moved.
“I was all ready to get traded, and then I was back out there playing. It was at the deadline. Marc Gasol got traded to Toronto. I thought I was getting traded,” Conley recalled. “I was sitting there in my room, and we had a game that day against the Thunder. So I thought, ‘Do I fly back to Memphis? What am I doing?’ And then it was, ‘Well, we’re gonna hold onto you for the rest of the year.’ So I got on the bus and went and played. I kind of went through it a little bit.”
And so, his advice to his teammates is to try, as much as possible, not to dwell on what’s out of their hands.
“I was legitimately told I was gonna be traded, and then I was back the next day. You never know, so just keep playing and block it out,” Conley said. “That day will come and that deadline will pass, and either you will be or won’t be involved in anything. It’s out of your control, so just continue to go to work and enjoy being around the guys and keep giving what you got. Try not to worry as much about it and just stick to your day-to-day.”
Easier said than done.
