New Celtics / Durant rumor

[Celtics2021]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

[Donoghus]

[Celtics2021]

If Adam Silver wants to crack down on tampering, he should investigate and at least fine Brooklyn for leaking this.  You can’t talk about players on other teams, and using backchannel “anonymous” sources to do so should be as off-limits as doing it in a press conference.

[Roy H.]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

[bdm860]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synonymous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

[Roy H.]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synomous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

Can you give me a real-world example of this in your business experience?

[Celtics2021]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synomous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

Can you give me a real-world example of this in your business experience?

For me personally it's tough to give an example, because they are confidential negotiations, and as they are large, they are newsworthy.  But I'll speak in general terms:

In these type of deals, it's not just about a dollar amount, it's also about other terms of the deal.  And in constructive negotiations, when one side makes an offer that the other doesn't like, rather than just saying "no", they'll say, in broad, non-specific terms, the problem with the offer.  And then the side making the offer will say "hypothetically, does X address your need?"  And if it does, maybe X will be what happens in the deal.  But maybe Y will be what happens, where Y is what grew out of more in-depth thinking about the issue and works for both sides, or maybe X won't be addressed directly at all, and either a concession in a different part of the deal will be found, or a deal won't happen.

In an abbreviated mock conversation between the Celtics and the Nets, it goes like this:

Celtics offer Al Horford, Derrick White, and draft picks.
Nets: That's not going to work.  We need an All-Star, a starter, and draft compensation/young players
Celtics: So Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a 1st?
Nets: No, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Grant Williams, and three firsts.

Did the Celtics make a committable offer in the above scenario?  I don't think so.  If the Nets said yes, would they have thought about it long and hard, and maybe made the deal?  Sure.

[bdm860]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synomous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

Can you give me a real-world example of this in your business experience?

I'm in Corporate Finance dealing mostly with internal business units (so not really comparable at all to how GMs do deal, ha!), but here's a recent example with an external client (though purposely vague for anonymity):

One of my roles is modeling the financials on deals that Sales brings into our company.  We want to charge $3m upfront setup, $500k per year in annual support with a minimum 5 year commitment for one of our services.  Customer (who you've definitely heard of) is only willing to pay $2m upfront but will pay $700k per year for the service, and only wants to agree to a 2 year commitment.

My team (Finance), the Sales Team, and the Product Team kick around ways to compromise.  What if we strip out this piece of the service?  What if we do a 2 year contract with the right to renew for 3 more years at the same price?  What if they pay the upfront price in 2 installments?

We agree on a plan of action and then do the analysis to see if it actually works.  If it does, Sales then goes back to the client to see if they agree, while I go to the CFO and CPO to see if they agree.  Sometimes both sides come back agreeing, sometimes only one, and other times none. and if they don't agree but we're close we go back to brainstorming.  But everyone involved understands nothing is official until the contract is signed.

One thing that definitely does not happen is we don't tell the client the results of our internal analysis (something Moranis mockingly mentioned).  We just say the deal we looked into won't work out for us (even if the financials did work, but big bosses didn't like it for other reasons).

Basically everything I've ever done in Corporate Finance is done this way (Budget, Long Term Plan, Supply Chain, M&A, Sales, etc.).  Brainstorm, analysis, and nothing is official until both sides sign off.

[Sketch5]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synomous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

Can you give me a real-world example of this in your business experience?

For me personally it's tough to give an example, because they are confidential negotiations, and as they are large, they are newsworthy.  But I'll speak in general terms:

In these type of deals, it's not just about a dollar amount, it's also about other terms of the deal.  And in constructive negotiations, when one side makes an offer that the other doesn't like, rather than just saying "no", they'll say, in broad, non-specific terms, the problem with the offer.  And then the side making the offer will say "hypothetically, does X address your need?"  And if it does, maybe X will be what happens in the deal.  But maybe Y will be what happens, where Y is what grew out of more in-depth thinking about the issue and works for both sides, or maybe X won't be addressed directly at all, and either a concession in a different part of the deal will be found, or a deal won't happen.

In an abbreviated mock conversation between the Celtics and the Nets, it goes like this:

Celtics offer Al Horford, Derrick White, and draft picks.
Nets: That's not going to work.  We need an All-Star, a starter, and draft compensation/young players
Celtics: So Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a 1st?
Nets: No, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Grant Williams, and three firsts.

Did the Celtics make a committable offer in the above scenario?  I don't think so.  If the Nets said yes, would they have thought about it long and hard, and maybe made the deal?  Sure.

i think this what most likely happened.

I have a feeling the Brogdan trade package was what they went with though plus a few more picks and maybe White, Since Al and KD are good friends.

Nets probably came back and said, "nah, we need a young up coming star and role players for you to be at the table"

Celts" you mean like Brown since tatum can't be traded there and some one like White?

Nets "throw in Smart with that and we got a deal"

Celts "click"

[Moranis]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synonymous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

an exploratory conversation is not one in which you make a concrete offer.  An exploratory conversation is something like, hey what are you looking for to part with Durant?  Any way to get there without including Tatum or Brown?  And things like that. An exploratory conversation is not we'll give you Brown, white, and a 1st for Durant.  No matter how that is couched, it is an offer.

[nickagneta]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synonymous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

an exploratory conversation is not one in which you make a concrete offer.  An exploratory conversation is something like, hey what are you looking for to part with Durant?  Any way to get there without including Tatum or Brown?  And things like that. An exploratory conversation is not we'll give you Brown, white, and a 1st for Durant.  No matter how that is couched, it is an offer.

Here's the thing, the only people saying that happened definitively as an offer are reporters given their info from the Nets because it's in the best interest of the Nets for that to come out. Weeks after it supposedly happened.

I have no doubt that the team's had exploratory talks to judge value, but just don't see the C's having given an actual, certifiable offer. The entirety of people's belief that it definitely happened is because of the reporters used. Yet, people aren't talking into consideration those reporters were fed bad info for nefarious and/or self serving reasons.

[Roy H.]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synonymous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

an exploratory conversation is not one in which you make a concrete offer.  An exploratory conversation is something like, hey what are you looking for to part with Durant?  Any way to get there without including Tatum or Brown?  And things like that. An exploratory conversation is not we'll give you Brown, white, and a 1st for Durant.  No matter how that is couched, it is an offer.

Here's the thing, the only people saying that happened definitively as an offer are reporters given their info from the Nets because it's in the best interest of the Nets for that to come out. Weeks after it supposedly happened.

I have no doubt that the team's had exploratory talks to judge value, but just don't see the C's having given an actual, certifiable offer. The entirety of people's belief that it definitely happened is because of the reporters used. Yet, people aren't talking into consideration those reporters were fed bad info for nefarious and/or self serving reasons.

Is there any reason to think an offer wasn’t made, other than wishful thinking?

And, Woj and Shams aren’t amateurs.  They’re not going to burn relationships simply to do the Nets’ bidding.

[Celtics2021]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synonymous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

an exploratory conversation is not one in which you make a concrete offer.  An exploratory conversation is something like, hey what are you looking for to part with Durant?  Any way to get there without including Tatum or Brown?  And things like that. An exploratory conversation is not we'll give you Brown, white, and a 1st for Durant.  No matter how that is couched, it is an offer.

Here's the thing, the only people saying that happened definitively as an offer are reporters given their info from the Nets because it's in the best interest of the Nets for that to come out. Weeks after it supposedly happened.

I have no doubt that the team's had exploratory talks to judge value, but just don't see the C's having given an actual, certifiable offer. The entirety of people's belief that it definitely happened is because of the reporters used. Yet, people aren't talking into consideration those reporters were fed bad info for nefarious and/or self serving reasons.

Is there any reason to think an offer wasn’t made, other than wishful thinking?

And, Woj and Shams aren’t amateurs.  They’re not going to burn relationships simply to do the Nets’ bidding.

Any conversation without Brad Stevens on the phone to sign off on the deal is by nature exploratory, and neither Woj or Shams have ever reported that Stevens was on the call.

As for their professionalism, their job is to drive viewers and readers to their respective media outlets.  They try not to report lies, I’m sure, but incomplete facts they’ll do all the time, because that lets them break the news when an actual deal is made.

[Roy H.]

How'd we get Capela?  Horford + multiple picks?

It was just an example to illustrate a player you might get for 3 picks. I'm not trying to get into a big debate about who that might be. Perhaps Capela cannot be had. But 3 picks, and possibly a rotation player we could replace can add a significant player. 

Getting Durant can only be fairly compared to an alternate scenario where the required picks are also converted into a present day asset

Yeah, it's hard to know how to judge value without knowing the pieces on the table.  For instance, if Seth Curry is packaged with Durant, that makes a lot of scenarios more palatable in the short term.  If Brooklyn would accept protected picks, that changes the evaluation, as well.  What players are being secretly shopped that the media doesn't know about?  What follow-up moves are available to Brad.

The room for a deal seemingly is somewhere between Brown + White + one #1 and Brown + Smart + Williams or Pritchard + two or three #1s.  To me, that's a fairly large disparity.

Of course the assumption is there is any chance of a deal and that the reality isn't the C's just checked in with the Nets looking at what value they were looking for and had little intention of making any deal in the first place and when communications went dry, the Nets decided to leak to Woj about an offer that was never really on the table and only talked about in the abstract.

I don't make much of a distinction between concrete and abstract trade ideas.

Scenario 1:  "I'll give you Brown + White + #1 for Durant"

Scenario 2:  "I'm not committing to anything, but let's say Brown + White + #1 for Durant was on the table.  Does that get things done on your end?"

Yep.  Those are both offers.  It is basically negotiation rule #1, if you say something, you are offering it.

Except that's not really true. The second one is explicitly NOT as offer, its a hypothetical. The difference between the two is if BRK says yes to the first one the deal is done. If BRK says yes to the second BOS still might not do the deal. That seems a pretty huge difference to me? 

Putting aside the specific details of which of those types of offers you think Jaylen Brown, those two things are absolutely different in intent and potential seriousness.

They aren't really different.  When you are in a negotiation, anything you say is an offer.  You don't hypothetically muse about something if you aren't actually prepared to do it.

As someone who's been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, that is simply wrong.  I have more than once both said and heard "We'd have to run the numbers, but what do you think about X?"  Or, the more colloquial, "we're just spitballing, but what about Y?" They're qualified statements.  If the other party is interested, you pursue them more, but you're in no way locking yourself into that position.

Other things that matter, and which were not reported:  Who from the Celtics and Nets were talking?  Was it Brad Stevens and Sean Marks, or their assistants?  Assistants make hypothetical offers, because everyone knows they have to run it back up.  GMs get on the phone when a deal might actually be made.  If Stevens and Marks weren't on the phone, it's not a real offer, end of story, especially with superstars involved.

Again, having been involved in major negotiations, we've sometimes started the conversation with a disclaimer that anything we come up with in the room is subject to the approval of higher-ups.  Sometimes that condition is on both sides, but it's not unusual.  9 times out of 10 a deal we come up with is okayed by the head of my organization, but it's not always the case, and that's understood.  Sometimes I'll say "I'm okay with this but I'm not sure it's going to fly."

But no, just because someone from the Celtics told someone from the Nets "what about Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, and a pick" does not mean that Jaylen Brown was ever officially offered.

You don't say that if you won't do it though.  That is the point.  Is it a binding offer, of course not, but you are not just throwing numbers around without knowing you will take it.  Sure you have to do the final due diligence and make sure the numbers check out, but if they do, you do that deal.  You don't come back and say, yeah the numbers checked out but we never made that offer so we aren't doing it.  That is how you end up losing your job because no one will do business with you.

Oh, we've definitely walked back those offers and have had them walked back on us too.  And despite that, we've still ultimately sealed a deal in such a scenario.  When you're running between conference rooms and workstations for week-long negotiations, it's understood that sometimes conversations will change.  As long as you've built up enough of a relationship that you're not trying to waste people's time, there's room to take back something that was said earlier.  It might cause some brief embarrassment, but you move on.  Lying is more likely to scuttle a deal than an admission that an offer was made that there wasn't full organizational buy-in on.

When GM assistants are talking, they don’t throw out “hypothetical” offers they have no authority to make, though.  I haven’t been in the room for multi-billion dollar negotiations, but I’ve been one of the negotiators on multiple $100+ million cases.  I don’t think the legal world is that different than the business world or the NBA.  When you’re dealing with the other side, you never truly spitball.  It’s too easy to throw out a non-vetted concept that the other side will hold onto, which your client / investor / owner will never agree to.

Responding to a counter-offer takes more finesse.  But in terms of making the opening offer in a negotiation, you don’t do that without authority.

I'm siding with Celtics2021, I think GM staffs do this all the time.  And where I sit in the business world it happens all the time here too exactly the way Celtics2021 described it.

Here's a quote from an Ainge interview back in 2015 about how deals get done:

There are all sorts of exploratory conversations and then there are real conversations.

For me exploratory conversations is synonymous with the spitballing scenario Celtics2021 described, but maybe you'll have a different interpretation.

an exploratory conversation is not one in which you make a concrete offer.  An exploratory conversation is something like, hey what are you looking for to part with Durant?  Any way to get there without including Tatum or Brown?  And things like that. An exploratory conversation is not we'll give you Brown, white, and a 1st for Durant.  No matter how that is couched, it is an offer.

Here's the thing, the only people saying that happened definitively as an offer are reporters given their info from the Nets because it's in the best interest of the Nets for that to come out. Weeks after it supposedly happened.

I have no doubt that the team's had exploratory talks to judge value, but just don't see the C's having given an actual, certifiable offer. The entirety of people's belief that it definitely happened is because of the reporters used. Yet, people aren't talking into consideration those reporters were fed bad info for nefarious and/or self serving reasons.

Is there any reason to think an offer wasn’t made, other than wishful thinking?

And, Woj and Shams aren’t amateurs.  They’re not going to burn relationships simply to do the Nets’ bidding.

Any conversation without Brad Stevens on the phone to sign off on the deal is by nature exploratory, and neither Woj or Shams have ever reported that Stevens was on the call.

As for their professionalism, their job is to drive viewers and readers to their respective media outlets.  They try not to report lies, I’m sure, but incomplete facts they’ll do all the time, because that lets them break the news when an actual deal is made.

Have they reported Stevens wasn’t on the call?

And, if Mike Zarren relays to his Nets counterpart that the Celts would include JB + White + 1st for Durant, that’s an offer, no matter how it’s couched.

But, use semantics however you would like. The fact is, the Celtics put Jaylen’s name in trade ideas with the Nets.

[Kernewek]

An offer that we know about as a measuring stick for what Kevin Durant’s trade value would be worth.

And we, the public, know about this because the organisation responsible for valuing Kevin Durant in a trade has let the world know that this is below Kevin Durant’s trade value.

It’s fairly straightforward.