TP back at you for the quotes. I was giving Stevens credit for shaking things up but it looks like Wyc was the catalyst. Very glad he didn't want to stand pat.
Maybe it's part of my preconceived notion about some of these super successful multi-millionaires/billionaire types, but Wyc often rubs me the wrong way with some of his statements, in the way he tries to take credit for things.
There's his comments recently that Kernewek just posted, and then there were his comments about the famous KG/Pierce Brooklyn trade.
If you listen to him tell it, he was the mastermind behind getting all those picks from Brooklyn.As I recall — and Danny may remember slightly differently — but as I recall, he came to me with that deal on draft day [in 2013] and said, “We’re going to get two first-round picks from Brooklyn for [Garnett, Pierce, Terry, and White], and take on some contracts.” And I said, “OK, are [the picks] unprotected?” And he said, “Yes, in fact, they are.” I said, “Great. Let’s go get a third pick.” And he goes, “Whoa, whoa, whoa,” but, “All right, I’ll ask.” And he’s not afraid to ask, he wasn’t pushing back. But he went and asked, and he said, “Unbelievable. We got a third pick. This is great.” And I said, “Great. Go get a fourth pick. I think these guys have deal fever — we’re going to keep going until they say no. I think they’ve been told by ownership to get the deal done, so let’s go back.” And Danny sort of gave me a look, like I don’t want to lose the deal by pushing too hard. Normally we try to play down the middle of the road with people, [but] I said, “Go push aggressively for a fourth pick.”
And so he went back, he came back to me and he said, “OK, you’ve got your wish. They’ve said no now … they’re not going to give us a fourth pick.” I said fine, make that fourth pick into a swap. Because swapping a pick doesn’t feel like you’re losing a pick. You still have a pick, and it’s pretty unlikely that we would be able to swap — that would mean we were better than they are. And we think they’re going to be pretty good with this trade. So just get the swap and call it a day. So we got that swap, and that swap turned into Jayson Tatum and another first-round pick — it turned into the number-one pick in [last] year’s draft [which was later traded to Philadelphia]. That’s how the Brooklyn trade evolved as I recall it, which was working together with Danny to get the best possible deal out of Brooklyn.
So it seems there's one of two things probably going on:
Wyc was really the mastermind behind Danny and now Brad's biggest moves.
Wyc hired really smart people to work for him, then takes the credit for their work.
I tend not to believe "there's going to be fireworks" Wyc so much. Like a lot of successful businessmen, I think there's a lot of politician to him, taking credit for things that he had minimal involvement in, and/or pandering to his audience (like in the past when he said the team's willing to spend yet they didn't, or his recent comments about wanting to bring the WNBA to Boston when it's unlikely for a variety of reasons).
I'm still giving credit to Brad on this one.
Topic: 2024 NBA Season and Playoffs (Read 1024933 times)