Weird.
Every report has said the opposite.
I wonder if he's toying with the words here. Like maybe Ainge didn't make that offer but said, "This will be the offer after we sign Hayward," so Pritchard is trying to save face after a bad deal by saying the offer wasn't technically made.
Probably that or the offer was slightly different than reported, but not enough that any sane person would have selected it over the OKC package.
It's super weird.
It does seem totally possible that the Celtics never made an offer.
The Celtics have repeatedly claimed that they couldn't create trades for stars with massive offers in the past two years only to watch players like Cousins, Butler and George get traded for 25 cents on the dollar. It's hard for me to believe that the Celtics are actually making these offers because it requires that every team they discuss trades with would prefer getting less value for their players than dealing with the Celtics.
George seems the most obvious case of this since Pritchard was ostensibly trading just a 1 year rental of a star who had made it clear he was going to sign with LA.
Mind you, I'm not criticizing the direction the Celtics went I'm just suggesting that the reports that get leaked to the media of these massive trade proposals being rebuffed are most likely smokescreens from the Celtics to take pressure off of management. Thematically these stories always serve to make the Celtics look like victims of their own success while making the other team's GM's look like fools who continually take the worst offer available.