Transaction reporting sometimes goes wrong, perhaps especially when it comes to trade deadline deals. The NBA trade deadline Thursday proved to be a case in point there. There, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski briefly reported that Brooklyn Nets’ guard Dennis Smith Jr. was headed to the Toronto Raptors alongside Spencer Dinwiddie in a deal for Dennis Schröder and Thad Young, only to quickly correct that Smith was not involved and that the deal was just for Dinwiddie (who the Raptors promptly waived):
But Smith took notice of this report while it was up:
https://twitter.com/casualtakeking/status/1755653143122084157
The 26-year-old Smith was selected in the first round of the 2017 NBA Draft (ninth overall) by the Dallas Mavericks. He’s played for six NBA teams across seven seasons so far, joining the Nets this past offseason. This season, he’s played in 34 games for them (but started only one), averaging 7.3 points and 4.0 assists across 19.9 minutes per game. And now he’ll be sticking with Brooklyn through at least the end of this campaign.
Mistakes certainly happen, especially with breaking news. And that’s even more the case when it comes to a flurry of transactions, with many of those featuring complicated moving parts, something we often see around trade deadlines. But there are definitely impacts for players from seeing media reports they’ve been traded, even if those reports aren’t ultimately proven true. Smith handled the false report of him being in this trade with good humor, but that’s still a rough situation to be placed in.
[Dennis Smith Jr. on Twitter]
About Andrew Bucholtz
Andrew Bucholtz has been covering sports media for Awful Announcing since 2012. He is also a staff writer for The Comeback. His previous work includes time at Yahoo! Sports Canada and Black Press.