Daryl Morey is known for being one of the NBA’s more ambitious executives, and apparently, this meant checking in on whether he could pull off a move at the trade deadline for arguably the greatest basketball player of all time. A new piece by Ramona Shelburne and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN laid out the Golden State Warriors’ efforts to acquire LeBron James at the deadline, and apparently, Morey thought it’d be worth trying to get in on the fun, as well.
You might remember that James tweeted out an hourglass emoji in the lead-up to the deadline amid the team’s struggles to consistently win games, which certainly gave pundits plenty to talk about. Morey, however, took things a step farther and actually called up Lakers executive Rob Pelinka to see if he could work something out. That, uh, didn’t happen, because Pelinka just turned around and asked if he could trade for Joel Embiid.
After seeing James’ cryptic social media post of an hourglass a week before the trade deadline, Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey called Pelinka to probe on a James trade and was immediately told that James wasn’t available. In fact, Pelinka responded by asking Morey if Joel Embiid was available, sources said. And that ended that brief conversation.
Kudos to Morey and Pelinka for all of this, because it’s very funny. But hey, you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take, so we can’t blame either of them for trying.
