Iman Shumpert is adamant he didn’t ask for a trade out of Cleveland, and he’s calling out the ESPN reporter who wrote the story on Twitter.
The Cavaliers guard fired back on Friday evening after a report broke earlier in the day that Shumpert asked to be traded by the Cavaliers. ESPN reporter Dave McMenamin wrote on Friday that “multiple sources” indicated Shump wanted out, just like Kyrie Irving had done earlier in the summer.
Soon after the story was written, though, The Vertical’s Shams Charania disputed the report. The Charania report indicated that the Cavaliers had looked into trading Shumpert but that it wasn’t at the guard’s prompting.
Shumpert’s tweet at McMenamin seems like a flat dismissal of any notion he asked out of Cleveland.
.@mcten since you speaking on me, you can find my number somehow. Get it and call me. I'll be waitin on it. I'm done wit social.
— Iman. (@imanshumpert) August 25, 2017
“Since you speaking on me, you can find my number somehow,” Shumpert said in the tweet. “Get it and call me. I’ll be waitin on it. I’m done wit social.”
That kind of response seems to indicate Charania’s sources are closer to the pin here. It sounds like Shumpert wants to clear the air, or at least try to find out where McMenamin’s sources are getting their information from. It’s another weird chapter in one of the oddest NBA summers in recent memory. What seemed like a very solid Cleveland franchise that could teeter if James decided to leave next summer is now filled with intrigue. Even the lowest guards on the totem pole have demands and rumors dogging them.
