With the NBA trade deadline a day away, rumors are flying around about potential trades. Two rumors that have been floated involving big name players and teams are the Celtics pursuit of Bulls star swingman Jimmy Butler and the Knicks and Timberwolves being engaged in talks to reunite Derrick Rose with his former Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau in Minnesota.
The NBA trade deadline and NBA free agency isn’t just about trying to parse through rumors to figure out which ones are legit, which are agents or teams blowing smoke to create leverage and which ones are flat out made up. In the year of our lord 2017, it also means we have to try and interpret cryptic posts and changes made on social media by players.
Isaiah Thomas knows this better than anyone, and he’s been having fun with the Celtics being in the middle of rumors about acquiring Jimmy Butler. Earlier in the week, Thomas simply tweeted the eyes emoji, and on Wednesday, he was at it again with an hourglass emoji.
https://twitter.com/Isaiah_Thomas/status/834478524933091328
This caused everyone to freak out again, wondering what Thomas knows. The answer to that is probably nothing. Players aren’t usually given information about what a team is doing at the deadline, especially players not being discussed in talks, so this is likely Thomas having fun with everyone’s overzealous need for hints of information.
The best example of that came earlier on Wednesday when Timberwolves guard Ricky Rubio followed Knicks star Kristaps Porzingis on Twitter. Normally, you’d chalk this up to a pair of NBA players following each other, but the Knicks and Wolves have been linked in trade talks that would involve the Wolves acquiring Derrick Rose and Rubio could be one of the players moved to the Knicks. Therefore, we must all commence freaking out about Rubios following Porzingis as a sign that a trade is imminent.
Maybe Rubio has heard he may be headed to New York and wants to get a jump on his relationship with his new star, or maybe he just realized he wasn’t following Kristaps (who’s been following him). Either way, the NBA trade deadline brings out the most intense swings of emotions in NBA fans, and the most intense social media stalking not seen in any sport this side of college football (there are dark, dark things going on deep in the college football message board world).
Fans are sitting on pins and needles to find out if their team is going to make a good move, a bad move (*cough* Kings *cough*) or do nothing (Spurs and Hawks fans, you can pretty much tune out at this point), and any little sliver of information, even an emoji, may provide crucial insight.
