The NBA can be a cold environment for players. Overnight, players who are crucial parts of their franchises can find out that they have been sent to a different team, and been made dispensable in the league. In the modern era, we’re more used to players demanding a trade and forcing their way out.
But in the past, the players did not have that much leverage. Star players being able to demand their way out of teams is a more recent phenomenon, brought about by the player empowerment era.
It can be a difficult process for players to get traded. In fact, there have been many occasions where players found out about their career future thanks to news leaking about a trade being made.
And that is exactly what happened to Richard Jefferson. Jefferson revealed a story on ESPN about how he had gone to pick up his son from school. Another kid at the school saw Jefferson and told him that his father found out he was getting traded.
Jefferson got the call from the Nets, saying that he was being traded from the team. In a brutally hilarious response, ESPN analyst Damon Jones trolled him by saying that the New Jersey Nets got better after trading RJ. Jefferson responded, saying that the next season, they had one of the worst records in the league.
Jefferson is far from the only player to have experienced this trade revelation in his career. Players like DeMar DeRozan have spoken in the past about how they found out they were being traded from the organization reaching out to them and breaking the news.
Despite Jones’ trolling, it all worked out for Jefferson. He won an NBA championship in 2016 with the Cleveland Cavaliers, making history by becoming the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the NBA Finals and beating the 73-9 Golden State Warriors.
