“From Showers to Honeymoons”: Worst Ways NBA Players Found Out About Getting Traded ft. Shaquille O’Neal

The 2024 NBA trade deadline is on 8th February. As of now, Bojan Bogdanovic’s move to the New York Knicks is the biggest update on the market. The league has always been about business first, and most players, especially veterans and journeymen understand this better than anyone.

As the deadline comes to its most crucial phase, players and executives alike can be seen growing more and more tense, as a single trade could change a lot of things in the future.

But in a cold business such as the NBA, even with all of its high-level management, players often find out through social media that they have been traded before they even have a sit-down with their team’s management. Exploring such unpleasant situations, here are some of the most bizarre ways players have found out that they have been traded.

Harrison Barnes

Harrison Barnes was a Dallas Maverick back in 2019. But his stint wouldn’t last for long. While Dallas faced the Hornets during a regular season game, with just six minutes left in the close contest, Barnes was informed that he has been traded to the Sacramento Kings.

Barnes, who was sitting on the bench at the time, learned from the crowd and his teammates that he has been traded, with cameras being able to capture the forward’s reaction in real time. Though he surely did handle the situation with grace.

Kelly Oubre Jr.

Kelly Oubre Jr. found out that he was being traded to Phoenix, while he was in the shower. Yes, you read that right. Back in 2018, Oubre Jr. was a regular feature of the Wizards’ offence. But after a regular season game, he would be shipped off to the Suns. Talking about it on NBA TV after his Suns debut, the youngster said,

“Everybody was talking about it and I’m getting ready to get in the shower, and I go in the shower and everybody is just looking at me with this look and I feel the energy, and I’m like, ‘What’s going on? Why are you all looking at me like that?’ Guys told me, ‘You got traded to Memphis.’”

Unlike the others on the list, Oubre Jr. received his news from his teammates, who huddled around the star guard to inform him of his departure from the team.

Ben McLemore

Back in 2017, Grizzlies guard Ben McLemore was in Ibiza, celebrating his marriage when he found out about his trade. Talking about it with the media, McLemore said,

“I was on my honeymoon…I was in Ibiza with my wife. I was on Facebook Live and then someone on the live [stream] said, ‘Yo Ben, you going back to Sacramento?’ And then my wife said something. She must have been on social media and seen. So I ended the live.”

It was a nice surprise for McLemore, as he relished his time with the Kings, where he spent the first four years of his career.

DeMar DeRozan

Probably one of the saddest trades of all time, a moment in NBA history when we were all reminded that nothing matters more than ‘winning’ and ‘money’. Back in 2018, DeMar DeRozan was at the height of his basketball prowess. He was the King of Toronto and things were looking up.

During the off-season, DeRozan was visiting LA when he found out about the Raptors trading him to Sacramento. The All-Star guard was actually at the parking lot of a ‘Jack in the Box’  when he got the call.

Shaquille O’Neal

Lastly, we have Shaquille O’Neal, as the Big Fella’s trade to Cleveland was quite the blockbuster news for the time. But funnily enough, Shaq found out that he was being traded from the Suns to Cleveland on ‘Twitter’.

O’Neal’s tweets at that point surely point to the theory being correct as he would respond to a tweet saying, “U CLEVELAND BOUND… Shaq found out he was traded thru Twitter! lmao…. hahaha”, by replying “I know right”.

The legendary Center would later delete his tweets, most probably after his agent asked him to do so. With the trade deadline coming to a close soon, it would be interesting to see if any new ‘bizarre’ trade stories come to the forefront.