What is up with athletes going on Twitter to announce deals that haven’t been made yet? In the past few weeks, we’ve seen Tyson Chandler announce that he was traded, Reggie Evans say goodbye to the team that still owns his rights and Matt Barnes announced that he would be signing with Toronto, a move that was impossible.
Why didn’t these guys simply wait for the paperwork to be signed, or for their agent to tell them to go ahead? It makes them look ridiculous, like fools who know nothing about what’s going on with their own teams and their own personal careers.
While cases like Chandler’s and Evans’ were not their decisions – the Bobcats backed out of a trade with the Raptors – Barnes was just a case of idiocy. The former Magician claimed he was bound for Toronto on a two-year, $9-million deal, but that just wasn’t possible. The Raptors had already used most of their midlevel exception and the Magic didn’t have his bird rights to even work on a sign-and-trade. How could Barnes have not realized this? Or his agent? It really makes him look like a fool.
And shame on the media for printing these things under the guise of a “report.†It has now been proven the case that these tweets are hardly accurate. So, let’s stop rushing to stop the presses just because a mediocre swingman thinks he signed a deal with a lottery team.