“It’s always a pleasure to meet with one of our players,” Rockets GM Daryl Morey said happily. “What’s on your mind, Clint?”
“We gotta trade Dwight. Like, ASAP,” Clint replied shortly, sitting across the desk from his GM.
Daryl’s smiling expression quickly changed to mirror Clint’s stony demeanor. “There’s a few reasons we can’t really do that, first bei-”
“Trade him,” Clint repeated. “For every reason you have to keep him, I have ten reasons to get rid of him.”
Daryl looked a little frustrated at his player’s meddling in team affairs. “Well, for starters, it’s March now, so the trade deadline’s passed. Do you know what the trade deadline is?”
Clint nodded surlily. “It means that at a certain point in the season nobody can get traded anymore. But there’s probably exceptions to that rule. Like, a trade exception or something.”
“No, a trade exception is something totally different,” Daryl said, resting his forehead in his hands. “Nobody’s getting traded now, least of all Dwight, who is a vital component of this team.”
Clint laughed. “There’s only two vital components of this team: Harden and me. Look, I do all the same things that Dwight does and even some things he doesn’t. I block shots. I catch lobs. I get putbacks. I run the floor. And I do it all without pouting about my touches. Plus, I would never try to get another player traded away like Dwight tried to do with James.”
“You’re trying to get Dwight traded right now,” Daryl pointed out.
Ignoring this, Clint continued, “actually, since you can’t trade him, you should just cut him straight up. Today if possible. He’s stunting my development.”
“I think this meeting is over,” Daryl said, standing up with a finality that Clint couldn’t challenge.
“If Dwight’s stuff is still in the locker room when I walk in tomorrow morning, I’m gonna be pissed,” Clint said, standing up as well and walking towards the door. “I hear he’s got like twenty different baby mamas. Just so you know.”
“Clint, please leave my office. Now.”
—
“Yo J.B., I got something important to talk to you about,” Clint said to his coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
“Does it have to be right now, Clint? We’re in the middle of a game in case you didn’t notice.”
Clint looked around mildly at the crowd and lights. “Yeah, I noticed. Hey, I was thinking, does Dwight even need to get any minutes at all?”
J.B.’s eyebrow arched in suspicion. “I was planning on playing him most of the second half if it’s still a close game,” he replied. “I’ll probably slot you at the four for some of that.”
“Or you could play me at the five and not put Dwight in for the rest of the game,” Clint suggested. “I do all the same things he does and I do them with more energy. And then, after you bench him this game, maybe you could put him on the inactive list since Daryl said we’re not going to trade or cut him any time soon.”
“Clint, I am not putting Dwight on the inactive list and that’s that,” J.B. said in a manner suggesting that this argument had been made several times before. “But maybe you’d like to sit on the bench a little longer for challenging my rotations like that.”
Clint shrugged. “Sure. Who you gonna play at the backup five? Josh Smith?” Having said all he needed to, he ambled back onto the court, where play was about to resume.
—
Having just been eliminated from the playoffs by the Warriors, Clint approached Dwight in the locker room. “You should definitely opt out of your contract,” he said shortly.
Dwight looked taken aback that his teammate wanted to talk about contracts at this delicate moment. “I’ll think about that later,” Dwight answered.
“Think about it,” Clint continued. “This obviously isn’t working. The team doesn’t want to build around your strengths. James hates your guts. He even told me yesterday, ‘I hate Dwight so much,’ that’s what he said to me. If you leave now you can make a ton of money somewhere else.”
“I told you man, I don’t want to think about that right now.”
Clint was not dissuaded. “If you compare our play styles, you’ll see that I do most of the things that you do but my contract is friendlier and I do it without any drama.”
“No drama, right,” Dwight scoffed.
“Honestly, you’re kind of redundant on this team while I’m around,” Clint stated bluntly. “Daryl said that he wanted to trade you two weeks ago but then the found out about the trade deadline so he had to keep you. You should be glad he didn’t cut your sorry ass straight up.”
Dwight now appeared slightly amused at his teammate’s aggressive posturing. “Yeah, sure. I’m, uh, I’m going to get going now.”
“Hopefully forever,” Clint said, watching Dwight exit the locker room. After Dwight left, Clint retrieved a folded piece of paper from his pocket. Across the top, it read, “Players To Get Rid Of.”
Ty Lawson’s name was already crossed off. Dwight’s name, Clint now put a line through. Below it was one more name: James Harden.