https://youtu.be/l8QbOQLt9B4
While most of us were fervently refreshing Twitter to keep up with the excitement of a busy trade deadline, my guess is that Nico Mannion was abstaining from all of that. As a young player on the type of team-friendly contract that most second round picks get, he’s just too easy to throw in on any trade the Warriors might happen to make. He didn’t end up getting traded, but the threat looms large for players like him, so, if I was him, I would just put my phone on airplane mode and read a nice book or something until the deadline passes. Or try to find a game on my phone that doesn’t choke and die when it can’t access the internet.
The downside of detaching oneself from the trade rumors is that one would miss the news if another player on your team, perhaps one with whom you were directly competing with minutes, were to get traded. Instead of finding out from the internet that your #1 nemesis, the single teammate who has done the most damage to your young career by stealing your minutes, is getting shipped all the way across the country, one of your other teammates has to tell you. “Hey, did you see Brad’s getting traded?”
That’s right, folks. Brad “Bricklord” Wanamaker got traded to the Hornets for cash (I’m imagining a literal suitcase of cash-bundles getting put in airplane headed to San Francisco), and now there’s one fewer player in the way of Mannion getting serious minutes. Mannion would have been properly somber after hearing the news, but while his outer expression would be one of neutrality or even sadness, his inner expression would be a wide grin punctuated by maniacal laughter.
Wanamaker wasn’t very good, but he was just good enough to get real playing time, and now that playing time has to go to somebody. Mannion knows that, and it’s already paying dividends, as Mannion got thirty minutes on the court in this game and responded with a season-best nineteen points. A new era truly dawns right now. And it’s ginger. Very ginger.