NBA trade drama heating up as deadline slowly approaches

NBA trade drama is a fascinating subject, and is uniquely satisfying. All the tweets, comments, “likes”, trade machine proposals, etc, make for a wonderful time of the year for NBA fans.

With rumors continuing to circulate regarding several Utah Jazz players, a whole new layer of drama unfolded on Wednesday via Twitter.

First, Derrick Favors was ruled out of Wednesday night’s game with an ankle injury.

Following this, the Bulls announced that Nikola Mirotic was also going to sit out due to an apparent illness.

Is this a sign that both players know they are going to be traded, thus eliminating any desire to play for their current teams?

To be fair, Favors’ injury seemed legitimate and was sustained the prior game, and Mirotic had missed his earlier game due to that same “illness”; but that didn’t stop NBA twitter from speculating on some juicy trade drama.

Mirotic cannot be traded until January 15th, so unless the players were informed or heard about themselves being traded, it appears these DNPs were in fact coincidental... or were they?

But that was not the end of the trade drama.

Mirotic started following Donovan Mitchell and Ricky Rubio on Twitter, which is proven to be a sign that the player is 100% getting traded to that team (lol).

Derrick Favors also chipped in on Twitter, with a simple GIF.

By this point, we should have some advanced device to translate Favors’ cryptic tweets. We might just have to settle with some good old fashioned speculation.

If no trade actually happens, at least we had fun with all this drama.

Rodney Hood gave the internet a great moment following his ejection from the game Wednesday night. As he was walking off the court and into the tunnel, Hood smacked a fan’s phone from out of his hand while trying to video him. Hood isn’t usually one to show a lot of emotion on the court, let alone such fierce anger at handheld tech devices.

Donovan Mitchell visited another podcast and discussed his rookie season, transitioning from college to professional sports, and the rookie of the year award.

The Jazz signed former Iowa State star Georges Niang to a two-way contract. Niang is a talented big who could develop in the Jazz system.

If you love hearing classic stories of NBA trash talk, you might love this one dealing with John Stockton, via Gary Payton and ThePostGame.com

TPG: Who would you rather guard, John Stockton or Michael Jordan?

PAYTON: Michael Jordan because it would be more fun. John is not going to say nothing to me. He’s going to be all workhorse. He’s going to put his yellow hat on and he’s going to come to work. He’s just going to pound, pound at you and say nothing to you and then that becomes a real tough job for me. If I play against Michael Jordan, I’m going to play, have fun, I’m going to talk a lot of trash and we’re going to be really, really competitive. It’s going to make the game a lot more exciting. I love to play against Mike because it makes the game more enjoyable for me.