Timberwolves Press: OJ Mayo Kevin Love Trade Draft Night

The Wild Ride of the 2008 NBA Draft: The Mayo Trade
The story of what it's like to report on a blockbuster trade before it happens

3:00 PM CT 6/27/08

To me the NBA Draft is like Christmas, I love the anticipation of not knowing what your team is going to get. We all knew the pressure the Timberwolves faced going into this draft and it appeared for once that they finally had made the right move by drafting OJ Mayo at #3 as he was the best prospect available. In the back of every Timberwolves fan's mind, we all now wondered, will he stay in Minnesota? Well it sure looked that way for the entire draft as there was no trade rumors mentioned on ESPN involving Mayo. Usually if a trade is to be made involving two top 5 picks, it is at least announced by the end of the first round. But tonight was different; once Timberwolves fans turned off their TV’s, little did they know that the Timberwolves were up to something that was about to turn everyone’s stomach upside down.
We at TimberwolvesPress learned about this trade right when the first round ended. Little did we know that we were about to help break open one the biggest trades in draft day history.

Here is the journey of what it is like to break loose a blockbuster trade that will most likely be bad news to your hometown team’s fans.

6:47 PM CT
Finally the Timberwolves did what they were supposed to do by drafting OJ Mayo. Although OJ didn’t fit a need for the Timberwolves, he was the big name they needed to keep fans happy. To be good to be true? Of course, we would soon learn the Timberwolves had something up their sleeves like usual and that OJ Mayo would not be a Minnesota Timberwolf for long.

10:00 PM CT
Everything changed at 10 o’clock. My partners and I received a phone call from an inside source claiming the Timberwolves and the Grizzlies pretty much had agreed upon a trade before the draft that would have sent the 3rd pick and Marko Jaric to Memphis in exchange for Mike Miller and the 5th pick. The deal was said to be done until Memphis decided on draft day that they were no longer interested in taking on the contract of Marko Jaric. My colleagues and I were relieved that the trade hadn't gone through and we all joked about how McHale would have screwed this draft up if he had made that trade. I posted this news on a few threads and most people responded with a “whew.” I’ll be honest I was pretty happy it didn’t happen as well because I was still so excited about OJ Mayo and just the extras that he brings to a basketball team. Thinking of seeing Big Al, Foye, and Mayo in a lineup really had me looking forward to next season.

10:02 PM CT
Two Minutes later our phone rings again but this time, my colleague has a bit more of a surprised look on his face.
Mayo

“We just traded Mayo to Memphis!” he said.

“No we didn’t!” I quickly responded.

Two minutes ago we had just learned that this proposed deal had been declared dead but now all of sudden it was supposedly done? We all sat in shock for about a minute, saying things like, “I knew this would happen,” or “McHale always has to screw up.” Finally after a minute of shock we knew we had to report this.
Now we are a fairly new site but we only report information that we are 100% sure on. And I’ll tell you this; we were 100% about this trade. We quickly posted the news that Mayo had been traded on a message board called, MNSportsFans.com at 10:05 PM CT. Within minutes the news was already looked upon as garbage and as a joke. This would be also be a huge credibility shot to our site if we had this news wrong. We all sat knowing what this could mean for our site but at the same time we knew we had a very reliable source and that this was to good to not be reported.

Once the Timberwolves two 2nd round picks were over, we really began to believe that this trade had happened. Surely if we had kept Mayo we would have drafted a center that could help us out by next year. Instead we used the picks on Pekovic who wont be ready for 2-3 years and Chalmers who we quickly traded to Miami. Something just wasn’t right about these picks and they just didn’t make sense with what we needed. Right there we knew that this trade must have been filling those needs that we were going to address with our 2nd round picks.

We all sat in confusion for the next 30 minutes wondering what the hell was going on at Target Center. Nothing still had been reported about the Mayo trade and we were beginning to get a bit nervous. Maybe it wasn’t going to happen.

Then all of sudden, the TV announced that there was a trade…

The Minnesota Timberwolves trade the rights to…

Here it was the OJ Mayo trade….

Mario Chalmers to the Miami Heat…..

Right when the deputy commissioner said Minnesota Timberwolves, we thought this was the deal but instead it was Mario Chalmers heading to Miami.

Now we were getting worried about this trade so we decided to make another call to our source.

10:39 PM CT
“The trade is 85% done and the Timberwolves plan to trade Mayo, Walker, Jaric and Buckner to the Grizzlies for Love, Miller, Cardinal and Collins,” said our Miller

source. This news gave us a breath of fresh air as the trade was still being worked on. We quickly posted this news on our site and a few message boards to let T’Wolves fans know what was going on. We were in a very awkward position right here as this was news that no Timberwolves fan wanted to hear at the moment but it had to be reported. I mean this is huge news whether its for the good or the bad. Right when this call came in I knew we had this trade because it now named specific players and they all made sense. We got rid of our horrible contracts in exchange for a player who McHale loves in Kevin Love and we also would get a solid scorer in Mike Miller.
A few minutes later we heard news that Mike Cristaldi, the PR guy for the Wolves had just told reporters that McHale was not ready for the media yet as he was still working on something.

Bam, we nailed it!

It was now just a matter of time before this would be announced on ESPN that the Timberwolves had just made the shock of the draft hours after it had concluded.

11:42 PM CT
We tuned into Sportscenter waiting for the news and at 11:42 PM CT it finally came. Right after a commercial break, ESPN comes back on and reported OJ Mayo has just been traded to the Memphis Grizzlies along with Marko Jaric, Antoine Walker, and Greg Buckner in exchange for Kevin Love, Mike Miller, Jason Collins and Brian Cardinal.

We all sat in a state of shock and ecstasy as we had just got this trade 100% correct hours before ESPN had even reported it. Surely everyone who had chosen not to believe this trade was in store for some sweet reality.

Here we were just an average group of guys covering the draft and then with a phone call our night turned into a night full of reporting one of the biggest trades in Timberwolves history. It is a night surely we will never forget. We had Fred Hoiberg saying we weren’t going to trade Mayo and the Star Tribune reporting Mayo was staying as a T’Wolf.

It’s not easy when you have two very reliable sources going against what you are reporting. But our goal is to provide everyone with the correct information and in this case our hard work paid off.

And that my friend's is what its like to break a blockbuster trade hours before it is even reported.

TimberwolvesPress.Com thanks all of it’s colleagues on draft night for their hard work!

http://www.mnsportsfans.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22564
Here is the link to our post on MNSportsFans.com where we announced the news. It's a bit funny to look back on.