Cleveland Cavaliers point guard Jordan Clarkson has tweeted that D’Angelo Russell will sign with the Phoenix Suns. Does he know something we don’t?
The Phoenix Suns need a point guard.
D’Angelo Russell has been on Suns fan’s radars for months now.
Kyrie Irving has been tied to the Nets for some time and it was recently reported that Brooklyn would likely rescind Russell’s rights if they signed Kyrie making Russ an unrestricted free agent.
Russ is best friends with Karl-Anthony Towns, although the Minnesota Timberwolves do not have easy access to the necessary cap space to sign the point guard.
Russ is best friends with Devin Booker and the Phoenix Suns already have the cap space necessary to sign D’Angelo.
Most of that is all information we know and have been banking on working in Phoenix’s favor, with many of us hoping the connections are so strong to eventually make the pairing happen.
But now Jordan Clarkson, former Los Angeles Laker and current Cleveland Cavalier, has tweeted that – among other things – D’Angelo Russell will go to the Phoenix Suns.
Should we trust Clarkson’s opinion?
Well, he played with Russell on the Lakers for two seasons. Is it out of the realm of possibility that they are regular text buddies, possibly on the same text threads hearing from one another everyday (you all know what that is like)?
Is it possible that if the two are not in direct and regular contact that Clarkson hears rumors from other NBA players and while maybe did not hear the information from the horse’s mouth, he at least heard it from sources that he trusts as credible enough to believe the rumor will become an eventuality?
That would be quite the sleuthing by a non-investigative journalist.
To better discern the tweet’s credibility, let’s also look at what else he tweeted.
Following his Russell statement he then pushed Kyrie Irving to Brooklyn.
That one seems to be the most likely as it has been the prevailing rumor for about a week now and that Kyrie has focused in on the Nets and is all but ready to sign as soon as free agency begins.
The rumor is actually so strong and consistent at this point that most NBA fans would probably even be more shocked if Irving signed with another team than if he landed in Brooklyn.
So while that’s not necessarily some great insight from Clarkson, he too could have heard that that will become a reality come July 1, from inside sources and again is very confident in it’s likelihood.
Clarkson then finished his news breaking tweet saying that Julius Randle will go to the Nets as well.
This little nugget hasn’t really been out there in the public NBA rumor mills – many Suns fans would love Randle to come to Phoenix – but makes a whole lot of sense as well.
If the Nets do elect to let D’Angelo Russell into unrestricted free agency, they immediately open up the necessary cap space to sign two max players.
Many had assumed that that second max player would be Kevin Durant, but with Durant now down for at least one whole season, Brooklyn could turn their attention in another direction with Julius Randle being a very poor man’s Durant, although still a solid, young power forward.
From the Phoenix Suns’ position in all of this, of course they would love a point guard of Russell’s ability, and filling in that gaping hole with one offseason free agency signing would be a huge boon and would leave the door open to filling their power forward need through trade.
Russell could of course be had in restricted free agency if Brooklyn does not rescind his rights outright giving them a chance to match whichever offer he signs making teams think about how high they need to overpay to prevent Brooklyn from matching it, which would make a max extension more likely.
Although if he is granted unrestricted free agency, the connections to Phoenix being so obvious (most notably his friendship with Booker) if he and his agent let other teams know that he is giving the Suns first crack, that could keep the contract below a max giving James Jones that much more flexibility to acquire an upper-tier power forward.
Jordan Clarkson isn’t known as an NBA trade or free agency news breaker so his tweet could be trolling; it could have been a Saturday good time at the expense of a number of important figures and teams in free agency; or maybe even his account was briefly taken over by a friend and he allowed the tweet to be published for the fun of it.
But he could also have heard enough chatter about those three potential moves that while all three happening might be unlikely to occur, he figured that he would shoot them all out in a shotgun blast of information as early as he could to look Nostradamus-like if they did all happen to come to fruition.
It won’t take long before we know the truth: does Jordan Clarkson know something that we don’t?