Hey, we traded you to Indiana as part of a… hold on a sec….. oh, never mind.
It has to be a little weird for O.J. Mayo. It’s one thing to hear your name circulated in trade rumors for months, it’s another to hear about a done deal and have the owner telling the Commercial Appeal how hard it was to trade you.
Except they didn’t. Memphis had a deal with the Indiana Pacers that would have sent Mayo north for Josh McRoberts and a first-round pick, but the Pacers wanted a third team in the deal to lower the costs. That team was the Hornets until they backed out at the 11th hour setting off a scramble to find a new team. They did (but we don’t know who that team was) but by the time they got the paperwork to the league office the deadline has passed.
So Mayo is still with the Grizzlies.
The Bulls also ended up getting a little serious in talks for Mayo, but how serious remains up for debate, according to Sam Smith at Bulls.com.The Bulls supposedly offered the Grizzlies three draft picks, a player and were willing to take a bad contract from Memphis, but were turned down. Though there were questions on whether it ever reached the stage of an actual offer.
“That told me they didn’t want to deal with Chicago,” the source said.Either way, Mayo is going to walk back into a Grizzlies practice Friday, and on to the court Saturday when Memphis plays Sacramento. He’s a professional, everyone will get along just fine. He’s a Grizzly. At least until the flurry of trades around the draft.
