Moore: What the Hell Happened with the Failed Suns, Wizards, Grizzlies Trade?

UPDATE: The Suns and Wizards agreed to send Trevor Ariza to Phoenix for Kelly Oubre and Austin Rivers on Saturday morning.

Allow me to crib myself from Twitter … ain't no such thing as halfway Brooks.

The Phoenix Suns tried to get off of the Trevor Ariza contract Friday night.

The Memphis Grizzlies tried to upgrade their bench on the cheap Friday night.

The Washington Wizards tried to clear up a sore spot in the locker room and add a veteran to try and fix their season Friday night.

None of it happened.

It appeared the Suns, Wizards, and Grizzlies had a deal. Austin Rivers, Wayne Selden and … a third player we'll get to in a second would go to Phoenix. Trevor Ariza and two Grizzlies second-rounders would go to the Wizards. Kelly Oubre would go Memphis.

And then reports started to conflict.

A Suns reporter adamantly maintained that Dillon Brooks was headed to Phoenix. ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski and Daily Memphian's Chris Herrington reported it was MarShon Brooks. One player is a bit player who has spent seasons in Europe. The other is a valuable young guard with the ability to play multiple guard positions and a key part of Memphis' future.

There was … some miscommunication.

The result is a failed trade and the impacts will be deeper than you'd imagine for a deal that didn't involve a single star.

For the Suns…

Ariza has to go, that's the top priority. You can't mess with a veteran player of Ariza's stature like this, even if he wasn't going to a good situation. Phoenix wants to get off his contract and needs a point guard. Some sort of deal will be done.

For the Wizards…

The damage here is the greatest. There has been tension between Austin Rivers and Bradley Beal going back to high school, but they cleared the air this summer. However, this team needed a change, and now they're stuck with each other. No one was happy already, and now it's even more awkward.

For the Grizzlies…

It's not that big of a deal. They were giving up, in their minds, two marginal end-of-bench players and two second-rounders to essentially "rent" Oubre for the remainder of his deal. (Oubre will be a restricted free agent this summer.)

But what the hell actually happened?

The Suns leaked that their owner, Robert Sarver — who you may remember from such hits as "sold off the pick that was Rajon Rondo for cash" and "tried to threaten to move the team this week in the midst of one of the worst runs in NBA history" — had spoken directly to Robert Pera, owner of the Grizzlies and that medical info on Dillon Brooks had been shared.

This seemed to be confirmed by the Wizards, who told the Washington Post that Phoenix and Memphis had been talking about a deal about Dillon Brooks and that their understanding was it was Dillon Brooks the whole time and that "Memphis got cold feet."

This is all remarkbale. Just wild. This kind of airing of dirty laundry is exceptional. It never happens. So much so that Memphis felt the need to actually publicly come out with a statement. Here's Chris Wallace of the Memphis Grizzlies in a public statement to ESPN about a trade that didn't even happen.

OK, so Phoenix says Memphis definitely had talked to them about Dillon Brooks, and Washington says it believed the same. Memphis denies the whole thing, publicly. What do we know, and what do we have reason to believe?

The Memphis Angle

All right, for starters, some reporting.

League sources confirmed to The Action Network after this whole trainwreck had come to a halt that there was indeed a miscommunication with Washington and, like Wallace said publicly, that Pera had never spoken with Sarver, and the Grizzlies had never included Dillon Brooks in any deal.

A source went on to confirm that Memphis has refused to include Brooks in even exploratory conversations in potential deals with multiple other teams over the past year, which was confirmed by at least one other outside executive.

So in order to believe that Memphis had included Brooks this entire time, you have to believe that they have turned down offers consistently, not even wanting to talk about it, and then including him in a deal for a two-month rental of a player shooting 31 percent from 3-point range averaging less than an assist per game.

That's not to say it couldn't have happened, but you have to judge whether that sounds right.

Now, from Memphis' perspective, there was an unfortunate miscommunication. However, the problems were mostly related to the timing of everything.

Were Ariza available for trade before Friday night at midnight, they could have hashed this out in a day and been done. But the trade negotiations happened over the past week, and the deal leaked before it could be completed.

At that point, once it leaked — regardless of whoever leaked it — the situation wasn't salvageable. It was public.

Wallace coming out publicly should not be overlooked. Skepticism is warranted; officials in the public eye openly lie all the time. However, to publicly, on-record deny the details of a non-trade is a pretty bold statement.

Unless Pera conducted this business behind his front office's back, which seems unlikely, Wallace's denial should carry some weight in context.

The Suns Accusation

So first off, the Suns claim that they exchanged medical information on Dillon Brooks, who's currently dealing with an injury.

Except, on ESPN's Hoop Collective podcast, former front office official Bobby Marks confirmed that medical information is held on a database now. You don't send over the data on a fax machine.

This sounds an awful lot like a claim from an older person who's been around the league for a while but isn't up on all the new procedures.

The Telephone Game

Now, the question of whether Memphis and the Suns talked prior to Friday's debacle matters here.

The Post reported that Washington "understood" that to be the case, while Memphis has maintained it didn't.

Two league sources outside the dispute did say that it's rare for a multi-team deal to be "signed off on" without having a conference call to go over those details.

A source close to Memphis maintains that conversation would have happened … once Friday night came and Ariza could actually be dealt. But the leak happened prior to that, scuttling any chance of it.

Meanwhile, Memphis maintained that part of the reason it chose to go through Washington was to limit information spread to other teams, including, you guessed it, potential leaks to the media.

You see what this is looking like, right?

Phoenix: We were always talking to Memphis about Dillon Brooks!

Washington: We thought we were talking to Memphis about Dillon Brooks, and Phoenix said they were talking to Memphis about Dillon Brooks, so of course we thought we were talking about Dillon Brooks.

Memphis: We were never, ever talking about Dillon Brooks.

From this, we can logic suss this out like a damn SAT question:

• Washington is telling the truth, so far as it knew.
• One of Memphis or Phoenix is lying.
• One of Memphis or Phoenix is telling the truth, or there is an outside fact being ommitted.

The Wizards can be telling the truth and Memphis be lying if Memphis did have conversations with Phoenix.

The Wizards can be telling the truth and Phoenix can be lying if Phoenix lied to Washington about what was going on.

The Wizards can be telling the truth and the situation have more wrinkles, like if Memphis and the Suns talked separately about another trade that involved Brooks but it wasn't this specific deal.

One thing that sources inside and outside the situation maintain: Washington is not really at fault here. Memphis remains confused why anyone thought Dillon Brooks was involved, but Washington clearly thought that, for whatever reason.

The Wizards just wanted to get Ariza, who they still desperately want, and thought they could use this deal to get it done. Washington is basically the biggest non-player victim here.

So Why All the Nonsense?

And why would the Suns or Grizzlies lie in this situation?

Memphis might lie to protect Dillon Brooks from becoming upset at being trade bait if he was involved in the talks between Sarver and Pera (which they say didn’t happen) but the Memphis front office convinced Pera to back out.

This doesn't check out much because neither Brooks is important enough big-picture to warrant that kind of delicate maneuvering.

Maybe Memphis was attempting a switcheroo to try and get MarShon Brooks in the deal instead.

After all, the Grizzlies have the most leverage here; they're the only team whose season isn't a raging, flaming, poisonous pit of despair.

Except that doesn't make much sense either, as it clearly increases the odds of the whole thing getting shut down and in doing so, alienates Selden and MarShon Brooks unnecessarily.

The Suns are more complicated. There was a sense from both those close to Memphis and league-wide that the Suns might be attempting to apply pressure to get Dillon Brooks into the trade as a replacement since the deal is this far gone and the damage is done both to internal and external reputations.

Bear in mind all this comes the same week that Robert Sarver was forced to make a public statement after reports surfaced that the team was threatening to leave the city without a new arena.

There are, of course, unknown explanations for this that might see the light of day over the weekend, but while there's evidence on both sides, it's impossible to tell.

The Sympathy Rankings

The Internet was aflutter Friday night as NBA Twitter took over and got those jokes off about this hilarious situation.

But, some real talk: This situation really does suck for all involved. Once you commit to trading a player — and he knows you tried to deal him — you're saying "we no longer want you more than we want what we can get for you." To be faced with that and then try and stay is difficult.

MarShon Brooks hasn't done anything wrong. He's just played well for a Memphis team floating above .500.

Austin Rivers, Wayne Selden, Ariza — all these players were just playing on their contracts, then had their lives thrown into chaos, only for it be whooshed away just like that.

With that, here are my rankings for who got screwed the most in this fiasco:

1. MarShon Brooks: Became a meme and didn't even wind up on Shaqtin'.

2. Austin Rivers: Sure he was going to the Suns, but he was also getting out of a toxic situation in Washington with some more freedom in Phoenix.

3. Trevor Ariza: Ariza will get dealt one way or another and he made his money. But thinking you're out of a toxic situation and then not being so is tough.

4. Wayne Selden: He's just "the other guy."

5. Kelly Oubre: Could have gotten out of Washington and to a playoff team that needs him.

6. The Wizards: This season has been hard enough without this fiasco, and they genuinely thought Memphis meant Dillon Brooks, it seems like.

7. Grizzlies/Suns: One team is unable to function in such a way as to be fair to all parties involved and in doing so impacted all of the above, the other at least should have known better to make sure to get the right name in all conversations or at least have called for a three-way conference call.

Going Forward

Ariza will get moved somewhere. This might even help out the Suns, sparking more offers.

The Grizzlies likely have two disgruntled players, but they're not big contributors so they can likely survive this.

The Wizards are somehow, unbelievably, worse off in the chemistry department. Rivers has to be just devastated at how this played out, and Oubre is likely sad that he's missing out on a chance to work toward a bigger contract this summer.

The Suns just need to find a way to move Ariza and they'll be as fine as they can be.

Friday night will go down in infamy as one of the most legendary NBA Twitter nights, along with when the Clippers kidnapped DeAndre Jordan in his own home and that night the Clippers and Rockets fought in the secret Staples Tunnel.

There are some lessons to be learned, though.

Always start by asking yourself "Why is this piece of information being leaked and by whom, most likely?" because everything is leaked for a reason.

Always make sure you use the first initial of the player you're referring to if you have two players with the same name on a team involved in a trade or your own.

Never, ever think that the NBA will stop being the most ridiculous and crazy sports league around.