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SALT LAKE CITY — On Feb. 5, 2019, Mike Conley assumed he was playing his final game as a Memphis Grizzlies player.
The old Grint and Grind era was over. Marc Gasol had been a late scratch that night as the team prepared to send him to Toronto, and Conley was told he would soon be next.
So the beloved Memphis point guard made sure to soak it all in. During each timeout he cast his eyes around the FedEx Forum; he'd look into the crowd and see the faces of the fans who supported him for more than a decade.
He'd look at his teammate and his coaches, people he had gone to battle with night on and night; he'd look at his wife and kids, sitting in the in the same spot they had been in for 12 seasons. If this was goodbye, he wanted to make sure he remembered the details.
He even gave an emotional press conference thanking the city and the fans following the game, and then waited for a call that never came. Two days later when the deadline passed, he was still a member of the Grizzlies.
At the deadline, nothing is certain.
"I'm sitting in my room and we got a game that day, we're playing the Thunder, so I'm like, do I fly back to Memphis? What am I doing? I'm already thinking about plans and stuff," Conley recalled. "Then it's like, 'Yeah, we're gonna hold on to you for the rest of year.' So I went and got on the bus and went and played. I kind of went through it a little bit. So I try to tell guys you never know — it really could happen last minute or nothing could happen."
This year's NBA trade deadline is set for Thursday at 1 p.m. MST, and the uncertainty around it is why most players attempt to shut all the talk out. That, though, sometimes is easier said than done.
Take Joe Ingles for example. He admitted that he never got caught up in trade rumors before because he was pretty confident he wasn't going anywhere. That all changed this season. His expiring deal, alone, made him a trade target. And suddenly he was put into a lot of potential fake trades.
When those were put out by anyone, he and his wife would suddenly get a slew of messages.
"Getting texts from people, saying, 'Oh, I can't believe you're moving to X, Y, or Z,' and it's like, … 'nothing's even happened yet,'" Ingles said.
The rumors haven't stopped since Ingles tore his ACL last week. His expiring contract is still a valuable trade asset, even if Ingles won't be suiting up for a new team this season.
When he was asked if he thought his contract could still be moved by the deadline, he laughed.
"Yeah, I'm not stupid," Ingles said, mentioning that it's been more on his mind now because he has a little bit more free time to just sit and think.
Regardless of what happens, Ingles admitted his injury makes a trade easier to deal with. He's not going to uproot his family just to do rehab in another city. And moving his wife and three kids was always his biggest worry when he heard trade speculation. He doesn't doubt he can play anywhere.
Finding a new school for his kids, finding a trusted therapist for his son Jacob — who has autism — and trying to find a community as a family was much more daunting. With the injury, he won't have to deal with that. If Ingles is traded, he will still live in Utah for the time being.
"I would never say Utah is 'home,' but it's been 'home' for us the last eight years," Ingles said.
Unlike Ingles, trade chatter is an old hat for Jordan Clarkson. On draft night, he was traded from the Washington Wizards to the Los Angeles Lakers. He was dealt from Los Angeles to Cleveland at the 2018 deadline. Finally, he went from Cleveland to Utah in a trade in December 2019.
So Clarkson, whose name has emerged in numerous trade rumors this deadline, simply tries to tune it all out.
"I don't even think about it, to be honest with you," he said. "I've been traded before, so it's not like something new for me; it is what it is. It's part of the business, you know, teams do things and stuff like that. So I just know it's part of the business. If somebody's getting traded, if I'm getting traded or anything — I know seats are gonna be filled around the NBA."
So best not pay attention to every whisper this time of the year. That's at least the goal — with social media, however, it's difficult to escape.
"It's hard to dodge the madness at this time of the year," Conley said. "We all know what's out there."
At least everyone but Bojan Bogdanovic.
"I don't read anything, so I don't know if my name is mentioned or not," he said earlier this week.
The Jazz forward said he didn't have Twitter, so he's unaware of what rumors involve him or his teammates. In short, he doesn't know anything. And, well, neither does anyone else. Conley can attest to that.
At the deadline, nothing is certain.
