It has been the story of the offseason: DeAndre Jordan verbally committed to the Dallas Mavericks, but had second thoughts as the moratorium wore on ultimately re-signed with the Los Angeles Clippers in dramatic fashion. Jordan took a lot of heat for not reaching out directly to Mavs owner Mark Cuban. Jordan apologized on Twitter, Cuban would have none of it. Chandler Parsons took his shot at Jordan. Through it all Cuban has gone from obviously frustrated to seeming to have moved on.
Jordan now turned to the Players Tribune to tell his side of the story directly.
“I woke up Monday morning feeling like there was something missing, something I didn’t do, something that was not covered, and that’s when I started to begin to have second thoughts...
“Originally I said yes to the Mavericks because I thought I needed change. I thought I wanted change at that point in time...
“At the end of the day, we’re basketball players and great athletes but we are also human and we make mistakes, we have emotions and feelings just like everybody else....
“I’ve been here since I was 19 so this is what I know. I love this city, I love the fans, I love my teammates, and I love this organization.”
In the written part of the piece at the Tribune, Jordan also discussed his relationship with Chris Paul.
“I love Chris, man. Chris is a big brother to me. When you play sports, you’re competitive — especially when you play them at as high a level as we have these last few years. And of course, yeah, we all bump heads during the course of the game. But we know that whatever criticisms or arguments we have on the floor, they’re about one thing: winning....
“Ultimately, I made the right decision for me, and now I have to own that. What’s important to me now is to explain how it all happened.”
What Jordan did was not handled professionally — as Commissioner Adam Silver said it was not a good look — but it was well within his rights to do. There will be no rule changes, the NBA’s moratorium at the start of free agency will remain the same. What will change is that next year, when a team gets a commitment from a free agent early in free agency, that team will continue to recruit and babysit that player until they sign the contract.
