Frank Kaminsky confirms that Boston offer on draft night didn’t exist
The myth of the six NBA draft picks offered for Frank Kaminsky is dead, and Frank himself has killed it.
On NBA Draft night 2015, something of a perfect storm happened. As Justise Winslow tumbled down the board, the Boston Celtics allegedly scrambled frantically to find a way to trade up and take him. The Charlotte Hornets, meanwhile, were right in the path of the fall, and by the time Winslow was on the board for them at No. 9 overall, the frenzy among fans was growing to huge proportions.
The Celtics, again, allegedly, offered a total of six picks, or four first-round picks, in order to move up into the ninth pick and take Winslow.
According to Frank Kaminsky, in his reddit AMA, the reporting that flew around that night was not accurate. “The draft night reporting was just off. The 6 picks thing got blown of [sic] of proportion. Went from 2 to 4 to 6 in like 2 days of media reporting but whatever.”
The Celtics are a team that has a bit of a reputation for misleading the media. The Hornets are a team that, especially under the Rich Cho regime, was notorious for not interacting with the media about things that weren’t official, and even sometimes things that were.
Add in Zach Lowe just beginning to make the shift from analytic writer to newsbreaker, some vague quotes from Curtis Polk and Dan Le Batard that referenced an offer but not the contents thereof, and Frank being Frank, and you just had the perfect recipe for misinformation to fly.
Sources that have a high degree of credibility were seemingly corroborating this insane story that the Hornets had passed up this huge offer and drafted that goofy tall guy (who actually turned out fine, in context of the ninth pick).
Three years later, Hornets fans can finally have some closure about that draft. They may not know the exact offer, but they can rest easy in that the crazy things that were reported (even if they were under an old regime), weren’t true, and that the most inside of inside sources has confirmed it.
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They can stop holding that crazy offer over Frank’s head, because it didn’t exist, and maybe, just maybe, they can start to appreciate Frank as a player — just in time for him to hit restricted free agency — rather than bemoaning the mythical picks.