None of this could ever have happened in one of the major American leagues, particularly the NBA, where there is no transfer as such, meaning a player sold for a sum of money. Players move in 3 ways:
The difference between a trade and a transfer is huge.
If I want to sell Mbappé, I need to find some clown willing to pay my asking price, and Mbappé has to agree terms with that clown too. Quite the circus.
In the NBA, the player’s contract belongs to me until it ends: I do whatever I like with it. The contract even stays in the name of the club that signed it, which sometimes leads to strange mix-ups, according to an American lawyer who represents several French players.
This quirk produces some pretty astonishing scenes, with players traded without even knowing it. Just this year, Josh Hart was warming up on the Golden State court, about to face them with his Portland side. A teammate calls him over: he finds out on a phone that he has just been traded to the New York Knicks a few hours before the trade deadline. So he won’t be playing the game.
For anecdote lovers, there’s also Enes Kanter doing a livestream while hundreds of comments tell him he has just been traded (to the Knicks as well). You can see the awkwardness on his face.
And my personal favourite is still Cousins, who learns from a reporter, live, that he has just been traded to the Pelicans (gutted)… before singing the praises of New Orleans 😎.