The weirdest NBA stories of the past 12 months

From a big picture perspective, arguably the strangest thing that happened this past year was the entire Kawhi-Raptors experience. Masai Ujiri took a massive risk in acquiring the Southern California native despite being warned that Leonard wanted to play in L.A. — essentially, the Raptors had to win a championship to both justify trading for Leonard and to have a chance at re-signing him. The magical season was bookended with memorable laughs from the "fun guy" and the team's first championship. And while Leonard left for the L.A. Clippers anyway, Ujiri's gamble was worth it in the end.

Although teams like the Spurs and Warriors have been resting players during the regular season for years, the Raptors started a trend this past season by using "load management" as the reason for resting their superstar, Kawhi Leonard, throughout the season. Load management immediately caught on elsewhere, as we saw nearly every team use it to rest their top players, especially on the second night of back-to-back games. While it ticked off fans and talking heads, give the Raptors credit: It worked, as Kawhi peaked during the playoffs and carried them to a championship. 

John Wall's year began with a hilarious Team USA photo. (He'd clearly been enjoying his offseason in Vegas.) Next, there was the tumultuous early-season practice that got leaked to the public. Shortly thereafter, Wall injured his Achilles and was set to miss most of, if not all of, the rest of the season. Finally, Wall re-injured the same Achilles at his home, which all but guaranteed that he'd miss the upcoming 2019-2020 season. His name is now synonymous with the "worst contract in the NBA" tagline. Doesn't get much worse than that.

In what seems like ages ago, Jimmy Butler did everything humanly possible to get traded out of Minnesota early last season. He questioned the heart and desire of Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns. He destroyed the starters with third-stringers at an infamous practice that was later brilliantly mocked in Game of Zones and then did an ESPN interview with Rachel Nichols and reiterated his desire to be traded. Finally, Tom Thibodeau relented and traded Butler to the 76ers, but the damage was done and Thibs was fired shortly thereafter.

After Fred Hoiberg's early dismissal, Chicago's front office turned to Jim Boylan to instill some toughness into the young, impressionable Bulls. What transpired next was hilarious. Boylan channeled his inner high school disciplinarian on the team and had players doing pushups and windsprints for hours during practice (which is unheard of in the NBA during the season). It bothered them so much that they considered a full team boycott of practice. During the meeting of the minds that followed, the team established a "leadership committee" to bridge the gap between the players and coach. Let the record show that NBA's first leadership committee members were Zach LaVine, Robin Lopez, Lauri Markkanen, Justin Holiday and Bobby Portis.

In what will always be the moment when people realized Kevin Durant wasn't long for Golden State, the Draymond Green-Kevin Durant argument thrust the Warriors' season into chaos in November. It started when Green didn't pass the ball to Durant in the final seconds of a tie game. Durant took issue with Green as the two went back to the bench. Green, never one to back down from a fight, let Durant know about how he and the rest of the team felt about how he was approaching his upcoming free agency. It clearly struck a nerve with Durant, as Green was suspended and fined for his actions and the team treated Durant with kid gloves the rest of the season.

Although this event didn't occur within the last year, the Kevin Arnovitz story that chronicled the GM Ryan McDonough era in Phoenix did. In a prank that was meant to serve as inspiration to McDonough, Suns owner, Robert Sarver put live goats in the former's office...well, live goats did what live goats do and proceeded to defecate over the entire office — which was probably a more fitting metaphor for the McDonough era than Greatest of All Time.

With the team struggling and Chris Paul injured, James Harden took his scoring (36.1 points per game) to a level we hadn't seen since Michael Jordan averaged 37.1 points per game in 1986-87. Harden's mastery of the step-back three-pointer (not to mention the NBA's liberal interpretation of the "gather" step) made him completely unstoppable in isolations. And despite not winning the MVP award, Harden's 2018-19 season made for some of the best individual regular-season performances people had ever seen, including two 61-point games, two 58-point games and two 57-point games.

In one of the more hilarious stories of the past year, the Suns, Grizzlies and Wizards agreed to a three-team deal involving Trevor Ariza, Kelly Oubre Jr., Austin Rivers, Wayne Selden and one of the two guys named Brooks on Memphis — Dillon or MarShon. As the story goes, the trade was essentially finalized until the Grizzlies realized that the Suns thought they were receiving Dillon Brooks (a decent prospect) instead of MarShon Brooks (a scrub). Multiple players were told they had been traded only to learn that they actually hadn't been traded later that day. It's unclear who was at fault here, but odds are it was the inept Suns.

Just when things started to look like they were coming together for the Lakers, LeBron James suffered the first serious soft tissue injury of his career — a groin strain — on Christmas Day. At the time, the Lakers were in the mix of the second-tier teams in the Western Conference. James missed the next 17 games, of which the Lakers won only six, and returned a lesser version of LeBron James we've grown accustomed to seeing. L.A. would go on to have a dramatic (more on that later) and ugly finish to its season, missing the playoffs — marking the first time James missed the playoffs since 2005.

Despite having two years remaining on his contract, Anthony Davis decided that he no longer wanted to play in New Orleans and that he wanted to play in Los Angeles for the Lakers. He hired Rich Paul to represent him and eventually demanded a trade. The public pursuit for Davis catapulted the Lakers' season when the Pelicans front office wouldn't yield as literally every player except LeBron James was involved in trade rumors/offers, destroying the little chemistry they'd built up by midseason. In the offseason, New Orleans hired David Griffin to oversee its rebuild, and Griffin took full advantage of the Lakers' thirst for Davis, acquiring Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and the rights to nearly every L.A. pick for the foreseeable future.

Weird stuff always happens every trade deadline — players find out that they're traded on Twitter or when they land from a team flight or sometimes just before a game. Rarely do they find out that they've been traded in the middle of a game, like Harrison Barnes did this past trade deadline. Even more rarely do players find out they're likely going to be traded and then choose to play the game and even stay on the bench to be with their teammates for the rest of the game after finding out they were traded. It was an incredibly bizarre but incredibly professional move by Barnes.

Ironically, this essentially was a slide in last year's slideshow as well. After seemingly getting over his case of the yips, former No. 1 pick Markelle Fultz struggled early and often last season and quickly reverted to his glitch-looking free throw before the Sixers shut him down and eventually traded him to the Magic. Ben Simmons also continued to refuse to shoot three-pointers last season, attempting a whopping total of six all regular season (after only shooting 11 his rookie year). The next three-pointer Simmons makes will be his first career three-point field goal. 

When the season began, most NBA pundits expected the Celtics to have the best regular-season record in the league and perhaps the best shot at taking down the Warriors. Kyrie Irving had different plans, as he decided to try to be an aloof leader of the young, impressionable Celtics. Irving's complaining, poor attitude and subsequent poor play against the Bucks destroyed the team's chemistry, leading to a second-round exit. The Ls kept coming this summer as longtime defensive centerpiece, Al Horford, left for the rival 76ers. 

The Lakers' year from hell begin with a wild Magic Johnson interview at the NBA Summer League and ended with an even stranger one in the moments before the Lakers' final regular-season game. Without telling Jeanie Buss or Rob Pelinka or LeBron James or anyone in the organization, Magic abruptly resigned as the team president of the Lakers during an interview. A few days later, he was on "First Take," saying Pelinka had backstabbed him. Months later he was helping to recruit Kawhi Leonard to the Lakers. What an absurd sequence of events!

Kawhi's series-winning shot in Game 7 of the second round vs. the Sixers was one of those "I'll always remember where I was" moments. Kawhi's shot not only produced a couple of the most iconic still pictures in sports history, but it also changed the landscape of the NBA. Had the Sixers won that game, they very well could have won the title, meaning there's no way Jimmy Butler goes to Miami or Al Horford goes to Philly — or Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Bucks may have made and/or won the championship, or the Warriors may have three-peated and Kevin Durant may have re-signed. The fourth bounce will always be an amazing shot and sliding doors moment in NBA history.

Shortly after losing Game 1 of their highly anticipated playoff rematch vs. the Warriors, it was revealed that the foul-baiting Rockets had audited Game 7 of the 2017-18 Western Conference Finals (a loss to the Warriors in which the Rockets missed 27 straight three-pointers). The audit claimed that the referees missed 81 totals calls, non-calls and violations that worked against the Rockets. Can we get them a banner that reads, "might have been the 2018 NBA champions"? This revelation not only seemed to distract the Rockets from winning a series they should have won (especially once Durant got injured in Game 5), but it also turned casual NBA fans even more against Houston and the ultimate referee manipulator, James Harden. 

In a cruel twist of poetic justice, just as Kevin Durant seemed to have finally ascended past LeBron James in the Best Player in the World rankings last spring, the basketball gods who apparently don't appreciate when players cheat the process of becoming a champion, intervened as Durant injured his "calf" in a second round matchup vs. the Rockets (I'm kidding...kind of). Despite the Warriors' insistence that this was a mild calf strain, this non-contact injury seemed a lot like a much more serious Achilles injury. As pressure to return mounted, Durant returned about a month later with his Warriors trailing three games to one against the Raptors in the NBA Finals. Durant came out blazing in Game 5, burying three triples early and looking like a savior. Sadly, early in the second quarter, Durant's Achilles ruptured. We may never know whether the Warriors' medical staff was to blame for this injury, but we can all agree that basketball was robbed of seeing the peak of one of the best players in its storied history. 

From trash talking the likes of Giannis Antetokounmpo and Draymond Green to giving Raptors coach Nick Nurse a shoulder rub midgame, Drake's sideline antics became a show unto itself these past playoffs. The NBA even told him and the Raptors to tone it down. To Drake's credit, some of the trolling was excellent — like when he wore a Raptors Dell Curry jersey to a Finals game to mess with Steph Curry.

After winning his second title and being crowned the best player in basketball, Kawhi Leonard took his sweet old time deciding which uniform he'd wear in 2019-20. In doing so, he strung all three teams along while the free agency market dried up. And by keeping his intentions close to the vest, he made all three teams believe they were the front-runner before he signed with and convinced the Clippers to trade for Paul George. It was a pretty cold-blooded move to do that to the Lakers and Raptors. Moreover, he signed only a two-year deal with the Clippers, which will keep them on edge the next two seasons. It certainly was the Summer of Kawhi.

Back in the 2012 NBA Finals, the Thunder seemed poised to become the team of the decade, as they had Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Serge Ibaka all under contract and all about to hit their primes. If you played out the past seven years in a simulator 100 times, the Thunder probably win a championship 90-95 times. Shockingly, the era ended with Paul George and Russell Westbrook being traded after failing to get out of the first round in consecutive seasons. If there's a silver lining to their failure to win a championship, they acquired 10 future first-round draft picks/swaps for their troubles and could theoretically build another contender.

After disappearing for a number of years, the sign-and-trade being utilized as a free agent mechanism made a return in a huge way this past summer. In the past, the sign-and-trade was primarily used when a restricted free agent would leave a team and a team usually transferred that player and some nominal draft picks. This past summer, however, teams executed sign-and-trades with unrestricted free agents and in player-for-player deals. Some of the biggest sign-and-trades this summer included Kevin Durant for D'Angelo Russell, Jimmy Butler for Josh Richardson and Kemba Walker for Terry Rozier.

Death, taxes, and the Kings jettisoning their head coach. Some things just never change. In a move that left people baffled, the Kings decided to fire Dave Joerger this offseason despite the team improving by 12 wins from the previous season — no easy feat in the West — and its franchise players — De'Aaron Fox, Marvin Bagley and Buddy Hield — all showing marked improvement throughout the season. Good luck, Luke Walton. Hope you negotiate a nice buyout! 

After parting ways with Luke Walton this offseason, the Lakers first tried to go after Monty Williams and, later, Tyrone Lue. Both of them balked at the Lakers' offers. Finally, they hired arguably the best X's and O's guy out of the lot in Frank Vogel. However, in typical Lakers fashion, they forced Vogel to hire "LeBron's guy," Jason Kidd, as an assistant coach. Ask David Blatt how having LeBron's guy serve as your top assistant worked out for him.

The Knicks went all in on this offseason and failed miserably. They dealt their best young prospect in decades, Kristaps Porzingis, to the Mavericks for Dennis Smith Jr., two future first-round picks and some cap space. They finished with the best odds to win the Zion Williamson sweepstakes. They allegedly were in line to sign both Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving with two max cap spots. And...they ended up with RJ Barrett (No. 3 pick) and Julius Randle, Bobby Portis, Taj Gibson and Marcus Morris. Classic Knicks!

For whatever reason, the Rockets organization seems to want Mike D'Antoni gone...but won't fire him. In addition to trading a steadying presence in Chris Paul for the more erratic Russell Westbrook, and not extending him this summer, the team dismissed essentially his entire staff of assistant coaches during the offseason. Thus, it looks like D'Antoni will enter the 2019-20 season as a lame duck coach. On its face, it's a strange move, considering how close this team has been to winning a title under D'Antoni. Then again, I guess nothing is all that strange when your team's owner pens a book titled " Shut up and Listen!"

After winning the lottery and drafting Zion Williamson, trading Anthony Davis for a then-historic haul and signing the likes of JJ Redick and Ed Davis, David Griffin tried to put an exclamation point on a summer heater by taking a couple of shots at LeBron James in a Sports Illustrated piece about the Pelicans. Apparently, the pressure that came with building around LeBron made Griffin "miserable" and wasn't as fun as he wanted it to be — get this guy a participation trophy! Well, after the cover story ran, Griffin immediately did some backtracking at the urging of LeBron's camp. Come at the King; you best not miss!

Although it's not a huge surprise that the best players in the NBA — the LeBrons, Currys and Hardens of the league — bailed on a non-Olympic tournament, this summer got pretty ridiculous. Everyone, Damian Lillard to Devin Booker to Landry Shamet, passed on playing for Gregg Popovich in China. When the team was finalized, Kemba Walker and Donovan Mitchell were far and away the top players. That did not turn out well at all, as the team lost to France in the elimination pool and Serbia on its way to an embarrassing seventh-place finish, the worst finish in FIBA event ever. Hopefully, this will inspire another Redeem Team-type re-investment into FIBA hoops for the US of A.

The end to a Hall of Fame player's prime typically goes one of two ways: The player either adapts to a new role a la Vince Carter and extends his career or refuses to adapt, becomes an inefficient version of his former self and has his career abruptly end like Allen Iverson. Carmelo Anthony, despite clearly being in the Iverson category, has somehow managed to stay relevant in NBA circles with workout videos, "First Take" appearances and hype from current and former players. Yet, he still doesn't have a job. Is he being blackballed? Probably not. Even if he was, who cares? He is no longer a needle-mover in today's game. There's no reason to waste time discussing Melo's basketball abilities unless he gets signed.

After an uneventful 2017-18 season with the Jazz and Rockets, Joe "Iso-Joe" Johnson took his talents to Ice Cube's Big 3 league. Despite turning 38 during last season, Johnson laid waste to the entire league, leading his team to a championship, earning MVP honors, and leading the league in points by a wide margin as well as assists. Turns out, Iso Joe had a lot more in the tank than anyone expected. His Big 3 dominance earned him another shot in the NBA, as he recently signed with the Detroit Pistons, becoming the first player to use the Big 3 as a platform to get back into the NBA.