The best thing about the Desmond Bane trade is that it came out of nowhere. There were no leaks. No rumors. I simply woke up and found out that Bane now played for the Orlando Magic. That’s the way it should be. I wanted to get a sense for how out of the blue this trade was so I reached out to Zach Rodriguez, the founder of Fanspo, which hosts one of the most popular NBA trade machines on the internet. In the last year alone, Fanspo users created more than 120,000 fake trades, according to Rodriguez. I asked Rodriguez, of those 120,000+ fake trades, how many of them featured Bane being sent to Orlando in exchange for Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Cole Anthony. Rodriguez queried his database and wrote back, “After some digging, I was only able to find two trades that involved these three players and only those two teams.” -via Substack / June 18, 2025
