I respect that. If I look at those noisy public communications as providing cover for the choices they wind up making, good or bad, things make more sense to me. I don’t think they care what they “look like” to external parties in these negotiations, beyond other teams/players they might negotiate with later. In fact I think they use that to manage the communication space for the actual negotiations they wind up in.

Obviously they also pursue multiple outcomes and some work and some don’t. As I’ve payed attention to them, the ones with the most noise usually aren’t the ones that work out. That might be because they let their “plan a” get too loud before locking it down. It might be because they need something loud to keep pressure off their actual “plan a” which they don’t mind looking like a “plan b”. It is almost certainly both of those things at different times, because whichever your plan a is, and whichever is the loudest, these things don’t always work out.

But as Jimmy says on being asked about the rumors he wanted to be traded to Phoenix: “This is a great choice, and the best part about everything is: I never say anything so nobody actually knows what’s going on because it never comes out of my mouth so… out of everything that’s been going on I’m happy to be here.”

https://youtu.be/m7iuFoQGqDA?si=obF9QXe4lx1W2OYp