Bogdan Bogdanovic explained his side of his controversial restricted free agency in an interview with Sam Amick of The Athletic.
Reports surfaced before the start of free agency that the Milwaukee Bucks and Sacramento Kings had a sign-and-trade deal in place involving Bogdanovic.
The confusion over how that happened remains to this day for Bogdanovic.
The sign-and-trade was reported while Bogdanovic was asleep in Serbia.
“Everyone was congratulating me like it was done, and I didn’t know what was going on, really,” said Bogdanovic. “And then, the NBA investigation – again, I’m reading it off the Twitter again, what was going on. My agent was obviously telling me, but what was unprofessional out of everything was not letting the player know, not letting him know what was going on. It was 1 a.m., 2 a.m. in (Belgrade) and I was sleeping. And I was sleeping the whole night. I wake up in the morning, I’m getting ready for my workout, and I see that on the Twitter. That was my experience of my free agency. After that, I was scared.”
The sign-and-trade couldn’t actually be agreed upon without the approval of Bogdanovic.
“Yeah, but they couldn’t do that before free agency starts, so the next day the NBA investigation got in. My agent called me, and he told me, ‘This cannot be done. They screwed up. They cannot trade a restricted free agent before free agency starts.’ I really don’t know. I really don’t know what happened. But that was, at the end, what I heard from my agent. The NBA investigation is on this deal, so even if we agree, they can say this doesn’t count, that this is tampering.”
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