Early Tuesday, a report surfaced saying that the Indiana Pacers had offered to trade center Roy Hibbert and their 15th overall pick in Thursday's NBA Draft to the Minnesota Timberwolves for the right to select Derrick Williams. That report, apparently, was wrong.
"We're not doing that, nah," Larry Bird said at a press conference on Tuesday afternoon. "I'm not interested in that trade. Roy is one of our core group guys, the draft is a good draft -- not a great draft -- and if there was somebody at No. 2 that we were really targeting that I think would make us a lot better? Yeah, you have to do it."
I believe in Roy, I think he's one of our hardest workers and while you never say you won't trade anybody because you never know what's going to happen in the next couple of days, but no, we will not trade Roy today."
This seemingly means that every trade rumor that has been brought to the media's attention involving the Timberwolves has now been denied by the team supposedly doing the offering. Maybe things will change by Thursday, but maybe David Kahn will just have to select Williams and deal with the mess it potentially creates with having all of the team's best players playing the same position.
To watch the entire Bird conference from Tuesday, it's available at Pacers.com.