Enes Kanter Says The Blazers Gave Him Six Minutes To Consider Their Contract Offer

Enes Kanter signed a two-year, $10 million deal with the Boston Celtics yesterday, bringing an end to his short but feel-good tenure as a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. Kanter’s time in Portland may have gone on a little longer if the team hadn’t, according to Kanter, given him just a few minutes to consider their contract offer:

It may sound crazy that a professional NBA team would give a guy just six minutes to make such a big life decision, but developments in this year’s free agency period have been particularly fast and furious. On an episode of his podcast this morning, NBA insider Adrian Wojnarowski provided a little peek into just how hectic the last two days have been:

What happened at 6:00 p.m. was, stuff started happening. And as one agent said to me, it felt like this really fast game of musical chairs. What I sensed from both teams and players, there were a lot of scenarios—more and right away—where either teams wanted to get their player done fast, or agents wanted to get a slot for their players before the market dried up. And there was a lot of, “Hey, you have an hour, you have 20 minutes, you have 30 minutes, or we’re going to the next guy. We want an answer.”

It’s suddenly a lot easier to understand how the Knicks threw millions of dollars at a handful of role players if you imagine all their decisions being made on the fly through panicked phone calls.