When Cronin and Horst went to sleep on Tuesday night, they were confident that they had a trade to complete on Wednesday. The Blazers and Bucks just needed to close out terms with the Suns, and they had a deal.
Here's what made that delicate, though: If the deal fell apart, Horst didn't want another team to know how far along these Blazers-Bucks talks had gotten. The Suns knew they were getting Portland's Nurkic, Nassir Little and Keon Johnson in a three-team trade, but the Suns had to get one more asset to make this deal workable. In almost all cases, Cronin would've told Bartelstein that he was getting Milwaukee guard Grayson Allen, but Horst's insistences on secrecy made this different.
Cronin did tell Bartelstein the general salary and position of the mystery player, so the Suns were able to deduce down to two players who that might be -- Allen and Oklahoma City's Victor Oladipo, who is recovering from a serious leg injury. The Thunder are sometimes on the periphery of these big deals, so the Suns thought that was a possibility. Of course, the Thunder were nowhere near this trade.