Tony Snell and Aron Baynes are two NBA roleplayers who have since been traded from their previous teams, leaving their fans with a decision to make.

It’s just before 7 p.m. on a Wednesday when Drake Deno pulls out his phone to check a Twitter alert from ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

“Milwaukee is trading Tony Snell to Detroit, league source tells ESPN”

His notifications are exploding. For the last six months, Deno has operated a novelty fan account that is well-known throughout Bucks Twitter.

“It’s @SnellSZN,” Deno says to me in a Skype call from his home in Madison, Wisc.

Snell being Tony Snell, the player who had just been traded in a salary dump by Deno’s home team.

“Immediately after I saw he was traded I had hundreds and hundreds of mentions coming in and that’s not even a joke.”

Deno says that he had some name recognition among Bucks fans on Twitter, but Woj’s Tweet propelled him to new levels of notoriety.

His followers skyrocketed, his DMs were full and he was getting retweeted by fans across the globe. It was a bittersweet moment for Deno, even though the writing was on the wall for some time.

“Part of me expected it,” Denos says. “When your favorite player on your favorite team gets traded, there’s not much you can do to prepare for it.”

The Milwaukee Bucks sent Snell to the Detroit Pistons along with a first round pick to unload salary ahead of a busy summer. The team had a number of important players entering free agency and Deno’s favorite player was jettisoned to make room to bring back the team’s more vital contributors.

“Even as a Tony Snell lover, for how much the Bucks use him — which is not enough in my opinion — his contract was insane. He was making a lot of money, so from a standpoint of just finances, I understand why they did it.

It’s hard to be an NBA roleplayer.

It can take a mental and physical toll battling for playing time, respect, your next paycheck and your place in the league. Even the best roleplayers in the world know there’s no guarantees. When you’re a non-star who signs with a team, you’re always at risk of being salary filler as part of a bigger deal or a casualty of cap mismanagement that sends you to a team for which you had no intention of playing.

Stars control their own destiny. Roleplayers are along for the ride.

As hard as it can be for an NBA roleplayer, there has to be a similar emotional burden for fans of said player.

Deno started his account to give respect to a player he thought wasn’t appreciated enough by his team or fan base. He liked Snell’s on-court attitude, his silent demeanor and the fact he was always the first person to help up a teammate off the hardwood. You know, roleplayer stuff.

“The more I watched the Bucks and the more playing time Snell got, I realized that he was truly kind of looked over and he didn’t get the credit he deserved and he quickly turned into one of my favorite Bucks.”

For context, Tony Snell played in 78 games in the 2018–19 season, averaging 6 points per game. As a Buck, he averaged 7.2 points per contest on above-average efficiency. Snell was a regular, if uninspiring contributor to the Bucks over his three seasons in Milwaukee.

But Drake’s dedication to the NBA wing never wavered over the years. He wasn’t a fan of Snell because of his counting stats, he liked him because of the things he did that didn’t show up in the box score. But now he finds himself between a rock and a hard place, torn between the player he’s stanned for over the last six months, and an organization he loves that he believes didn’t value his favorite player.

A thousand miles east of Deno, Randall tweets away from a novelty account honoring another underappreciated do-it-all roleplayer/journeyman: Suns center Aron Baynes.

I spoke with Randall over Twitter and email. He runs @BaynesFanClub on both Twitter and Instagram. He wanted to remain anonymous but he was willing to wax poetic about his favorite player for this story.

“Superstars like Kawhi/LeBron/KD etc. always get the mainstream shine but I’ve always been a fan of unheralded role players/glue guys,” Randall said in an email.



Randall lives in Massachusetts and has been running the Unofficial Aron Baynes Fan Club account since February. As a Boston fan, he’s seen firsthand what quality utility players can add to a contender.

“Looking back to 2008 Celtics, KG/Pierce/Ray were the stars but they weren’t winning that championship without James Posey and Eddie House.” Neither house nor Posey ever averaged double digit points in their Boston careers, but articles from that championship run back up that claim.

Randall’s been a loyal Celtics fans for years, but watching the way his beloved franchise handled his favorite player left him feeling a bit perturbed. He says he thinks they’ll regret trading Baynes to the Phoenix Suns.

“He was perfect for the role he was in, of giving them solid minutes of tough defense and hustle, plus he opted in because he wanted to be in Boston and on the Celtics.”

Randall is referring to Baynes’ 2020 player option. Reports indicate Baynes chose to return to the Celtics for just shy of $6 million for the upcoming season. As Keith Smith reports, the decision was a “no-brainer” as Baynes felt home in Boston. Smith also reported that Baynes had opted to stay with Boston with the assumption he would not be traded in the summer.

Oops.

In tweets following the trade, Randall called Boston Celtics General Manager Danny Ainge callous for the handling of Baynes.

His franchise betrayed his favorite player, but Randall says he’s received support from other fans. Like Deno, on the news that his favorite player had been traded, his phone immediately blew up with hundreds of mentions and direct messages.

“I saw the Woj tweet and my notifications instantly went crazy,” Randall says.

Mentions of @BaynesFanClub are still flooding in, over a month after the trade was announced on draft night. And Randall continues to hype up Baynes as a potential difference maker for Phoenix, repeatedly taking shots at the Celtics.

As the NBA season moves onto the next story in its revolving door of content, and with a chaotic free agency period winding gown, two fans of two obscure NBA roleplayers found something interesting in their notifications.

Among the hundreds of mentions and direct messages in the wake of the trades, both Randall and Drake said fans of their favorite player’s new team reached out to them for their honest takes regarding each respective player.

“I was added to a couple Pistons group chats, people messaging me ‘Welcome to the team’ and ‘Motor City’ and that kind of thing,” Deno said.



Randall says Suns fans reached out to him too. He’s responded to the new followers by crowning the Suns’ Devin Booker, De’Andre Ayton and Baynes as the league’s new big three. Newly-signed Ricky Rubio was the biggest move of free agency, if you take his word for it.

Despite the trades, Both Randall and Drake say their loyalties to the Celitcs and Bucks, respectively, remains unchanged, but they aren’t giving up on their favorite players. Deno says he hopes to attend a Pistons game this year and he’ll be watching their games closely this season. Randall has since re-branded to the SunOffical Aron Baynes Fan Club. He spent the majority of July trying to convince superstars like Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant to get in at the ground floor of an up-and-coming superteam.

As fans of players who keep their mouths shut and do the gritty work that helps teams win, both Drake and Randall started their accounts in hopes of raising the national profile of their favorite players. They were the voice of the players who had no interest in being seen or talked about. They wanted fans of their teams and the rest of NBA Twitter to appreciate the players they love.

To me, it honestly seems like they might have actually succeeded to some degree. Their promotion — and a change of fanbases — might actually open some eyes. For the first time, new fans are seeing what Drake and Randall have been seeing for years, something their favorite teams must’ve missed.

Such is life for an NBA roleplayer. Such is life for their fans.

@SnellSZN and @BaynesFanClub are both on Twitter. Both accounts are weird and nutty and great.

Travis Schlepp is a journalist and NBA Twitter junkie living in Santa Barbara County, California. You can follow him on Twitter.