The Lakers are professionals at grabbing headlines.
Sometimes, they don't even need to do anything proactively, like now, the Lakers never thought about bringing in Barkley, nor did they illegally contact Barkley in any way.
Actually, as per normal protocol, Barkley has no way to interact with the Lakers. He can't even express his desire to join until he genuinely refuses to execute the player option.
But he can state his desire to the Phoenix Suns to join the Lakers, letting the Suns inform the Lakers of his intentions.
On May 28th, the morning after the Western Conference Finals ended, Zhang Hao called Logo Man, inquiring about Barkley's interest in joining.
Due to NBA rules, Logo Man didn't speak directly but replied with, "Any NBA trade could happen... not including you."
Then he called Henry Thomas to try and find out Barkley's schedule. By noon, while having lunch at a beach in Miami, Zhang Hao proposed changing their destination to Hawaii.
