You ALWAYS equivocate. Unless you're dead serious. Subtlety is key. But a blanket statement in public? Nah.
"We have no plans to trade him" = slight equivocation.
"You always listen to offers, but we want Boogie here" = slight equivocation
You don't come out and say that a guy's untradeable, slap your coach's hand a bit, unless you mean it. Not publicly. You could do it on the phone with somebody. But publicly you've put your name behind it. You turn around and trade him nobody has any reason to believe anything that comes out of your mouth afterwards.
I think you are substituting in your own feelings for what's on paper now. You wouldn't consider him untradeable, so no matter how clearly somebody says he is, you can always just say, well they didn't mean it. But if you're Vlade, newly minted basketball kingpin, you can't do that. It would just be another in the long line of egg on the face front office debacles to turn around and in fact trade the guy you just called untradeable, in public, during an interview.