10:44am: If the Suns and Raptors reach an agreement, it's likely to come in the final hour before the deadline, tweets ESPN.com's Marc Stein, who says that Telfair would likely be swapped for Hamed Haddadi and a second-round pick.
8:34am: NBA fans may not breathlessly be discussing the Sebastian Telfair sweepstakes, but according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (via Twitter), the Raptors have emerged as the frontrunners to land Telfair.
We heard earlier this week that the Suns were looking to move Telfair in order to create playing time for rookie point guard Kendall Marshall. The club's efforts to trade Telfair likely intensified after Phoenix agreed to acquire Marcus Morris — with 15 players already on the roster, the team will need to trade or release a player to clear room for the newest Sun.
The Suns' need to move or let go of a player should create leverage for the Raptors, who have been eyeing a number of backup point guards on the trade market. However, because Telfair makes more than the minimum salary, the Raps would have to send out a little salary of their own to make a deal work financially. Doug Smith of the Toronto Star suggested today that trading Alan Anderson in a deal for a backup point guard is a possibility for Toronto.
Why, why, why are they thinking of shipping Alan Anderson out? This guy is a work horse with a big heart. I understand the need for an extra back up at the point guard slot but PLEASE we need Alan Anderson
Maybe to get Terrence Ross more minutes? And we don’t need Alan Anderson, he has one good game every now and then but he is inconsistent and will have a big stretch of games where he cant hit anything from behind the arc. He’s not a core piece and never was, packaging him with a player to get a core piece is a smart move.
I will be EXTREMELY disappointed if the Raptors ship our Alan Anderson for garbage. Alan Anderson is a hard worker, he can dribble penetrate, run the point, pass, hit clutch 3 pointers, and has very streaky potential. This guy is the perfect back-up wing player that the Raptors NEED right now. If they are to trade him, I expect him to be packaged with a larger contract, for an impact player. He has rightfully increased his value, and a trade for Telfair would certainly be a ‘sell-low’ situation.