4:57pm: A source who spoke to Joe Cowley of the Chicago Sun-Times disputes that the Bulls are once more pushing to trade for Love.
4:08pm: The general belief is that the Wolves asked for Joakim Noah when they held preliminary talks about Love with the Bulls prior to the draft last month, according to K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune. Presumably, Chicago rebuffed Minnesota on that point.
3:40pm: Dieng’s name hasn’t come up in talks with Cleveland, and neither has Martin’s, reports Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press. Krawczynski cautions that Martin’s name was indeed a part of talks with the Warriors earlier in the offseason (Twitter links).
2:44pm: Gorgui Dieng‘s name has also come up in talks between the Cavs and Wolves, sources tell Sam Amico of Fox Sports Ohio (Twitter link).
2:11pm: Cleveland’s search for non-guaranteed contracts are in fact in an effort to sweeten their offer for Love, Wojnarowski writes in a full story, as they would provide cap relief for Minnesota once waived. The Cavs are also dangling future first-round picks in search of an experienced center, sources tell Wojnarowski, though it’s unclear if that, too, is related to Love. Wojnarowski is among the reporters contending that the Cavs are willing to put Wiggins in the deal, a point of frequent debate.
The Nuggets also remain in play for Love, according to Wojnarowski, and their package is Minnesota’s favorite outside of Cleveland’s and Golden State’s, if the Warriors were to relent and offer Klay Thompson. Denver reportedly offered multiple packages in June, but it’s unclear what the Nuggets have on the table now. The Wolves are insisting that teams take on J.J. Barea as part of any Love trade, and possibly Kevin Martin, too, Wojnarowski adds.
1:15pm: The Wolves also like Bulls rookie Doug McDermott, but their priority remains acquiring Wiggins if possible, Wolfson tweets.
12:57pm: The Bulls are indeed making another push to get involved in the Love sweepstakes, report Marc Stein and Brian Windhorst of ESPN.com. The general belief is that the Wolves would seek Taj Gibson, Jimmy Butler and other assets from Chicago, according to Stein and Windhorst. The Bulls and Warriors were seemingly Love’s top two destinations when he made a push to be traded in May, but Chicago put any pursuit of him on the backburner while it chased Carmelo Anthony.
Still, the Cavs remain in the lead for Love and are increasingly optimistic that they can find a package that will work for the Wolves, Stein and Windhorst write. Their offer would center around Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Bennett and a first-round pick, Stein and Windhorst hear, echoing a report last week from fellow ESPN scribe Chris Broussard and perhaps signaling a renewed willingness from Cleveland to part with Wiggins.
11:09am: The notion of including Andrew Wiggins in a trade for Kevin Love appears to be a matter the Cavs have tabled for now, but Cleveland remains in daily contact with the Wolves, tweets Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities. The Wolves are ready to pull off a deal, but the Cavs are reticent to trade future first-round picks, as Gery Woelfel of The Journal Times hears (Twitter link). Minnesota is interested in the protected 2015 first-round picks the Cavs have coming from the Heat and Grizzlies, according to Jeff Goodman of ESPN.com (Twitter links).
The Bulls could find themselves in position to acquire Love, especially given the presence of Nikola Mirotic on the roster, if the Cavs won’t give up the picks the Wolves want, sources also tell Woelfel (Twitter link). As Mirotic was finalizing his buyout from Real Madrid of Spain, he reportedly wanted the Bulls to assure him that he wouldn’t be traded, though it’s unclear if Chicago ever addressed that issue.
The Cavs are on the prowl for non-guaranteed contracts that they can flip and use as trade ballast in subsequent deals, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports (on Twitter). Cleveland remains under the cap, so it isn’t subject to a two-month waiting period that would prevent it from immediately aggregating salary it received via trade in another swap. It appears as though the Cavs are going after these contracts at least in part to help build their portfolio for a Love trade, though that’s just my speculation.
Why the bulls? They are fine the way they are. Is Gasol going to go on the bench? Would be a stupid trade for them
Getting Love wouldn’t be a stupid move for any team. He’s a top 10 player in the league. Gasol could get starter minutes as the sixth man. Having said that, I don’t see them getting Love.
He’s a top 10 player in your fantasy league.
Name 10 players better than Kevin Love.
Nope, he’s a top 10 player in the NBA.
But giving up Butler and/or Gibson would be stupid. Disrupts chemistry and they did fine on the team. Love wouldn’t work well with Thibodeau
Why wouldn’t Love work well with Thibs?
I don’t buy that. A good portion of defense is closing out possessions. Love is one of the best defensive rebounders in the NBA. He’s not an elite 1-on-1 defender, but he still has some value on that end of the floor.
Butler and Gibson are role players. And Kevin Love is one of the three best players in the league (and the best post player in a decade). I doubt Thibs couldn’t work with him, but if that were the case then Thibs would have no business being an NBA coach. That’s asinine. That’s like Cleveland passing on LeBron because of their coach. It’s not even an issue.
A bidding war between division “rivals” (debatable, for sure) is about the best-case scenario for Minnesota.
This sounds more like the Mavs attempt to derail Houston. Maybe it induces a ‘bidding war’ and the Cavs give up more than they should. However, Love expressed interest in Chicago before LeBron went to Cleveland though, so don’t simply expect him to resign with the Bulls.
Cleveland won’t have cap room next summer. If they can’t swing a trade, they won’t have Love. If the Bulls trade for him, not signing means he’s relegated to alsorans like the Knicks. If he wanted to play for an incomplete team with issues, he’d be willing to stay in Minnesota for a bigger payday.
Technically they COULD have cap space. 10.5 Haywood, And if Bennett is terrible – Renouced 5.8. That puts them at 60 MM if they make a QO to Thompson, Murphy, and Della, and if they really wanted to they could renounce all.. and have the cap space. Not signing means he’s likely to be a Laker.. not a Knick though.
The Wiggins deal would be on their cap in this scenario, so they’ll be roughly in the $60 range anyway after minimum cap holds, so unless the salary cap is going to make a huge $15 million jump they’re not going to have anywhere close to $20 million under the cap without dealing Irving. The cap did jump $5 million this year, and that was the biggest jump ever, but if anything next years cap is likely to not change much, let alone get anywhere close to helping the Cavs (who are mostly capped out because of two max deals).
Wiggins is already added in.
Next year: Lebron 21.5, Irving 18, Haywood 10.5, Wiggins ~5.5 = 55.5 million. Minimum cap holds (will depend on minimum salary next year should still be slightly over 500,000, so a cap hold for 8 players is more than $4, so they’ll be right at the $60 million mark. They have no chance. Even if they found someone to take Haywood off the books, they’d be offering less than what the Bulls tried to offer Carmelo. No way that Love accepts that. And that’s after non-tendering some pretty good players.
Haywood is NON-guaranteed. There’s an entire article on here dedicated to his contract search for that. In a sign & trade its worth 15.5 as well…
I don’t see how that helps, they’re still roughly $10 million short because of Irving. And if they renounce their rights to all the players above, there’s no reason for Minnesota to do a sign and trade.
I’ve got 36,902,887 cap figure if they trade Haywood (15.5 freed), Trade/Renounce Bennett (5.8 freed), keeping waiters, wiggins, and thompson, and miller. They have two options w/ Haywood – trade him now get 2.8 space, release next offseason get 10.5, trade next offseason get 15.5. per sportrac hoopshype
Use basketball reference, it’s more accurate. The numbers I gave you above are not next year’s salaries, they are next year’s cap hits (they’re not always equal). Next year, LeBron’s cap hit is 21.573 million. Irving’s is $18 million. Wiggins in the second year of a max rookie scale 1st pick deal would be $5.55 million against the cap. MIke Miller on the room exception would have a guaranteed cap hit of 2.73 million (that’s straight from the collective bargaining agreement). Those four players are guaranteed $47.853 million against the cap. Minimum roster holds four a minimum of 8 more contracted players is a little over $4 more dollars, bringing the figure right around $52 million. That’s without Waiters. So the number is right around $12 million under the cap (once again WITHOUT Waiters), which for the record is $10 million less per year than a max deal and $6 million less per year than the Bulls were able to offer Carmelo Anthony. There’s no reason to suspect, short of dumping Irving’s salary, that Cleveland would be a player to sign Love outright in the offseason. And with no viable destinations with cap space (ie no contenders), Minnesota does not have to do a sign and trade after the season (as there’s no place better than Minnesota to sign outright).
On top of that now they’re giving Mike Miller a fully guaranteed two year deal with the room exception. They’re really not going to have cap room.
If Love is already on the CAVS roster, they don’t have to stay around $60 – hell they can go $80’s $90’s whatever as long as they are re-signing their own players already on their roster…. BIRD RIGHTS!!!
I see teams above $100 million, so don’t tell me players have to be traded away to re-sign whom they currently have on their roster. Bird Rights allows them to go over the CAP when they re-sign their own players…..
I’m gonna answer all 3 of your comments here. No one is talking about the Cavs ability to resign Love if they trade for him. It a common knowledge they’d be able to resign him in that scenario. We’re discussing the Cavs leverage, as they cannot sign him outright next off season if they don’t trade for him now.
That is true, at least not without a possible sign and trade. My bad, I thought you where talking about after the CAVS traded for him….
We started the discussion based on leverage. Cleveland really has none. They won’t have cap room next year to sign Love outright and there aren’t any attractive free agent options that will. Minnesota is the best team able to offer him a high salary, so they shouldn’t feel pressured to make any deals that don’t blow them away.
Well, don’t they obtain Love’s bird rights to re-sign their own players???
if Minnesota is smart they take Cleveland’s offer and start a rebuild. pekovic and Rubio both have value right now. go on the market and get that value for them and set yourself up for the shortest rebuild possible.
rubio>rockets makes sense
For the rockets maybe. They have no trade assets for a rebuilding club.
To clarify here, are you referring to the Rockets as rebuilding?
No, they have nothing to offer Minnesota. Getting Rubio only works for them.
Understood. Yeah, I’m not sure they could do more than Terrence Jones and Motiejunas. Nowhere near enough.
This story gets better & better, if he stays in the West that’s a good thing for the Cavs.
Love is overrated unless we are talking about fantasy basketball. For all the (unwarranted) talk of him being a top 5 player its kind of telling that the Warriors won’t part with Klay Thompson to get him. People in the know obviously don’t value Love as highly as the fantasy basketball junkies and ESPN talking heads.
The Warriors won’t part with Klay Thompson in part because they don’t want to piss Steph Curry off. I doubt it’s simply because they think Thompson is an overall better player than Love.
I didn’t say Thompson was better, I said if Love was really a top 5 guy and they could get him for Thompson (plus spare parts) they would have done it already, Curry is under contract for the next 3 years, he doesn’t have any leverage/say and IF Love was really a top 5 player (spoiler alert: he isn’t) they would get him regarless of what Curry wanted because players PLAY and coaches/GM’s MANAGE.
Normal players play, star players control the bigger moves that their organization makes. Yeah, Curry’s got 3 years left, but it’s not like he’d just forget about the W’s trading one of his favorite teammates. Hell, OKC has held off on amnestying Kendrick Perkins to placate Durant for three summers now. If Love’s not a top-5 player, he’s awfully close to it.
If you think a team would pass on a chance to add a REAL top 5 player for Klay Thompson just to placate a guy they control for the next 3 seasons then there is really no reason for me to continue the conversation. If you can pair 2 of the top 5 players in the league for spare parts you do it. Would Curry be pissed off in the short term, maybe, but 3 years is a long time to get over it (especially when Golden State will be able to offer him an extra year and a ton more money than anyone else after that) and winning fixes just about everything.
Alas the point is mute because the only place Kevin Love is a top 5-10 player is on your fantasy team.
You’ve repeated that last part like 6 times without justifying it and naming 10 players better than Kevin Love. Also, in the NBA, a player who can make a significant trade demand is always on a contract one year shorter than what they signed for. Make it so Curry won’t re-sign and they only control him for two years. I’ll be here waiting for your list of 10 better than Love though. Can’t wait for your hilarious ideas about guys better than him. I’ll predict that you’ll include someone like James Harden or Damian Lillard.
You won’t see this list ever probably
I’m sure I won’t. He’s been sitting at his computer all afternoon trying to think of a way to make it work without including a player or two who clearly isn’t better than Love.
If I were to spend time putting that together you would just report it and have it removed for no reason like you did with the other post that made you look foolish. Nice try, but you are absolute trash as a human being and as someone who thinks he knows basketball.
Go back to managing your fantasy team ,Nancy.
First off, I didn’t report your comment. Second off, I’m going to report this one, because despite your assertion, I am in fact not “human trash”. Calm your internet temper Christopher. Just name your ten.
Wiggins for Dieng, straight up. Can’t miss deal. 5 stars.
I wouldn’t mind love but let’s see what this roster can do. Were extremely deep and have a number of new good additions to the team. Keeping the roster like this is probably better than giving up a good amount of our key players to get kevin love.
Noah doesn’t make any sense on the wolves unless they plan to flip him, they already have Pekovic and Dieng. Mitotic and McDermott fit better with the Wolves current roster
Except that Noah is a far superior player and they’d probably look to flip one of the other guys. But I doubt the Bulls trade Noah, he’s more of what makes the team what it is than Rose.
Far superior player? A bit of an overstatement there, considering Pek posted the superior PER last year and Dieng played extremely well once he got playing time (his per36 is nearly identical to Noahs) and has tremendous upside. Noah’s offers a solid overall game but is definitely a lesser scoring option then Pekovic and is a year older. It makes little sense to trade one of the games best players for an arguably minor upgrade at a position of strength.
Noah is the best defensive player in the game, the best passing big in the game, and probably one of the best 15 players overall in the game (and likely the best center).
Butler, Mirotic, Snell, and Gibson (and likely Dunleavy for salary purposes) is a far better offer than anything Cleveland is willing to give up (short of looking to deal Kyrie Irving), but you’d have to think this trade might weaken the Bulls overall. They’d relegate Gasol to sixth man duties (will that anger him?) and have no one at either 2 or 3 (depending on where McDerrmott plays or if he’s traded instead of Snell). This might be more about stopping Cleveland from becoming an unstoppable monster with two of the top three players in the game than it is making the Bulls roster better overall. So it makes a bit of sense. Maybe the Bulls take back Kevin Martin (probably something Cleveland won’t do)? In that case, Cleveland should be worried.
I believe Mirotic can’t be traded for 30 days because he just signed his contract.
Same for wiggins
I don’t believe Wiggins has signed yet. I could be wrong.
He signed yesterday.
Moral of the story, every ‘first’ report of something gets refuted shortly there after. i.e. Dieng’s name came up, wait no it didn’t…. Chicago pushing for Love, well not recently.