TUESDAY, 12:11pm: The Grizzlies believe they have a verbal agreement to swap Dante Cunningham for Wayne Ellington, but the Timberwolves seem to be looking to include Cunningham in another deal before finalizing anything, reports Ronald Tillery of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Tillery speculates that the T-Wolves are waiting for resolution on Nicolas Batum's offer sheet before making any other moves official.
"The shoe will drop this week or it won't get done," one source told Tillery, on the Grizzlies/Timberwolves trade talks.
FRIDAY, 12:01pm: The Grizzlies have engaged in trade talks with the Timberwolves in hopes of acquiring a guard, according to Ronald Tillery of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. Tillery says the Grizzlies are eyeing Wayne Ellington, Martell Webster, and Wesley Johnson, and are likely to prefer Ellington, the most affordable of the three.
Ellington, 24, is on the Timberwolves' books for about $2.08MM for the coming season, as opposed to $5.71MM for Webster and $4.29MM for Johnson. None of the three players were particularly productive in Minnesota last season, which is why the T-Wolves have been aggressive in pursuing wing help this summer. Trading a player or two could give the Wolves the cap space to sign the players they've been linked to this month.
Of course, the Grizzlies are over the cap and approaching the tax line as well, so I can't imagine they'd want to take on much salary themselves. As Tillery points out (on Twitter), Dante Cunningham would seem to be a logical trade chip for Memphis to use in a deal with the Wolves, particularly for Ellington, since the two players are on nearly identical salaries. If Minnesota would rather not absorb any salary, perhaps a third team would need to be involved to acquire Cunningham.
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What the Wolves need is for some team to accept all three in exchange for one real player. As it is, I have a hard time distinguishing the three in terms of results, so the cheapest one (Ellington) would be my last choice to trade away.
Websters contract is almost entirely non-guaranteed so he wouldn’t help with clearly up much cap space. It doesn’t look like the Wolves will get Batum so they should have enough space to sign Steisma, Hill and Roy.