JULY 8: The Timberwolves and Blazers have issued press releases to confirm that the trade is official. Portland will generate a small trade exception in the deal.
JULY 3:
The Timberwolves have reached a deal to sign forward Jake Layman to a three-year, $11.5MM contract, agent Mark Bartelstein tells ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski (Twitter link).
Layman is a restricted free agent whose rights are held by the Trail Blazers, but he won’t be signing an offer sheet. Instead, Minnesota will acquire him from Portland via a sign-and-trade arrangement, according to Wojnarowski.
“We’re extremely appreciative of how hard (Blazers president of basketball operations) Neil Olshey worked with us to accommodate what we were trying to accomplish in this sign and trade,” Bartelstein told Wojnarowski (Twitter links). “The deal couldn’t have happened without the Blazers looking out for Jake’s best interests.”
The Blazers will receive the draft rights to 2013 second-rounder Bojan Dubljevic in the deal, tweets Darren Wolfson of SKOR North.
Layman, 25, has spent the first three seasons of his NBA career in Portland after being selected with the 47th pick of the 2016 draft. He played a limited role in his first two seasons, but claimed a regular spot in the Blazers’ rotation in 2018/19, averaging 7.6 PPG and 3.1 RPG with a .509/.326/.704 shooting line in 71 games (18.7 MPG).
Minnesota lost some shooting in its frontcourt by agreeing to trade Dario Saric to Phoenix and watching Anthony Tolliver sign with the Blazers. The Wolves will presumably look to replace those departed players with Layman and Noah Vonleh, who agreed to a deal with Minnesota earlier this week.
Speaking of Saric, the trade sending him to the Suns will need to be completed before the Wolves’ deal with the Blazers, since Layman will slot into the trade exception created by Saric’s departure, per ESPN’s Bobby Marks (Twitter link). That exception will be worth $3.48MM, so Layman’s starting salary is permitted to start at $3.58MM (trade exceptions have an extra $100K cushion).
The Wolves, whose interest in Layman was first reported by Darren Wolfson on Tuesday, will be hard-capped at $138.9MM for the 2019/20 league year as a result of acquiring a player via sign-and-trade.
Photo courtesy of USA Today Sports Images.
Sign and trade RFAs has suddenly become the new fashion. If you don’t sign and trade your RFA you are not cool enough.
Teams want to show they will work with their players & take care of them even while waving byebye.
They also get a TPE for zip.
If sign and trading your RFA is cool, consider me Miles Davis
Thumbs up for the Billy Madison reference
Surely this means a Wiggins plus two 1st rounders for DLoading trade is happening. Why else would you sign a third strings SF/PF on a 3 year deal on good coin. If they do get Dloading that’ll be great.
Russell—-Teague
Culver—-Okogie
Covington—-Layman
Vonleh—-Bell
KAT—-Deing
NO!
I thought dlo couldn’t be traded till December 15th. Since he was is in a sign and trade not a normal trade
What else are the Warriors going to get offered? All the teams have there point guards for next year except very little. And the teams that don’t that a great starting PG have very little assets to give up. Wiggins could still turn out to be a really good player and if not he’s a 18p5r5a player similar to Harry Barnes when GSW won there first title. Plus you’d get multiple 1st rounders
I like Wiggins for GSW more than Russell.
Sub-eras of the Splash Bros era: 1)Barnes 2)Durant 3)Wiggins.
Stylistically Wiggins fits that group; Russell & Towns are friends; MIN wants out of Wiggins; GSW already has guards; GSW has money.
GSW doesn’t have money for bad players.
Hence the temporary posession of D’lo.
Russell can’t be traded until Dec. 15 at the earliest, so your conjecture is wrong. The Warriors have nothing to lose by pairing Russell with Curry and see how it works out. If anyone can make it work Steve Kerr is the coach who can.
Well the trade hasn’t been finalized, so they could make any adjustment they wanted at this point.
Warriors want nothing to do with Wiggins
Serious (and possibly dumb) question: if a team wanted to acquire a RFA without being hard-capped through a sign and trade, is there any rule prohibiting them from making a separate trade to circumvent it?
For instance, if the Wolves wanted Layman and decided they wanted to blow past the tax apron, would there be anything stopping them from making a separate trade (giving Portland a future pick in exchange for the draft rights to someone that’ll never play in the NBA) to basically coerce Portland into not matching an offer?
I think that would probably be viewed as cap circumvention.
Anyway, I think in this case it was probably Minnesota’s preference to do a sign-and-trade. There’s no chance they’re gonna reach the hard cap anyway, and without the “trade” aspect, they’d have to use their mid-level exception (rather than a trade exception) on Layman. Now they still have most of that MLE available to use if they want to.
That makes sense. Thanks for the clarification, Luke.
Is that what they did in regards to purchasing Layman ? ?
Warriors gave up two 1st’s, Iggy and are living with a hard cap, all in order to get Russell. They’re in the win now business, and if they trade Russell, then it will be for an elite player, not another team’s mistake. Some rebuilding team might take Wiggins and a couple of 1st’s, but not the Warriors.
Early reports said that Russell was only going to be used as a trade piece and not be a long term player. Which kinda makes sense. KD was going to leave for nothing anyways may as well get dlow. As for what they will get for him. I’m only suggesting Wiggins because Dlo was apparently keen on them and they were keen on him. Wiggins has a big contract to match, would be the biggest upside player because KAT isn’t leaving and Wiggins also fills the same position as KD. Obviously they would have to give them picks to even it up but the Layman signing if you think about it only makes sense if your going to lose a SF. They just signed Vonleh and Bell to replace Gibson and Saric. They still have Covington and Bates-Diop so why else would they sign Layman if there wasn’t going to be a need for him. It makes sense kinda
Yes, an in-season trade piece for a win-now team, i.e., a guy who can help them immediately, for the balance of next season and the playoffs. Not a project like Wiggins.
Layman is minor addition (a backup stretch 4) and it’s beyond a reach to suggest his acquisition suggests anything as big as a Russell-Wiggins swap.
Wiggins is not a project… he is what he is. He is like Barnes, should have been better but isn’t. They’re both baby Durants. This is what GSW is used to. They’re not used to D’lo.
Layman could be made a 4 but that’s not what he has mostly been to this point.
If Leonard leaves Raptors the Wolves will trade Wiggins 2 #1s just to rid of that contract !! Toronto is home for Wiggins .
Layman is more of a PF. And even if GSW wanted to trade DLo to Minn it wouldn’t be for Wiggins. It would probably be for Covington, Layman (this all would take place after Dec 15th), Okogie and a protected 1st. The Warriors might even throw in Jacob Evans if the Wolves want him. Dubs would need quite a few unprotecteds for Wiggins.
GSW would get the firsts back, prob. more. There would be a lot of details to work out still, and Russell would get a test run first. Maybe Russell works out and Klay doesn’t mind the 3 and Draymond doesn’t mind another boy wonder…
But Wiggins is a good fallback plan. They probably took Russell a bit impulsively, knowing they could recover the asset level.
So the Blazers don’t get anything back?
Why are the Wolves going to a hard cap with a sign and trade for a player like Layman? Surely you can get someone like him on a vet’s minimum and still keep your cap flexibility. I understand giving up the flexibility for a game changer like Durant or Irving or even someone like Russell or Kemba, but Jake Layman just doesn’t make sense in this scenario.
See Luke’s response for MC.
Thank you. I broke one of my cardinal rules. I should have read all the comments first, especially Luke Adams’s because they usually answer your questions before you ask them.
I wish I was younger. If I was, I would change my name to Bojan Dubljevic. I’m probably too old to pull off something like that now, but wow is that a great name to say.
Yo B-Dubs wassup. Would you still be hiflew, thats better, in case a Bogdan Dubljevic signs on.
Greatest part of Bogdon’s draft day was when ESPN had Bojan’s EuroLeague clips playing on stage in the background.
Thank Goodness the T-Wolves were able to retain the draft rights to Henk Norel – he’s just about ready !!