Well the trade went down. We get two heavily protected future first round picks and Kosta Koufos to dump Al Jefferson’s salary of $42 million over the next three years. Multiple sources reporting all over Twitter, and here:
– Marc Spears, Yahoo Sports
The source said the trade will be completed sometime Tuesday. The Jazz will take on Jefferson by using the trade exception they obtained in their sign-and-trade deal that sent Carlos Boozer(notes) to the Chicago Bulls.
The Jazz also expect to send the T’wolves a protected first-round pick they acquired from the Memphis Grizzlies last season in the Ronnie Brewer trade and another future first-round pick. More than anything, the T’wolves are making the deal to get off the remaining three years and $42 million on Jefferson’s contract. They have been looking to trade Jefferson for some time after deciding to build around forward Kevin Love.
Some people are thinking we are getting a “Trade Exception” in this deal. Well… not really. I’ll let John Hollinger explain:
If I’m not mistaken Minnesota will be more than $13M under cap anyway, so TPE would be a non-factor. For those who are asking, no, you can’t use the TPE and the cap space. It’s one or the other – if you use cap space you renounce exceptions.
And to make things worse (better???) the Wolves are closing to signing Luke Ridnour to a 4 year $16 million contract, says Adrian Woj from Yahoo:
Free agent guard Luke Ridnour is close to accepting a four year, $16 million offer with Minnesota, a league source tells Y!
So if all this stuff goes down, in total we swapped out Big Al and 2 future second round picks for Michael Beasley, Luke Ridnour, Kosta Koufos two future heavily protected first round picks, and about $8 million dollars in cap space. I guess you be the judge regarding the merits of these moves. I like the Beasley trade, but I would have liked to seen us get at least one player for Jefferson though. I hope our Front Office doesn’t try to spin this as one big trade (to cover up for dumping Al), because that would be disingenuous and weak.
Kahn has already said Koufos will be moved somewhere that he can play, hence probably another salary dump.
Here’s to hoping that Ramon Sessions now gets moved for Rudy Fernandez, as has been rumored.
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