Timberwolves president of basketball operations David Kahn strongly refuted a report Monday that he offered forward Al Jefferson to Indiana in a trade for forward Danny Granger, a four-year veteran who is the Pacers’ leading scorer.
Kahn described the report by Yahoo! Sports as “total fabrication.”
“I have not offered Al to anybody,” Kahn said while traveling with the Wolves on the team’s four-game road trip. “As I’ve stated before, my preference is to go through the season and continue to evaluate the team before we do anything dramatic.”
In a pretty candid recent appearance on ESPN’s NBA Today podcast with Ryen Russillo, Kahn himself conceded that the Wolves aren’t sure if Jefferson and Love can play together in the long term . . . but also said that it’s too early in Jefferson’s comeback for such judgments. The interview sure made it sound as though Minnesota wants to give the tag team an entire season of evaluation before thinking about breaking them up, since Jefferson — when healthy — ranks as one of the league’s last true back-to-the-basket forces.
“We had a talk about it last week,” Jefferson said after this morning’s shootaround. “He talked to us and let us know nothing like that was going on…He made me comfortable to know what I heard last night was rumors.
“He talked to us and let us know that nothing like that was going on,” Jefferson said. “When you see stuff like that coming on TV and coming up out of the woodworks, that’s why it’s in one ear and out there other one.
“I’ve been in this league long enough to know, this time of the year, every year, you’re going to hear rumors about trades and stuff before the trade deadline. That’s why it didn’t bother me. Actually, me and my teammates, they all are making jokes about it.”
Kahn wouldn’t go so far as to say there’s no chance of Jefferson being moved by Feb. 18.
“You can never say with 100 percent certainty,” Kahn said. “Maybe there’s a few players in our league who don’t even need to be named because they’re so obvious that you could say there’s certainty. But I don’t ever want to put ourselves where we say something like that, when you’re in a position like I am, where you’re trying to rebuild a franchise, that you can make it like a promise that you don’t have total control of keeping. I did not promise that, but I also reassured Al that we have absolutely no intention of doing something and I have not made one call to a team saying, ‘Would you like have Al?”’
Yahoo! reported there have been chemistry issues between Jefferson and Love. It quoted a source as saying, “There’s some jealous stuff that’s playing out.” Kahn denied that as did both players.
As Jefferson sat on a chair and spoke to reporters Monday, Love approached, threw himself down on top of Jefferson and gave him a big, heavy body hug.
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