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| The Nets will officially acquire the 2012 1st-rounder out of Kentucky when the NBA league office opens on Monday morning |
Never a dull moment with this basketball team, is there? Right as they return from their successful trip to London, where they crushed the Atlanta Hawks on Thursday, the Brooklyn Nets have agreed, in principle, to a pair of moves that give them some luxury tax relief, a former NCAA champion, and a supposed 2nd-round draft pick.
According to multiple outlets, Brooklyn has traded Tornike "Toko" Shengalia to the Chicago Bulls in a straight-up swap for point guard Marquis Teague, who won the 2012 NCAA Championship as a member of the Kentucky Wildcats, a team that happens to be coached by John Calipari, a former New Jersey Nets head coach. However, Brooklyn GM Billy King wasn't done there.
In an accompanying move, the Nets also traded point guard Tyshawn Taylor, along with cash, to the injury-plagued New Orleans Pelicans for what is reported as being a future heavily-protected 2nd-round pick. To sum up, the Nets traded Toko, Tyshawn, and cash for Teague and a 2nd-round pick of an unknown year and team.
With Jrue Holiday out indefinitely with a leg injury, New Orleans needs another point guard, and it's certainly conceivable that Tyshawn–a New Jersey native whose draft rights were bought by the Nets on draft day in 2012–could get significant playing time on a Pelicans team dealing with injuries to Jason Smith, Tyreke Evans, and former Net Ryan Anderson.
Toko, meanwhile, could play some for a struggling Bulls team that recently traded away its starting small forward, Luol Deng, to the in-divison Cavaliers a little more than a week ago. Shengalia–who was drafted in the 2nd-round by the 76ers in 2012 and was immediately traded to the Nets–only played 137 minutes in 17 of Brooklyn's 38 games this season and rarely appeared in non-garbage time situations. Chicago is a nice change of scenery for the Georgia (country, not state) native as Tom Thibodeau can afford to play him more than Jason Kidd could.
Going back to the Nets, the deal saves them around $2.5 million in luxury tax and gives them a former 1st-rounder in Teague who hasn't played well at all in his two-plus seasons with the Bulls, but has the talent to be a decent NBA player. Teague, the younger brother of Hawks' point guard Jeff Teague, was heavily-recruited out of Pike High School in Indianapolis and ended up at Kentucky, the NCAA's "one-and-done" powerhouse, winning the 2012 NCAA Championship over, fittingly enough, Tyshawn Taylor's Kansas Jayhawks.
Anyway, Teague clearly never found his groove under the gruff Thibodeau, and certainly needed a new team and locker room in order to revive his career, a big chunk of which was spent in the D-League with the Iowa Energy. The Nets are that new place for him, and hopefully can give him the chance to improve and realize his high potential. Also, with Deron Williams still dealing with his nagging ankle injury, the playing time just might be there for Teague.
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