I'm not a fan of him because his defense sucks and pairing with Love hasn't worked out all that well in my opinion, but does Minnesota actually have interest in keeping Pekovic's contract without Love?

I have to wonder they wouldn't be too happy keeping that long contract. If that is true, would salary relief would be enough to get him to the Celtics (for example, using Wallace's contract)?

Would we be actually interested in investing in Pekovic as well with his long contract, even if the Love-Pekovic due hasn't worked all that well defensively?

Aside from the picks involved, this is the scenario I would envision (give or take some other minor prospects involved in the movement) would have to work or something quite similar to it... of course, with the assumption that Minnesota would be highly interested in cap relief and not being saddled with that long contract.

http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=nrhwu3e

Rondo
??
Green
Love-Olynyk
Pekovic-??-Anthony

(Didn't bother including the rest of players who are under contract, they have little salary cap relevance and have little impact whether they stay or go in my opinion)


After these assumed move, we should be at around $58 million committed in salary. You'd still have to factor in any rookie deals, but that would depend on which will be retained, if any. The projected salary cap is looking like around 63.2 million and the tax level is projected to be around $77 million.

I'd imagine that even with all these moves done, there would still be, at least for this particular season, a big interest in staying away from paying luxury tax. That gives us about a $19 million wiggle room to work with to solidify the rest of the roster without going into tax land (about $23 million to be within the apron).

And if you make these moves, I'd imagine keeping Bradley becomes that much more of a priority I would think no?

We'd still have that big Trade Exception to use to solidify our roster.

And all the other salary cap exceptions, mid-level, bird-rights (Humphries, Bayless), etc.

Anyways, the main questions I'm asking, and the ones I'm actually interested in discussing are:

Does Minnesota has interest in keeping Pekovic with Love gone?
If they aren't, is a bit of salary relief (Wallace's contract) enough?
If it's enough, should the Celtics have interest in dealing for him even if the Love-Pekovic pairing has been far from ideal?
If it isn't enough, and the Celtics (us) have interest in him, what do you figure need to be added to sweeten the deal? And is that price worth paying?

Don't think I've seen this point being discussed in the forum, though I haven't been as active... and with the crapload of Love threads around, it was hard to find. So forgive me if there's a similar discussion going around.