Steve Bullpett : Ainge trying to get a 3rd team involved in the Love talks

[Eja117]

With the NBA draft bearing down on the process, the Celtics are knocking on a door that may be locked to not only them but the rest of the league, as well.

There remains some possibility that Minnesota will trade Kevin Love by tomorrow night, but involved sources told the Herald that Timberwolves president of basketball operations, coach and part owner Flip Saunders is growing more entrenched that he should let things play out with his All-Star forward.

Love told the club he plans to exercise his opt-out and become an unrestricted free agent next summer, and, according to a source, he repeated that statement when told Saunders might be taking over the coaching reins.

But Saunders is now ready to roll the dice and see if Love will change his mind, rather than making a trade he does not believe meets his standard. His chief aim continues to be keeping the Timberwolves from taking a step backward. He is said to be set on avoiding a larger rebuilding process.

Clubs told the Herald that Saunders is looking for people who can contribute right away, and that has put the Celtics in a scrambling position. It?s been reported here that Danny Ainge offered the sixth and 17th overall picks, along with Kelly Olynyk and one of their own future first-round picks. They are also willing to discuss packages that include first-rounders the C?s are owed from Brooklyn in 2016 and 2018.

But one problem from the Timberwolves? side is the additional contracts they would take back to make the salary numbers on a deal conform to the collective bargaining rules.

The best the Celtics could offer by themselves is a collection that would give Minnesota a jump start on reconstruction. But in that such is not its desire, Ainge has, according to league sources, been trying to learn which players would appeal to Saunders with the idea of acquiring them and rerouting them to the Wolves for Love.

However, word is Minnesota does not believe the Celtics can get what the Wolves want. And what Saunders wants is to make an upward move next season by adding pieces to last year?s core.

http://bostonherald.com/sports/celtics_nba/boston_celtics/2014/06/not_a_whole_lotta_love_for_celtics

Who would they want ?

So basically at this point Flip wants to try to gamble hoping one of the following happens: teams raise offers or Love falls in love with Flip's coaching, some other teams ahead of them fall apart with injuries or something, their draft pick is really good and suddenly K Love is happy enough to resign for a few more years. Yeah right.

I could understand that. Sometimes in fantasy ball I get the feeling that if I agree to a certain trade it may lead to a perception I can be low balled.

[azzenfrost]

It's close to a point where I'm ready to say "Let's go into another direction". My faith in the Celtics front office is the only thing keeping me interested.

[cman88]

doesnt Love have any say in this? guys like Melo/Howard were able to force their ways off the team to wherever they wanted to go.

I wonder at what point Love/ his agent goes to flip and tells him "i am NOT resigning no matter what, get this straight stop playing games"

[Kane3387]

Milwaukee has guys like ilyasova, sanders, and mayo.
Orlando has afflalo.
Philly has Thad young.
Boston has sully and Jeff green.

All those teams would be interested in picks and those players could compliment Rubio and pek.

The Wolves could add every single one of those players to Pek and Rubio and they still wouldn't be very good.

Agreed!

Denver got a three seed in 2013 with a similar talent pool. Minny could compete for the 7th and 8th.

[GreenWarrior]

If you take Love off the T-Wolves, no one short of LeBron or Durant is going to improve them going forward so I don't think there are any players Ainge could swing to make a difference.  If he could get another team willing to take on Kevin Martin, that might help.

I can't believe an NBA veteran like Flip is being this stupid.  Barring multiple playoff-caliber teams suffering season-ending injuries to one or more of their starters, there's nothing Minny's going to do that will make them any better than the 7th or 8th seed out West.  That's not going to change Love's mind about staying and the more they drag this out, the less they're going to get for him.

Maybe he's just waiting to take advantage of some team, like Houston or Chicago, who get desperate when they miss out on Melo or LeBron.

Mike

While it's true that Minny won't improve minus Love, they're sort of stuck.  They have four more years of Pekovic.  They want to extend Rubio.  It's not like they can clear house Philly style -- they've got a lot of dollars committed for a couple of years, and it's been practically a decade since they made the playoffs.  We laugh about striving to be the 8th seed here, but reaching that achievement would be the best Minnesota has done in a long time.  They positioned themselves to start trying to make the playoffs, really as early as last year, and there would be a sizable cost in diverting from that.  While they have only themselves to blame for being in this position, it's not clear to me that getting primarily draft picks is a very good option for them.

i'm not laughing, i'm serious when I say that's a horrible goal.

there's yr's as a fan that you have to accept that you're team might not be all that good. I would never accept a team willingly be mediocre as a goal. not with no intent or belief they will be better.

Making the playoffs in the West is not mediocre.  That required 50 wins this year.  Minnesota will never be in a position to go from missing the playoffs to being a championship contender in a season.  They're going to need to make incremental steps.  Making the playoffs is an important step.  It's a goal, but it's not the final goal.

unless they change the format, it doesn't matter if they win 50 games and just barely make the playoffs. which is what they'll do(if they're lucky) if they don't add to Love or take one of these other deals. they'll still be mediocre.

sure in the east they might be a top seed but that's not how things are in this league, there's 2 conferences.

as far as their final goal? do you or anyone think they'll be able to become better if they make the 7th or 8th seed? what assets do they have to do so? what big name free agent or 2 is going there willingly? Minn.'s only chance of ever being good is to build through the draft, they don't have the luxury other teams have.

[rondohondo]

Another reason Minny should be interested in the c's offer is we can create a bunch of cap space for them along with young talent and draft picks .

I know everyone is saying the cap space is useless to them because no one will sign there

BUT

Cap space can be used to trade for players too, without having to send back contracts the other way. Add that cap space to all the draft picks they will have and they could actually have a shot to add a all-star .

Flip is being a moron

[LatterDayCelticsfan]

Maybe we can send the picks, prospects be expirings to Miami instead, so that Saunders gets LeBron in a sign and trade. :-P  Indulge me a little, as I am a little bored

[Who]

If you take Love off the T-Wolves, no one short of LeBron or Durant is going to improve them going forward so I don't think there are any players Ainge could swing to make a difference.  If he could get another team willing to take on Kevin Martin, that might help.

No one player will offset the loss of Kevin Love but getting a couple of quality players could offset that loss.

Like how Denver improved after trading Carmelo Anthony. Or how the Knicks didn't improve much after acquiring Carmelo because they had to send half of their main guys to Denver to make the deal happen in the first place and so needed time to rebuild team.

Minnesota is nothing special as a team. They were only .500 last year. They have some good pieces there outside of K-Love with Rubio, Pekovic, Dieng and Kevin Martin. It is well within their reach to trade K-Love and maintain a similar W-L record next year.

If that is Flip's goal, it's an achievable one.

[Gainesville Celtic]

I know folks want Love in green --- I do too --- but I dont' get the anger at Flip. (Actually, I get it, i just think it's naive.)

His job is to make MIN better -- not BOS. He's gonna try everything he can to either keep Love (admittedly a long shot but NOT impossible) or maximize what MIN gets for him.

Saunders knows MIN isn't a FA destination so he has to do everything he can to maximize the stars they come out of the draft with (and lord knows that during the Kahn era those were few & far between).

It's close to a point where I'm ready to say "Let's go into another direction". My faith in the Celtics front office is the only thing keeping me interested.

Why would we need to go in another direction? I believe BOS will be in the mix for Love until (a) Love is moved somewhere else or (b) BOS acquires a different 'franchise-ish' player which makes acquiring Love impossible.

If there's no Love deal on Thurs., I think Ainge will make the picks for the players that are the highest on the C's board.

There's nothing* that says those players + some combo of Sully, Olynyk, and any number of the BOS/BKN/LAC/PHI picks we have in the upcoming drafts couldn't be used for a future Love trade.

(* Nothing other than the fact that newly signed rookies can't be traded until some date during the season -- Dec. 15? --- which I'm too lazy to go look up.)

doesnt Love have any say in this? guys like Melo/Howard were able to force their ways off the team to wherever they wanted to go.

I wonder at what point Love/ his agent goes to flip and tells him "i am NOT resigning no matter what, get this straight stop playing games"

Love is under contract for 2014-15 to MIN. He can say whatever he wants to Flip, but unless MIN trades him, he'll report to camp and I'm sure work his but off and play well for MIN.

(FWIW, Melo's numbers in the 50 games for DEN leading up to his trade to NYK were actually better than the season before.)

Flip has to try and convince Love to stay. I know conventional wisdom is that MIN can get more for him now, but I don't know that there's any evidence that a team gets less for a top-20 star by dealing him at the deadline vs. the preceeding offseason.

And what if Love gets injured again --- that hurts his FA stock a bit. That coupled with an improved roster may encourage him to opt into his final year --- meaning MIN got 2 more years of Love by not dealing him for 70 cents on the dollar.

[Who]

one key reason why i'm seeing all this talk as posturing. specifically when the T-Wolves/Flip saying "they want to keep Love for this yr. and try to make the playoffs and maybe convince him to stay if they can win".

if this were true, how come we are not hearing one iota of a rumor of them trying to put at least one better player around him for next yr.? wouldn't this convince Love they're committed to winning? why even think you can win in the west going into next season with virtually the same roster? maybe they are and we don't know about it, but  does anyone actually believe that?

That's actually an intriguing point. You'd think there'd be talk of them trying to move #13 for veteran help but there's been nothing.

The Wolves don't have good cards to play. They have some talent (Rubio, Pekovic) but nobody has really great trade value. It would mostly just be lateral moves. That #13 pick is useful but it is not netting a star. Teams don't give up stars for mid-first round picks. They give up useful starters (Ariza type). Not someone good enough to turnaround the franchise and convince K-Love to stay.

Minnesota very limited in their ability to make anything happen that is important enough to convince Kevin Love to stay. And they have very little time available to change that before K-Love hits FA next summer. So no real cards to play (in terms of convincing K-Love to stay).

[cman88]

minnesota's best hope to improve their team is get alot of picks in this draft that Flip himself said "has alot of all-star or rotational player potential" and hope that one of those guys becomes a stud.

signing role players to be a 10th, 11th seed isnt going to improve your team, nor is letting love walk without anything.

[Gainesville Celtic]

minnesota's best hope to improve their team is get alot of picks in this draft that Flip himself said "has alot of all-star or rotational player potential" and hope that one of those guys becomes a stud.

signing role players to be a 10th, 11th seed isnt going to improve your team, nor is letting love walk without anything.

POR improved 19 wins last year by essentially swapping out JJ Hickson, Thomas Robinson, Sasha Pavlovic and Ronnie Price for the immortal Robin Lopez, Mo Williams, Dorell Wright and CJ McCollum (who only played 476 min).

Sometimes you *can* get better by adding the right role players.

[Fafnir]

Sometimes you *can* get better by adding the right role players.

Other times you can just pray for player advancement (Lillard) and then just get fluky shooting in the first half of the year.

That was what Portland pulled off. Minnesota doesn't have room for internal improvement like Lillard provided, they could certainly get lucky though. They were relatively unlucky this past year.

[Sizzlack]

We would have to trade Olynyk, Bass, 6th pick, filler, and 2015 Clippers pick to the Warriors for Thompson and Lee. 

Then reroute Lee and Thompson, along with 17th pick, Sullinger, and Green for Love/Martin.  That would give the Wolves Rubio, Thompson, Green, Lee, Pekovic. 

Would Golden State trade Thompson for Olynyk and basically Marcus Smart?  Would they let Lee go for salary cap relief and a future pick?

Danny has the future Nets picks to try and sweeten the pot, but that is really everything he has to offer.

Leaves us with Love, Rondo, Wallace, Bradley, Martin, and hopefully Asik.

It works well for us, just need Danny to work his magic.  Warriors will be the key. 

http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=jwawlt3
http://espn.go.com/nba/tradeMachine?tradeId=jwawlt3

In what world would the Warriors ever do this? They take a team who was one of the best in the West last year, and a legit contender, significantly downgrade next year, just acquire cap space and draft picks? I mean this is a good draft, but nobody they draft at 6 is going to make them better next year. Olynyk and Bass are nice player, but complimentary ones, not all star level players (maybe Olynyk gets there someday, but certainly not right away.)

They're pretty much punting on next year with the idea that they're able to develop Olynyk, and the 6th pick quick enough to get them over the top.

Not a snowball's chance in hell they'd ever do that.