Etan Thomas to OKC Wilkins, Atkins in Return

Recently acquired reserve center Etan Thomas and two future second round draft picks have been traded to Oklahoma City for Damien Wilkins and Chucky Atkins. If this was a straight-up trade of the 3 players, it might make sense roster-wise to bring in Wilkins and Atkins for balance, but as it is, especially after trading away Madsen and Smith and adding two second rounders to this deal, this deal screams “precursor.”

We HAD a glut at the PF/C rotation, but especially after trading away Craig Smith and Mark Madsen, Etan Thomas would have been a useful rotation man for us. Our bench bigs are now reduced to Darius Songaila and Oleksiy Pecherov, who really went downhill after a strong summer league start.

Wilkins is OK, and expiring, and does allow us to re-trade Quentin Richardson while still having a veteran player to push/teach Wayne Ellington…and for the record, QRich shouldn’t be teaching anyone anything. He has a 10% trade kicker as well, which will boost his salary from $3.3 million to $3.63 million this year.

Chucky Atkins could be useful for us, but only if Rubio is not coming over this season. He’s more interesting because only $760,000 of his contract is guaranteed this season. That could mean an additional $2.72 million off the books this summer on top of the $800 we are saving in this trade already by dropping from Etan Thomas’ $7.91 million deal to a combined $7.11 million for Atkins and Wilkins. In the end, the Wolves could end up with up to $2 million in cap space this summer. That number includes an unsigned Ricky Rubio’s $2.72 million cap hold that disappears on day 1 of the regular season and is re-instated at the beginning of the next offseason. If Rubio signs this summer at 120% of the rookie scale, the Wolves cap space would dip to about $1.5 million.

While these cap space numbers don’t appear to be big enough to be necessarily significant, David Kahn’s remarks, “this move better positions us for the summer,” seem to indicate that he is positioning the organization to make another move this summer. I’m still holding out hope for a Marvin Williams acquisition, but if David Kahn has shown one thing since taking over, it’s that he’s unpredictable. Look for more movement this summer.