As NBA free agency rolls on, the Timberwolves remain in competition to land C.J. Miles. Plus, Ricky Rubio speaks to the media regarding his trade to the Utah Jazz.
Free agency is nearly five days old, and while the news — both generally and in terms of the big fish — has slowed, the Timberwolves are still in serious search of bench help.
Many of the big names are gone, but so too is the Wolves cap space. After spending $19 million per year on Jeff Teague and $14 million per year on Taj Gibson in a weekend spree, Minnesota now only has around $3 million in cap space, plus the room exception ($4.328 million) with which to work.
That simply isn’t enough money to outright sign many otherwise attractive free agents, and the Wolves found that out first-hand when Nick Young signed a one-year deal with the Golden State Warriors at $5.2 million. Other than being the Warriors, of course, $5.2 million is nearly a million dollars more than what the Wolves likely offered.
At any rate, the Wolves are apparently still trying to work out a way to dump Cole Aldrich‘s $7+ million deal in order to create room to sign C.J. Miles outright. If that doesn’t work, the idea of a sign-and-trade with the Indiana Pacers for Miles could be a possibility as well. The hold up, of course, is the potential need for Minnesota to include the lottery-protected pick of the Oklahoma City Thunder in next June’s draft.
And now, there’s this from Darren Wolfson.
Sounds like Indiana working on a Miles sign-and-trade with at least one other team, and further along w/ them than with the #Twolves.
— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) July 5, 2017
In other words, the Wolves will go from trying to be creative on the fringes with rotation players to all-out bargain bin diving in relatively short order. Remember, the presumed bench only has the following players on it: Tyus Jones, Nemanja Bjelica, Cole Aldrich, and Justin Patton, who has a broken foot and is out for an undetermined amount of time. That means that there are five or six roster spots to fill, and other than signing a pair of undrafted rookies to non-guaranteed deals in V.J. Beachum and Charles Cook, there hasn’t been much activity.
We listed out some cheap shooting on the Twitter machine on Sunday. Here’s what we came up with:
Cheap(ish) wing shooting on the market for Wolves: Babbitt, Bogdanovic, Casspi, G Green, Morrow, Rush. For more $: Miles, Korver, Sefolosha.
— Dunking With Wolves (@DunkingWolvesFS) July 2, 2017
Of that list, only Casspi and Korver are off the board. We discussed the possible return of Gerald Green here at DWW in the wake of Doogie Wolfson’s report, and he’s probably the best combination of a good addition at a reasonable salary on that list.
Is it sad that we’re already at the point of crossing our collective fingers for Gerald Green? Yeah, probably. But he would be a solid addition to the rotation as a backup wing and a poor man’s “three-and-D’ player.
Morrow is the best shooter of the bunch, with a career three-point percentage of 41.7 percent. He should come relatively cheaply, as well.
Shifting gears, we should mention Ricky Rubio’s interview with the Associated Press’ Jon Krawczynski. Rubio didn’t get a chance to leave Minnesota on his terms, but had plenty of glowing things to say about the state as a whole, as well as the future of his now-former team.
"“I’m always going to be attached to that city because I made friends and family there,” Rubio said. “With the team, we went through some rough times. I remember my rookie year and all of the excitement. I was really, really happy to make my dream come true. They gave me a chance.”…“The people over there are the nicest people on Earth, I think,” he said. “I’m truly going to miss that.”"
Rubio also mentioned that the Wolves are now his “second team” and that he hopes they make the playoffs. Check out the article in it’s entirety here.
Next: Timberwolves Announce Summer League Roster
Stay tuned as we navigate through the bargain bin of free agency together, Timberwolves fans.