3 trade ideas to send Kemba Walker to the Timberwolves

News broke on Friday that the Charlotte Hornets are open to trading All-Star Kemba Walker. Here are three possible trades that the Timberwolves could propose to upgrade the point guard spot.

In the wake of my initial reaction to the Kemba Walker-is-now-available rumor, I’ve spent some time considering what any potential trade offer could look like.

Standing by my original take, let’s get this out of the way: landing Walker would be extremely difficult to pull off, and would almost certainly require at least three teams as part of any final trade offer. The Wolves and Hornets simply have too many large contracts on their respective rosters, and they would need to find a cooperating team that might be willing to take on a salary in order to land a draft pick or a young player on a cheap contract.

Of course, that’s also reportedly what the Hornets’ goal is here, too. Forgive me if I’m a bit skeptical; it was exactly seven months ago that Charlotte assisted Atlanta in their roster deconstruction by landing Dwight Howard and the two years and $47 million remaining on his contract. And it was just prior to last season when they extended Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Nicolas Batum and re-signed Marvin Williams.

According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the four players mentioned above are those that the Hornets “already made available”, and that Charlotte has found that their contracts are “unattractive in the marketplace”.

Yeesh. Think about that for a minute. All of those contracts were signed or acquired in something like the last 18 months.

At any rate, let’s approach this article with some healthy skepticism surrounding Michael Jordan‘s willingness to completely tear down the roster that he essentially built over the past two years. He’ll still want to win, and at 18-26 following a devastating loss to the Heat on Saturday night, the Hornets are still only four-and-a-half games out of the Eastern Conference playoff picture.

So let’s take a look at three potential trade scenarios. They all involve Minnesota and Charlotte, of course, but they also include at least one other team that has a) cap space, and b) motivation to be in a state of rebuild, at least at some level. (All trades are verified with the ESPN Trade Machine and have a link included if you wish to follow through to that page.)

Let’s get to it.