NBA Trade Deadline: Every Timberwolves trade rumor from this week

With the trade deadline coming up rapidly, let’s take a quick look at every single player the Timberwolves have been rumored to have interest in over the past few days and weeks.

Here we are, bumping up against the earliest trade deadline the NBA has seen in years. And for the first time in 14 years, the Timberwolves are in position as a legitimate buy-now candidate.

The problem, as yours truly has noted right here at Dunking With Wolves, is that the Wolves have virtually zero cap space and a handful of nearly untradeable players on the books. There’s still a possibility that a few veterans in the rotation could be on the block, however — more on that later on — and that allows some intrigue to remain as we advance closer to the 2 p.m. CT deadline.

Let’s take a spin through each name that has flown off the fingertips of NBA insiders as they discuss the Timberwolves in relation to the trade deadline, and weight the likelihood of a move actually occurring.

As always, it wouldn’t be a shock if there were several dark-horse trade candidates out there that surface in the final hours. Stay tuned…

DeAndre Jordan

The Clippers were rumored to be considering a complete tear-down for the first few months of the season, and they finally took the first official step by shipping five-time All-Star Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons 10 days ago.

The player that everyone thought would be moved, even if Griffin wasn’t, is center DeAndre Jordan. And as of this writing, he’s still a member of the Los Angeles Clippers.

The first report that mentioned alleged Timberwolves interest in Jordan was from Gary Woelfel of the Racine Journal Times back in early December. (Woelfel all but doubled-down on the four teams he claims are hottest on the trail of Jordan earlier this week.)  We covered it as a highly unlikely occurrence, as our own Jake Paynting identified that it would surely have to be a Gorgui Dieng/Cole Aldrich/Jazz first-round draft pick coming from Minnesota, and it remains unclear whether or not that would appeal to the Clippers.

Surely, L.A. is trying to stockpile picks and young players, and while a trade with Minnesota would net them a first-round pick, it’ll be a late first-rounder, and they would get back exactly zero young players. And to make matters even more tepid, the Clippers would have to take back Dieng’s contract, and while they reportedly like him as a player, the price tag is surely too high for a team that just got out from under Griffin’s mammoth deal.

Unless there’s a third-team involved, it’s extremely difficult to see the trigger being pulled on Jordan-to-the-Wolves. The Clippers will surely have better offers, and while the Wolves are right to have interest in the best defensive center in the league, it’d be mildly shocking if Tom Thibodeau and Scott Layden pulled this one off.

Lou Williams

The Lou Williams discussion began on Tuesday afternoon when SI.com’s The Crossover listed the Timberwolves as one of three contenders, along with Boston and Oklahoma City, to have interest in the former Sixth Man of the Year.

My reaction, in part:

"…The 31-year-old is having a career-year, shooting 43.9 percent from beyond the arc, his best percentage from 3-point range since becoming a rotation regular back in 2007-08. He’s averaging a career-best 23.3 points per game for the likely lottery-bound Clippers, and would provide an efficient scoring punch off the bench for the Wolves."

Something to keep in mind when it comes to any potential Lou Williams acquisition is that it would require the Wolves to move Jamal Crawford, who is essentially an older and less-efficient version of Lou-Will. As we’ll find out later in this article, Minnesota is reportedly willing to move Crawford, which comes as at least a mild surprise.

At any rate, the Clippers reportedly reached a three-year contract extension with Williams on Tuesday, effectively ending any trade speculation as he now can’t be moved until the offseason.

The interest in Williams, however, does show that the Timberwolves are willing to improve their current roster without limitation, as any hesitation to move on from a high-scoring, well-respected sixth-man like Crawford would have been understandable. Crawford picked the Wolves over contenders such as Golden State and Cleveland in free agency, and if Thibodeau had wanted to show some loyalty, and/or if he hadn’t thought that Williams was a clear upgrade, well, it wouldn’t have been shocking.

And while Lou-Will won’t be donning a Timberwolves jersey anytime soon, it’s a positive sign that Minnesota had interest.

Marco Belinelli

The Atlanta Hawks are tied for the worst record in the NBA at 17-37. They don’t have a need for a 3-point specialist, and Marco Belinelli’s 37.7 career 3-point shooting percentage would be of value to virtually every potential playoff team.

Belinelli played for Tom Thibodeau’s 2012-13 Chicago Bulls squad that won 47 games. Belinelli shot just 35.7 percent from beyond the arc that year, which is his second-worst long-range shooting season in his 11-year NBA career. He doesn’t contribute much outside of shooting, but has played in a variety of systems and has virtually always been an effective rotation piece.

The Star Tribune’s Jerry Zgoda said on Tuesday that he does not think the Wolves will “stand pat” at the deadline, and followed that up by suggesting that a shooter such as Belinelli could be the type of player they end up landing. Later on Tuesday, regarding Belinelli:

Also from Tuesday, Marc Stein reported that the Hawks have told Belinelli that he will likely be moved.

According to Zgoda, a potential trade could be something like Shabazz Muhammad, plus a draft pick of some kind, in exchange for Belinelli.

This is exactly the kind of deal that would likely constitute a best-case scenario for the Wolves: not mortgaging the future or further tying up cap space, but also not upsetting the apple cart by messing with the current rotation too much or trading away value of any kind.

Tyreke Evans

Tyreke Evans was the fourth-overall selection in the 2009 NBA Draft. Or, as Wolves fans know it, the Ricky Rubio/Jonny Flynn/Steph Curry draft. In what ended up being a shockingly strong draft class, Evans was the Rookie of the Year award-winner following the 2009-10 season.

Evans has evolved somewhat as a player in bouncing from Sacramento to New Orleans, back to Sacramento, and now to Memphis in his ninth season in the NBA. He’s added a 3-point shot, and has drained 38.2 percent from beyond the arc since 2015-16.

Evans’ main point of attraction for Tom Thibodeau is, no doubt, his length and athleticsm that could slot in at either guard position or even the small forward spot in a grind-it-out type of matchup. The biggest issue is that the Wolves will be competing with what sounds like a hefty list of teams interested in Evans’ services, and it’s fair to wonder whether it’s worth moving the Thunder first-round pick that Minnesota acquired from Utah in the Ricky Rubio trade.

Evans could be effective as a bench piece that would play the one, two, and three, but unless Crawford is moved in the trade, he’d have to earn most of his minutes at small forward, and there aren’t all that many minutes to go around there with Jimmy Butler and Andrew Wiggins playing so many minutes.

Expect Evans to be traded by this afternoon, but don’t expect it to be to Minnesota.

Jamal Crawford, Shabazz Muhammad, Gorgui Dieng, and more…

As previously noted, the most valuable asset that the Timberwolves will be willing to trade is the first-round draft pick owed to them from Thunder, by way of the Jazz. But in order to free up a roster spot and match salaries, there would have to be an actual player involved in any trade.

That leaves Shabazz Muhammad, Gorgui Dieng, Jamal Crawford, Cole Aldrich, and Nemanja Bjelica as realistic, tradeable assets that the Wolves would consider moving. Up until this week, it wsa known that they’d be willing to move Muhammad, and his recent reported trade request makes sense.

Additionally, it makes sense that Minnesota would trade Aldrich and his hefty contract, they’ll just need to find a trade partner that is willing and able to take on that salary.

Now, we also have confirmation that the Wolves would listen on both Dieng and Crawford.

ESPN’s Zach Lowe mentioned the Wolves’ willingness to trade Dieng earlier in the week, and we covered that here. Also, our friend Darren Wolfson from KSTP/ESPN 1500 confirmed as much.

While we’d identified here at DWW that a Lou Williams trade (which can’t happen anymore after his extension) and even a potential move surrounding Tyreke Evans would be an awkward fit alongside Crawford and his ball-dominant play on the second unit. Now, there’s a report that the Wolves have “talked to teams” about Crawford.

Wolfson was surprised and couldn’t confirm, but noted that Amick is “very plugged in”.

It makes sense, of course, and would be silly for the Wolves to dig their heals in on Crawford, but it’s interesting in that a move there would completely change the complexion of the bench unit — no small thing when the team is sitting fourth in the Western Conference nearly two-thirds of the way through the season.

Nothing new has cropped up in the past 24 hours or so, but expect the lead-up to the deadline to be extremely busy.

Next: 5 bold predictions for the Wolves at the trade deadline

That doesn’t mean that anything will happen, of course. The Timberwolves face an uphill climb if they’re going to make a move, that much is clear.