The Minnesota Timberwolves were reportedly interested in Jerami Grant when he hit the market as a restricted free agent last offseason.
Ultimately, Grant was quickly priced out of the Wolves’ range, inking a three-year, $60 million deal as part of a sign-and-trade that sent him from the Denver Nuggets to the Detroit Pistons.
Grant has had a strong season, but the Pistons remain one of the league’s worst teams. Naturally, vultures have been circling in the trade market, and Bleacher Report is suggesting that the Wolves should pony up to acquire Grant this summer.
Bleacher Report is off-base with their Jerami Grant to the Minnesota Timberwolves trade
Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley included a potential Grant-to-Minnesota deal as part of an article suggesting five offseason trades from across the league.
The proposed deal, however, would include two key members of the Wolves’ rotation, including their third-best player and an exciting rookie.
Here’s how it all breaks down:
To be clear, Grant is a great player and would be a perfect fit next to Towns. He’s a bouncy, 6-foot-8 forward with the ability to guard multiple positions with an above-average impact. Grant is also an average 3-point shooter for his career who knocked down 39.1 percent of his long-range attempts over his past two seasons in Oklahoma City and Denver.
He just turned 27, and $20 million next year and $20.9 million in 2022-23 are not unreasonable salary numbers to pay during Grant’s prime as he continues to improve.
The cost to the Wolves, however, at least according to Buckley, would be far too high.
Buckley correctly makes the point that the Wolves are allowing Karl-Anthony Towns‘ prime years to waste away, and the Wolves need to build out their roster with win-now players.
However, Malik Beasley is exactly that: a win-now player, on a more affordable contract than Grant, and possesses an important elite skill that the Wolves’ roster largely lacks on the wing in his 3-point shooting and ability to create efficiently both in the half-court and in transition.
Add in the cost of including 20-year-old rookie forward Jaden McDaniels, who is under team control for three more seasons and has been a pleasant surprise this season as the No. 28 pick in the draft, and this deal makes zero sense for the Wolves.
McDaniels isn’t as good as Grant yet, but it’s feasible to see him surpassing Grant on the defensive end of the floor in the next year or two, and the offensive ceiling is considerably higher. The Wolves rookie is already knocking down 37.2 percent of his 3-point attempts and his catch-and-shoot mark of 38.2 percent from beyond the arc is extremely encouraging.
Oh, and that isn’t it. Buckley suggests that the Wolves add in a top-seven protected 2023 first-round pick, plus Jarrett Culver, one of the Wolves’ few additional trade assets that might actually be of value to potential trade partners.
This package ultimately borders on lunacy. Yes, the Wolves would be better today with Grant next to Towns, but does losing McDaniels’ defense and upside, Beasley’s shooting, plus Culver and another first-round pick make it worth it to (maybe) win a handful more games in 2021-22?
No. The answer is an unequivocal and unwavering, ‘no.’