Former All-Star believes Timberwolves robbed Jazz in trade

The Minnesota Timberwolves must be doing something right. You see, the key to a blockbuster trade that has a real chance to be a great move is one that does not make everyone walk away feeling like it was a Win-Win. Rather, the best deals are those where everyone passionately weighs in on the exchange and accuses the other side of highway robbery.

We had recently shared the perspective of NBA executives who felt as though the Minnesota Timberwolves overpaid for Rudy Gobert in the blockbuster trade earlier this year. If you read between the lines, their reasoning was that the Gobert trade elevated the asking price of Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant. So perhaps there was some “We want a lower asking price for Durant,” bias in their opinions.

But there are other opinions, and some believe that the Minnesota Timberwolves got a tremendous bargain.

I think that it’s safe to say that the blockbuster trade between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Utah Jazz surprised both fans and NBA analysts alike. It was a trade that nobody saw coming but involved so many valuable assets that almost everyone who should have predicted something was up was a bit embarrassed.

After all, the Minnesota Timberwolves were upfront the entire time that they wanted to add a more traditional NBA center to allow the team to move Karl-Anthony Towns to the power forward position to optimize his incredible shot arsenal. Meanwhile, the Utah Jazz traded away their star center for four NBA first-round draft picks, one pick-swap, and five solid but rotational NBA players.

Three-time NBA All-Star point guard Gilbert Arenas is now weighing in about the trade. On his podcast, the former All-Star guard was appalled that the Jazz would trade such a valuable and rare NBA All-Star center for what he called “nobodies”. As for all those draft picks? He called them just “things.” Arenas summed it all up – “it wasn’t that much.”

Gilbert Arenas was hilarious, calling the Timberwolves package of players and picks to the Utah Jazz “fools gold,” “magic beans,” and suggested that the Timberwolves “throw in two coupons to Red Lobster, that’s basically what they did.”

So not everyone believes that the Jazz raked the Timberwolves over the coals on this one. How do you feel about the trade? Let us know in the comments section.