The Timberwolves want to upgrade the roster, but they have a roadblock that will make trades difficult.
The Wolves aren’t trading one of their core three players, and it’s highly unlikely they move Jaden McDaniels either. Upgrading around those players makes sense, and along those lines, Bleacher Report recently published a piece providing three trade targets for each NBA team.
The three names make a lot of sense. Gary Trent Jr. would fill a need on the wing and was recently mentioned in a piece here on the site as a trade target. Josh Richardson and Kelly Oubre Jr. are solid two-way wings on tanking teams. All three players would help the Timberwolves and shouldn’t be prohibitively expensive on the open market.
The problem for Minnesota is that it would be extremely difficult for them to trade for any of those three players. The reason? The Timberwolves have very ill-fitting matching salaries.
For those new to the trade game in the NBA, teams that are over the cap (28 of the 30 teams this season) have to use an “exception” to add a player. One way to do that is to have a “trade exception” large enough to drop an entire player’s salary into. The more common way is to use the “matching salary exception” and send out player salaries within 25 percent of the contract coming in.
Gary Trent Jr. is making $17.5 million this season. Josh Richardson is making $12.2 million. Kelly Oubre Jr. is making $12.6. It’s very difficult for the Timberwolves to build a trade to match the salaries of those players.
Rudy Gobert, Karl-Anthony Towns, and D’Angelo Russell are all making over $30 million this season. Anthony Edwards is making $10.7 million as the fourth-highest-paid Minnesota player this year. No one is on a salary in the middle range between $10 and $31 million.
Want to construct a trade for Kelly Oubre? Unless it’s some larger blockbuster move with Russell involved, the Wolves have to stack players. Taurean Prince ($7.2 million) and Jordan McLaughlin ($2.1 million) don’t quite get you there. Wendell Moore instead of McLaughlin just barely would, but the Wolves aren’t moving their recent first-round pick for a rental in Oubre or Richardson.
Kyle Anderson is the only other player among the tradeable pieces making more than $2.3 million, and he was this team’s key offseason addition and is playing a large rotational role. Moving him for another player just shuffles the pieces, it doesn’t help boost the rotation.
If the Timberwolves want anyone making more than about $11 million they have to include players they are relying on. If they want someone making more than about $14 million, it means trading Anderson and Prince and hoping the other team is comfortable with that. It’s not a great negotiating stance to hold.
The Timberwolves will continue to scour the trade market and make calls on available free agents. Perhaps something comes together. The realities of their roster, paying a combined $113.2 million to three players, have put them in a bind and created a substantial roadblock to improving this team.