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Teams can officially start talking to free agents at 11:00 pm CDT, but we’ve already had a ton of Wolves news.
Of course the acquisition of Jimmy Butler on draft night was a course changer for the franchise, but today brought us a hugely disappointing trade of Ricky Rubio to the Utah Jazz for a protected draft pick.
John wrote eloquently about this earlier today, and we’ll of course have a lot more on it in the coming days.
The trade opened up more cap space for the Wolves, and they head into the night with roughly $25-26M in space, which could get as high as $33M or so if they choose to renounce Shabazz Muhammad and his $7.6M cap hold.
However, rumor has it that they are about to use much of that space on Jeff Teague, a point guard replacement for Ricky Rubio. Reports have his deal at 3 years, $55M.
I am not looking forward to that; he’ll cost more that Rubio was making, which turns today’s transactions into a net negative in terms of cap space and also on the court. This would not be a good look for Tom Thibodeau and Scott Layden, and would frankly show what I see as a mis-evaluation of the involved players.
That said, Teague is not a bad ball player. You can win games with him.
Meanwhile, it appears Blake Griffin is headed back to the Clippers on a five year deal.
And in a shocking turn, the Thunder got Paul George while managing to move Vic Oladipo’s contract and didn’t give up a pick. Oladipo and Sabonis for George. Amazing.
We’ll have more on any further Wolves moves.
Until then, this is your chatterbox.