Offseason: Free Agency | Latest from Ken Berger | Rumors
The Wall Street Journal reports that the New York Knicks recently attempted to trade for Kevin Love, offering young prospects and Amar'e Stoudemire's huge expiring contract.
The Knicks recently attempted to make a trade for Minnesota Timberwolves star Kevin Love, offering forward Amar'e Stoudemire and his enormous expiring contract, second-year guard Tim Hardaway, Jr. and swingman Iman Shumpert, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
via Source: Knicks Made Offer for Kevin Love, Timberwolves Balked - WSJ.
That's actually not that bad of a package. A huge expiring contract to allow Minnesota to dump Kevin Martin and/or J.J. Barea in a deal, two great young prospect players in THJ and Shump. Now just throw in a couple of draft picks and ...
Oh, right.
And that's where the deal falls apart. Due to the Ted Stepien rule, teams can't trade picks in consecutive seasons. The Knicks traded their 2014 pick in the Carmelo Anthony trade and their 2016 pick in the Andrea Bargnani deal. (The gift that keeps on giving.) To be clear, that offer even with picks doesn't stack up with Cleveland's offer of Andrew Wiggins or the Warriors' offer if they deign to include Klay Thompson, or the Bulls offer of Taj Gibson, Nikola Mirotic and Doug McDermott, but it's also not bad ... if they had picks.
But they don't, having mortgaged their future in monstrous ways in efforts to win now. It's good that the Knicks picked up the phone to make the call, but the rebuilding process just isn't going to be that easy for Phil Jackson and company.
