Timberwolves reporter: I ‘just don’t see’ how the Suns have a good enough package to get Kevin Love
Jun 20, 2014, 11:23 PM | Updated: 11:25 pm
“Starting at forward for the Phoenix Suns, 6-foot-9 from UCLA, Kevin Loooooove…”
Admit it, you’ve envisioned what it would look like with Love in the spotlight at US Airways Center, wearing the orange and black while public address announcer Kip Helt belts out the above intro.
The consensus is, that scenario will probably come no closer to fruition than the first two paragraphs written here.
Less than a week before the NBA Draft, it appears that the Golden State Warriors are the frontrunners to land the disgruntled Minnesota Timberwolves power forward. How’d they get to the top of the list? By reportedly including 6-foot-7 shooting guard Klay Thompson in a possible deal for the three-time All-Star.
So where does that leave the Suns and general manager Ryan McDonough, who is likely still trying to craft a deal to bring Love to the desert?
According to Minneapolis Star Tribune scribe Jerry Zgoda, it leaves the Suns unable to engineer an offer that makes sense for Minnesota to accept.
“You keep hearing (Eric) Bledsoe, (Goran) Dragic — possibly both, which makes no sense to me — and you’d have the same issues with them as you’d have with (Thompson), you know, (they’re) going to need to get paid and you hear rumblings that he wants a max deal or he’s going to get $12 million or $13 million,” Zgoda told Burns and Gambo Friday on Arizona Sports 98.7 FM. “Bledsoe’s in the same situation. And then Dragic has one year left and he’ll need to get paid after that.
“OK, you’ve got those guys, but then you’ve also got Ricky Rubio here. They’re obviously better, but do you try to play them together, do you give up on Rubio and try to make some other trade?”
McDonough is armed with other tradable assets, like Markieff and Marcus Morris, but Zgoda pokes a hole in that possibility, was well.
“Is it possible to physically split up the Morris twins?” he asked.
The Suns do have something that most potential trade partners can’t offer Minnesota — oodles of future first-round draft picks. In fact, Phoenix owns six over the next two years, but Zgoda doesn’t know how much value those have to the Timberwolves.
“Whatever the draft picks that the Suns have compiled, I’m not sure how big of an attraction those are,” he said. “I mean, I think they’re on the list, but I think they’re like the Celtics, who are down there.”
In other words, Zgoda believes the Suns fall into the ‘longshot’ category of teams trying to trade for Love.
“I look at it and I just don’t see where the package competes with Golden State,” he said.
Jules Tompkins contributed to this report
