The NBA trade deadline is six hours away, and the expectation at this point around the league from those in the know seems to be that we won’t have too much in the way of earth-shattering trade news coming.
That doesn’t mean deals won’t get done, but we probably won’t see a blockbuster on the level of the Blake Griffin trade from a couple weeks ago. The Clippers are the best bet to facilitate another big time trade, as they continue to look for deals for center DeAndre Jordan, although talks have yet to get really serious.
The Cavaliers apparently continue to push hard to try and land Jordan, although not hard enough (to this point) to give up the Brooklyn pick, but according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, Cleveland is exploring other ways to sweeten the pot. Woj reported on Thursday morning that talks were ongoing and the Cavs had even discussed some possible three team options with L.A.
The Clippers and Cavaliers continue to discuss the possibility of a trade centered on DeAndre Jordan, including conversations with potential third teams to help create a pathway to a deal, league sources tell ESPN.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) February 8, 2018
Trying to bring a third team in makes sense, although trying to figure out what team that may be is a bit trickier. You would expect it to be a team with cap space willing to take on some salary in exchange for a pick of some sort, or if there’s for some reason a team with space that likes Tristan Thompson, which seems unlikely.
To this point, the Cavs’ efforts to get the Clippers to take on one of their two bad contracts in Thompson or J.R. Smith and their own 2018 first round pick have been unsuccessful. It’s hard to speculate on just what a third team could get out of joining the trade to help with assets, but it appears Cleveland will exhaust every possible option before they put that Brooklyn pick on the table, if they do at all.
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