According to Jerry Zgoda of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune a three-team trade will be completed on Saturday sending Kevin Love to Cleveland in exchange for the No. 1 pick in the 2014 NBA Draft, Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 pick in the 2013 Draft, Anthony Bennett, and Philadelphia’s Thaddeus Young. Philadelphia will receive Miami’s 2015 first-round pick Cleveland owns as well as Minnesota’s expiring contracts of Luc Mbah a Moute and Alexey Shved.
Zgoda adds that the ‘Wolves will also receive a trade exception believed to be worth at least $4 million.
There had been reports Bennett would go to Philadelphia in exchange for Young, but those were false, as we noted yesterday.
Instead, Minnesota dumps the expiring deals of Shved and Luc Mbah a Moute on Philadelphia, the latter of whom has ties to Philadelphia’s first-round pick, Joel Embiid, since he also hails from Embiid’s native Cameroon.
The deal will likely go down on Saturday, when Cleveland’s 30-day window to trade rookie, Andrew Wiggins — after he signed a rookie-scale contract last month — expires. The Timberwolves are expected to introduce Wiggins, Bennett and Young in a news conference on Tuesday at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds.
While the Young-to-Minnesota deal was initially expected to be ancillary to the Love trade to Cleveland, it seems Sam Hinkie wanted Miami’s 2015 first-round pick as part of sending Young to Minnesota, hence, they’ve been included in one mammoth three-team trade that will be announced tomorrow after completing a trade call to the league office.
Then again, according to Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski, and ESPN’s Marc Stein, the two trades might still be separate from each other, with Sam Amick of USA Today writing — like Zgoda did in his piece last night — that the two deals will be lumped together in one three-team swap.
Regardless of whether they’re separate swaps, or if the Love-to-Cleveland deal also includes Young to Minnesota, Kevin Love will be joining LeBron James and Kyrie Irving in Cleveland, and Thaddeus Young will join the last two No. 1 picks in the NBA draft — Wiggins and Bennett — in Minnesota, and Minnesota also gets a $4 million trade exception. Philadelphia acquires two expiring contracts, Shved and a fellow Cameroonian, a Moute, to help Joel Embiid’s transition to the NBA, as well as Miami’s 2015 first-round pick, which Woj reports is lottery protected to No. 10 in the 2015 and 2016 drafts, and unprotected in 2017.
This is a doozy of an exchange, and you can be sure it’ll be felt all around the league next season as the Cavs catapult to Eastern Conference favorites with the addition of all-star power forward Love, while the ‘Wolves look to rebuild with the last two No. 1 picks in the draft and the 26-year-old Young to replace Love at power forward. Philadelphia continues to conserve cap space and get younger under Hinkie’s long-term rebuilding plan.
Who wins this three-team swap once it’s official?
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