The Cavaliers ended up the winners in the Kevin Love sweepstakes, even though no trade can become official for a couple more weeks due to league rules about trading players just signed to rookie contracts.
But it’s happening, and should Love continue to play at an All-Star level and help LeBron James lead Cleveland to a title, there may be some in the Bay Area who end up having some regrets.
The Warriors were deep in talks to acquire Love themselves, but the Timberwolves insisted on getting Klay Thompson in return as part of any package. Golden State ultimately decided they weren’t willing to part with him, however, so Minnesota went shopping elsewhere.
Thompson, as you might imagine, is just fine with getting to remain with the Warriors.
From Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group:
Backcourt mate Stephen Curry told The Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday he spoke with Thompson about the subject a few times during the process.
“He actually took it pretty well.” Curry said of the trade talks. “Those rumors come around obviously every summer with free agency and teams trying to get better, and it’s going to be hard at some point in your career to avoid it, so he took it well. Obviously, our trade didn’t go through. It didn’t happen, and they’re keeping our core intact, so I know he’s pretty happy with how things turned out.” …
“I’m happy about that,” Mychal Thompson, Klay’s father, said last week on the ESPN LA radio show he co-hosts. “He likes it there. He did not want to get traded. As a matter of fact, he saw Kevin in Vegas during the Team USA workouts and said, ‘Thanks a lot, buddy.’ He was teasing him and said, ‘Thanks for putting my name out there in all the trade things’ because he wanted to come to the Warriors.
“He’s happy to stay with the Warriors. Thanks to Jerry West and Steve Kerr, they wanted to keep those guys together as they should, so I’m looking forward to that.”
None of this comes as a surprise, of course, because not only is the weather much more pleasant in the Bay Area than it is in Minnesota, but the Warriors are a playoff team in the West with a new head coach in Steve Kerr, while Minnesota, even with Thompson and someone like David Lee, would have struggled to reach that threshold.
Thompson is a great shooter to pair alongside Curry, and he’s a capable defender, as well. But he’ll be a restricted free agent next summer, and will be looking for a contract in the neighborhood of a max extension — something which the team may feel is too steep a price.
We’re seeing how it works when a player thinks he’s worth more than his team does in restricted free agency. At that point, it’ll be interesting to see if the Warriors are as happy as Thompson is that they didn’t trade him out of town.
