12:13pm: The situation will probably keep him from traveling with the team for road games, Kirilenko told reporters, including Stefan Bondy of the New York Daily News, who notes that the family issue involves Kirilenko’s wife (Twitter link). Kirilenko also said that the matter won’t be resolved until early February, Vasquez notes (via Twitter).
11:48am: Nets GM Billy King confirmed today that Kirilenko has returned to practice, tweets Andy Vasquez of The Record.
MONDAY, 8:15am: Kirilenko is set to rejoin the Nets for practice today, a source tells Robert Windrem of NetsDaily (Twitter link). The forward has been absent from the team for more than a week, ostensibly to tend to the family issue.
SATURDAY, 1:56pm: Several contending teams that have inquired about trading for Nets forward Andrei Kirilenko were given the impression that Kirilenko’s desire to attend to an unspecified family matter in New York would make any deal impractical for the foreseeable future, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports reports. The Cavs and Clippers are two franchises with needs on the perimeter who will wait and see if Brooklyn makes the 33-year-old Russian available as February’s trade deadline moves closer, or if Kirilenko and the Nets reach a buyout agreement before then, Wojnarowski adds.
Kirilenko left the team recently while the Nets were on a west coast trip to return to New York in order to deal with this family matter. With the veteran seemingly out of head coach Lionel Hollins‘ rotation prior to his departure from the team, Brooklyn has been looking for a trade partner who would be willing to take on the remaining balance of Kirilenko’s $3.3MM salary for this season, notes the Yahoo! scribe.
If the Nets were unable to find a contending team willing to acquire Kirilenko, then Brooklyn would likely need to package him along with future second round draft picks in order to find a rebuilding team with free cap space to rid themselves of the Russian, Wojnarowski adds. In that instance, Kirlilenko would likely be waived by the team acquiring him. The Sixers would certainly seem like a fit in this scenario, but Philadelphia has asked for too much draft compensation to close the deal with the Nets, Wojnarowski notes. Talks with Philadelphia are not completely dead, but no longer include Nets forward Sergey Karasev, Wojnarowski’s sources said. The Jazz were also said to be interested in acquiring Kirilenko, but there were conflicting reports regarding Utah’s involvement.
The Nets may be able to garner a better deal if they wait until February when contending teams would have a better handle on when Kirilenko would be able and willing to report to them, and this may remove the need for Brooklyn to part with any draft picks, Wojnarowski concludes.