3:53pm: The Wizards regard Will Bynum as their chief target aside from Ray Allen, writes J. Michael of CSNWashington.com, so it doesn’t appear as though Martin is a high priority for them.
MONDAY, 10:35am: There’s “nothing there yet” regarding the Mavericks and Martin, a source tells Wolfson (Twitter link).
FRIDAY, 2:33pm: Washington hasn’t discussed Martin to this point, as Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN Twin Cities hears (Twitter link).
9:10am: The Mavericks and Wizards are “among the possibilities” for Kevin Martin, as Chris Mannix of SI.com writes within his Open Floor column, calling the Timberwolves shooting guard a “player to keep an eye on” as the February 19th trade deadline approaches. Still, a source told Sean Deveney of The Sporting News about a week ago that there’s “almost zero chance” the Wolves swing any deals because of the long-term salary commitments involved with many of their veterans. Martin, who makes nearly $6.793MM this season, is under contract through 2016/17, a season for which he has a player option worth almost $7.378MM.
Despite those salaries, Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press wrote last week that he didn’t get the sense that the Wolves wanted to trade the 11th-year veteran. Martin has played in only 14 games this season, including a 37-point performance against the Knicks in which he broke his right (shooting) wrist. He returned to action just last week after an absence of more than two months because of the wrist, and he scored 30 points in Minnesota’s last game, a victory over the Heat. The 32-year-old is averaging 20.5 points per game so far this year, which would represent his first season with a scoring average of better than 20.0 PPG since 2010/11.
Neither the Mavs nor the Wizards have a trade exception large enough to absorb Martin, and both teams are fairly close to the tax threshold, so they’d have to send out matching salary. Washington has the additional burden of a hard cap. The only expiring contract the Wizards have that’s greater than the minimum salary and doesn’t require the player’s consent for a trade is the team’s deal with Andre Miller, who makes $4.625MM this season and has recently fallen out of the rotation. The expiring contracts for the Mavs are all minimum-salary deals, except the ones for Tyson Chandler and Rajon Rondo, players the team will almost certainly keep.
A deal with Minnesota may also come down to how badly Washington would want to avoid the tax. It looks like they could do a two-for-one swap of Miller and Butler for Martin, but that would put them over the tax line. If they wanted to get below it, it looks like the only option may be including DeJuan Blair as well, but his deal extends through next season, something Minny may not want. Obviously, draft pick compensation would need to also be involved to make this deal work.
The Wizards will not be trading Butler. If they do trade Blair, it will be next season. I believe Webster would more likely be a candidate to get traded, I think only a team like Minnesota would accommodate a deal with Webster or any team in a similar position to them.
I think a team like Philadelphia can help to make a trade work even more efficiently, obviously their would have to be picks tied into a deal with them involved.