The Kings are high on Timberwolves shooting guard Kevin Martin, Darren Wolfson of 1500 ESPN reports (Twitter link). This comes on the heels of the overnight report from Jon Krawczynski of The Associated Press that Minnesota has made Martin available in trade discussions. The Wolves are reportedly looking to free up more minutes to aid in the development of Andrew Wiggins, Shabazz Muhammad and Zach LaVine, according to Krawczynski.
This isn’t the first time that Sacramento has shown interest in the 32-year-old shooting guard. Last winter the Kings were mentioned as part of a series of reports identifying them along with the Mavericks, Wizards, Bulls and Rockets as interested parties for Martin’s services. No deal was struck, obviously, due to late Wolves coach/executive Flip Saunders‘ apparent unwillingness to trade Martin or arrange for a buyout at the time. Martin played for the Kings from 2004-2010, though his time in Sacramento ended years before owner Vivek Ranadive bought the team and later installed Vlade Divac atop the basketball operations department.
Sacramento could certainly use some help at shooting guard, with neither former lottery pick Ben McLemore nor offseason signee Marco Belinelli playing particularly well thus far in 2015/16. The Kings are currently over the salary cap and without a trade exception, so Sacramento would need to send back matching salary to Minnesota in any deal. Martin is making $7.085MM this season with a player option for nearly $7.378MM next year.
Trade Kevin Martin for Cauley Stein, Would give more chemistry to the team as Towns is his former teammate on kentucky.
Can’t see giving up a promising rookie for a 32-year-old shooting guard. Plus the salaries won’t come close to being even. Stein is obviously on his rookie contract.
Oh true, i’m not too experienced with the business side of the NBA, but I really do look into the timberwolves as a basketball team. I do think that our depth is really strong and not sure who we should add, is it possible for draft picks?
The Wolves could certainly swap Martin for a draft pick or picks, but given his salary there are only a couple of teams (Sixers, Blazers) that have enough cap space available to simply absorb Martin’s cap hit. The Kings are just over the cap, so they would have to send salary out in order to land Martin. Sacramento can’t free up space by releasing a player either. The only guy on the team not possessing a fully guaranteed deal is Eric Moreland..and if he’s waived prior to being medically cleared to play it wouldn’t clear any space..so no help there. Best option for the Wolves/Kings if they want to make this happen without merely exchanging similar contracts is to get a third team involved..though someone would likely need to throw in at least one second-rounder to make it worthwhile for the extra team to take part in facilitating a trade.
KMart would give the Kings their best SG since Tyreke (I think he played SG in Sac). But he hasn’t shot well this year and has never been a great defender, so I am skeptical if they end up doing a deal