Many NBA teams’ hopes of improving their rosters this summer with a big name player relies on a trade. That includes the Nuggets. But itap easy to speculate trades. Itap harder to get the team with the star player to want to deal him.
With that in mind, this appears to have been a bad week already for organizations looking to pry Kevin Love from the champion Cleveland Cavaliers or Jimmy Butler from the Chicago Bulls.
Chicago’s trade of native son point guard Derrick Rose to the N.Y. Knicks signals the Jimmy Butler era is probably in full swing. The Bulls are expected to build around Butler, who has established himself as one of the best two-way players in the game. Chicago had already reportedly rebuffed advances from the Celtics, who have tried to acquire Butler for packages that included the third pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft.
Meanwhile, Cavaliers coach Tyronn Lue went on the Mike & Mike radio show and sounded as definitive as anyone could in saying his star player, Kevin Love, would be returning to Cleveland next season.
“He’s going to be here,” said Lue on the show. “Without Kevin Love, we wouldn’t have got to the Finals. Had a great series against Detroit, a great series against Atlanta. He had a great series against Toronto. With the way Golden State plays and the positions they put you in, itap a tough series. You know, like the same way with Channing Frye; he did a great job of getting us to that point, but then you know it was a tough series for him to play because they played small. It was tough for him matchup-wise. Kevin Love, he was great for us all season long. Kyrie Irving missed 30 games this season and LeBron (James) and Kevin really carried the team the first 30 games of the season. And throughout the playoffs, those first three rounds he was big. In Game 7 he comes in after hearing all of the negative talk, he comes into Game 7, has 14 rebounds, a big stop on Steph Curry at the end of the game.
Kevin Love is going to be here. We want him here. He’s a big part of what we’re doing and what we’re trying to do going forward.”
There is always the chance of gamesmanship, but gamesmanship rarely sounds like that. Thus, if those two players are essentially off the market, that puts a big dent into the plans of teams that have found it difficult to improve markedly through free agency.
