I actually think this is the best of the three most rumored deals (also including the bad players/picks from Houston and Richardson/no cap relief from Miami) because Minnesota is desperately trying to avoid the tax and this makes that happen. Covington has a great value contract and the Wolves will only have about a $6M cap hold for Saric in 18 months, so they are cost-controlled, efficient uses of cap space. You get about 140 games to evaluate Saric to see if you want to keep him around or one/both can be valuable trade chips.
I get the arguments for either of the other two deals but I think this one has fewer unpredictable variables associated with it. It wouldn't totally shock me if Minnesota kept their foot on the gas and ended up making the playoffs after all of this, since they can use Jimmy's absence as a rallying point of sorts, but it's probably more likely that the 4-9 start or whatever it is, is close to how this roster is going to perform.
|