Yesterday morning I went off on the Wolves front office for their trade of OJ Mayo for Kevin Love.  Normally I try to keep what I write on the front page from being overly harsh and save my "off the cuff" remarks for the forum.  However, somewhere in the seismic shift between my Thursday night elation and my Friday morning stomach punch, I lost my cool and made a post out of anger without looking at all the angles.  After taking a day to put the whole picture in perspective, I definitely owe Kevin McHale and Fred Hoiberg an apology for publicly ripping them a new one and  heralding this trade as potentially the "dumbest move in Timberwolves history".  Don't get me wrong, this very well may end up being the dumbest trade in Timberwolves history if OJ Mayo becomes a superstar, and I'm not convinced that I'd have made the trade myself, but to automatically label it that was was extremely premature.  The final verdict on this deal won't be made for at least another two years, and anyone passing judgement a moment before then is claiming to be a psychic.

My main objection to the trade was that I felt OJ Mayo's ceiling was far higher than Kevin Love, as even Glen Taylor as attested.  You don't win in the NBA by hitting seven straight singles, you win by hitting a grand slam.  After finishing  third to last this past season, the Timberwolves are more in need of a bases-clearing hit than perhaps any team. Plain and simple, Mike Miller and Kevin Love aren't going to help Al Jefferson hoist a trophy without other MAJOR additions.  If OJ Mayo is who I think he is, the combo of him and Big Al could have been Stockton and Malone-esque. With an additional move here or there, the Wolves could have been firmly in contention a couple of years down the road.  Of course all of these "possibilities" are meaningless now and it's pointless to talk about what might've been.  However, if five years from now OJ is lighting it up in the NBA, there's going to be an army of disguntled Wolves fans cursing McHale's name. 

On the flip side, there's no guarantee that OJ will actually match the hype surrouding him.  Still I feel comfortable saying that he'll be a solid player at worst and probably a better pro than Love.  Spot-on shooters with solid defense don't come around all that often, so letting OJ go before he even stepped foot on an NBA court was extremely risky.  Maybe at the end of the day the Wolves pulled in two good players for the price of one, but Memphis probably got the best player in the trade. In a league where a single person can make the difference between a team going for a title or ping pong balls, that's always a good situation to be in.  I certainly don't understand the people who are crucifying the Grizzlies for this deal.  The Wolves almost certainly won't have a tandem as good as Gay and Mayo this upcoming season.  

All I knew about the remaining players in the deal was that Brian Cardinal still had an atrocious contract, which partially off-set the benefits of ditching Marko's deal. I also cringed at the fact that we'd lost Antoine's expiring contract and, with it, any chance of swinging a deadline deal or signing a good free-agents next summer.  At first glance, the Timberwolves looked like a one-man-team with slightly better role players and less flexibility to make moves in the short-term. That was the logic that lead me to go off on the Wolves front office.  At six o'clock in the morning, that was about as in-depth as I could get into the deal.

However, after I finally got the time to scrutinze all the new contracts we acquired, I realized something phenomenal.  Other than Big Al, there's not a single player on this team locked up beyond the 2009-10 season.  That means that when an astounding group of free agents (Think LeBron, Tim Duncan, Amare Stoudamire, Joe Johnson, Chris Bosh, Deron Williams, Chris Paul, Tracy McGrady, Michael Redd, the list goes on...) come due in 2010, the Wolves could be ridiculously under the cap and able to buy themselves some top-shelf talent.   It's true that Walker would have given us some cap space this upcoming summer, but the 2009 crop of free-agents pale in comparison to those names I just rattled off.  It can also be argued that the Wolves could have avoided this two year wait by just keeping OJ Mayo and hoping that he'd turn into the superstar we're hoping to buy, but even the most adamant supporters of OJ, like myself, have to admit that there's no guarantee he'll reach that level.  What can be guaranteed is that if the Wolves have 20 million plus to offer a free-agent, there's going to be somebody in that pool who's going to be willing to take it.  

In summary, Kevin McHale will probably not be considered a fool for swapping Mayo for Love in the long run.  Unless OJ ends up being a Top 5 talent in this league, the Wolves will have ample opportunity to acquire somebody just as talented in 2010, and managed to improve their overall roster in the process.  Is it necessarily the way I would have done things?  Probably not.  But I can't promise that my plan would have had any better results.  With my plan, the Wolves have a core of Jefferson and Mayo and we swing a deal using Antoine, our youngsters, and our extra picks to acquire another solid player.  With McHale's plan we have Jefferson and some nice, but not amazing pieces, and will hopefully add the other core player in 2010.  I don't see either of the plans getting us anywhere before 2010-11 anyway.  I wanted the Wolves to make a right turn and McHale decided to take three lefts.  Until we really see how good Mayo and Love are, as well as what the Wolves do with their potential cap room, the there's no way you can say the Wolves will be any worse off with either option.

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