Minnesota Timberwolves Still Shopping J.J. Barea and Luke Ridnour, Tried Trading for Ekpe Udoh
By Josh Hill
The Minnesota Timberwolves were supposedly going to trade both J.J. Barea and Luke Ridnour before the draft on Thursday but the only player they ended up trading was Trey Burke. Both Barea and Ridnour are still on roster but according to Gerry Woelfel it wasn’t for a lack of effort. Prior to the draft the Minnesota Timberwolves were in talks with the Milwaukee Bucks to send Luke Ridnour back to his old team in exchange for Epke Udoh.
Jerry Zgoda from the Star Tribune follows that report up today with news that the Wolves are still shopping both Barea and Ridnour to teams around the NBA and remain engaged in attempts to trade one of them.
"They’re trying to trade Luke Ridnour and/or J.J. Barea to clear one of their $4 million-plus salaries and will waive backup center Greg Stiemsma before his $2.5 million contract becomes guaranteed for next season."
It was widely reported that both guards would be gone by the draft but that clearly didn’t happen and now the Wolves might end up hanging onto one of them. It appears they’re going to make re-signing Nikola Pekovic their top priority this offseason but free agent guard O.J. Mayo is very much on Minnesota’s radar which means the need to clear cap space and get rid of the contracts of Barea and Ridnour becomes even greater than it was before.
The rumor that they were trying to land Udoh makes sense since they weren’t planning on drafting anyone other than a top shooting guard in the draft on Thursday but that plan fell through very quickly. Minnesota saved face pretty well but it’s clear that shooting guard is still a hole on the roster and the team is even more ready than before to give up two point guards to find one shooting guard.