NBA Trade Rumors: Los Angeles Lakers, Atlanta Hawks offered trades for Hedo Turkoglu
By Josh Hill
The Orlando Magic set a deadline for themselves when i came to the future of forward Hedo Turkoglu and the decision the came to was to ultimately cut him on Friday and send him through waivers. But while the team waived their longtime forward, it wasn’t before some eleventh hour wheeling and dealing. According to USA Today, both the Los Angeles Lakers and Atlanta Hawks offered the Magic trade packages to land Turkoglu but neither were appealing enough for Orlando to pull the trigger on a deal.
According to Jeff Zillgitt, the Lakers trade offer would have added salary to the Magic’s books and the offer from the Hawks was pretty much worthless. Both trades would have had to be pretty bad for Orlando to opt to waive Turkoglu and forego receiving anything other than cap relief in return.
Both the Lakers and Hawks are now free to sign Turkoglu to a free agent contract once he clears waivers and that looks like the likely case. Los Angeles is probably the spot Turkoglu will land, simply because a choice between Los Angeles and Atlanta will always favor L.A. no matter what.
Turkoglu isn’t the player he used to be though and it’s surprising that he drew as much interest as he did. Neither the Hawks nor the Lakers are going anywhere this year though so it’s not as if Turkoglu is about turnaround a contenders season.