Kevin Love trade rumors: Klay Thompson seeking a max extension, Andrew Wiggins' contract negotiations

Sam Amick of USA Today had a pretty detailed account of why the Golden State Warriors won't trade Klay Thompson yesterday, that mostly confirmed (or re-affirmed) things that have already been rumored or discussed.

• The Warriors are concerned about the defensive trade-offs of giving up ace Klay Thompson to acquire Kevin Love, who isn't known for his defensive ability.
  
• Thompson is seeking a max contract, which was a given in light of contracts doled out this offseason and would be cheaper than eventually paying Love the max.
  
• There's some question about whether the Warriors can a) be elite with Love and without Thompson OR b) become elite by standing pat and passing on Love in favor of keeping Thompson.
  

Evanz's article adds some statistical weight to the position that the Warriors don't need to trade for Love in that his, "...although Love is a sizable upgrade from David Lee (+ 8 wins), the downgrade from Klay to Livingston/Martin is also sizable and negates much of that upgrade." I would still maintain that paying Thompson a max contract is a less efficient use of funds than paying Love a max contract - even if Thompson's would cost four million a year less - and if Love would get the team closer to 60 wins, that's worth it in pursuing a title. As for the general fact of the Warriors denying interest in trading Thompson, what Yannis Koutroupis of Basketball Insiders reported the other day makes a lot of sense: given a possible negotiation with Thompson in the absence of a trade, of course they need to deny wanting to trade him.

But, again, that's bringing up old stuff.

The new news from the weekend was the Cavs getting ready to sign rookie Andrew Wiggins to a contract, as originally reported by ESPN's Brian Windhorst yesterday. That would take him out of any package for Kevin Love for 30 days, which would do one of two things: buy the Warriors some extra time to persuade the Wolves that their offer is the best or simply continue to drag this thing out for the rest of the summer.

We can continue going back and forth on this, but ultimately we're still a ways away from a resolution and it's not entirely clear what the Warriors are going to do here. But for now I'll leave you with a quote from Patrick of the Boxscore Geeks:

Love is like a Picasso. You walk into a store where somebody wants to sell the Picasso for $500, you do not think "Oh, this sucker doesn't know he has a Picasso! I'm going to see if I can get it for $250. I'll wait him out, he clearly wants to sell."

You do not do that. You take out your wallet, and you plop down $500 as fast as you fucking can before someone else walks in the store and yells "Holy shit, a Picasso!" and starts a bidding war that you might lose. Because there are no other picasso's coming on the market any time soon.

Happy Monday.