Although many believe Kevin Love will never suit up for the Utah Jazz, he remains with the team nonetheless. This is likely because the Jazz waited until Love's trade restriction expired to trade him with someone else. Well, with the offseason entering its dog days, there is one way the Jazz could take advantage of the Love situation: trade him to the Philadelphia 76ers.
Jake Fischer revealed on a Bleacher Report live stream that the Sixers are looking to cut salary in their efforts to re-sign Quentin Grimes.
"There has been buzz all summer long about the Sixers looking to potentially move one of, if not both, Andre Drummond and Kelly Oubre. If they are able to find a deal for one of those two guys as we get closer to camp, that would open up some more wiggle room for Philadelphia to be able to pay Grimes a little bit more than what he’s looking at right now and what that qualifying offer would be," Fischer said, transcribed by NBC Sports' Kurt Helin.
That's where the Jazz can come in. Utah has a massive TPE thanks to the John Collins trade, and they also have Love, who the Sixers can acquire only to waive and stretch to make room for Grimes. A scenario like this could definitely work between the two sides.
Sixers get: Love
Jazz get: Oubre, Drummond, Sixers first-round pick(s)
Because the Jazz currently have 16 players on their roster, part of making this deal would involve waiving KJ Martin and his non-guaranteed contract. They would also have to re-route and/or waive one of Drummond or Oubre, but that wouldn't be too hard, no matter what route they take.
They could take advantage of the Sixers' desperation by taking back salary they don't want to re-sign Grimes and potentially get some draft assets out of it. Sure, they would have to swallow some bad salaries, but the potential benefits from a deal like this would be too good to pass up.
(This would work better with Martin, but since that's exactly who the Jazz acquired him from, they can't trade him back to Philadelphia until February.)
The Jazz did this with the Georges Niang trade
Utah is definitely capable of making a trade like this because they've done it in the past. Just take a look at what they did when they re-acquired Georges Niang from Boston. not only did they get him back, but they got two second-round picks for their troubles to help Boston save money, which is exactly what the Celtics wanted.
The Jazz took advantage of the Celtics' priorities by extracting assets on top of Niang. If they have the chance to get even more or better assets from Philadelphia, as they hope to keep Grimes, Utah should absolutely do it without thinking twice.