For Sale: Shawn Kemp.
The Seattle SuperSonics have decided to trade their disgruntled All-Star forward and are entertaining offers from around the league."I've said all along we'd only do something if it's in our best interest," Seattle general manager Wally Walker said upon his arrival at the NBA meetings Wednesday night. "We're not in a situation where we're compelled to do anything - unless it's something we really like."
Los Angeles is one of the most ambitious pursuers of Kemp, and the Lakers also are trying to acquire Antonio McDyess from the Denver Nuggets.
Those possible trades, along with the unsettled contract status of the draft class of '95, were two of the hottest topics Wednesday as the NBA got ready to begin its first full-scale league meetings since 1993. The 31/2-day affair was canceled in 1995 because of the lockout.
Among the arrivals Wednesday night was Walker, who will be one of the major players in trade talks before everybody heads home Sunday to get ready for the start of training camps Oct. 3.
Several teams are trying to swing a trade for Kemp, who feels he is underpaid and perceives a lack of respect from the Seattle organization. He said in May that he had worn the Sonics uniform for the final time.
Over the summer, Kemp missed teammate Gary Payton's wedding so he could avoid contact with Sonics executives, then sold his home in Seattle and trucked his belongings back home to Elkhart, Ind. He has promised to hold out from camp if he's not traded by then, and he has refused to speak with members of Sonics ownership and management.
Although the Sonics have maintained publicly that they have no immediate plans to trade Kemp, sources around the league say Walker has come to the conclusion that a trade would be for the good of the team. Walker wants a legitimate All-Star in return.
The Lakers, Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets are among the teams involved in the bidding, according to league executives and player representatives who spoke on the condition they not be identified.
Los Angeles has dangled Eddie Jones, but a straight-up Jones-for-Kemp deal - which would work under salary cap guidelines - wouldn't solve Seattle's need for a power forward. If the Lakers were to include Elden Campbell and take Jim McIlvaine and Hersey Hawkins, the deal might be more enticing to Seattle.
A McDyess-for-Kemp proposal has been rumored for months, and Milwaukee is said to be pondering a Vin Baker-for-Kemp offer (which also works cap-wise), although the Bucks would rather part with Glenn Robinson.
One rumor that was shot down this week had the Vancouver Grizzlies offering Shareef Abdur-Rahim to the Sonics for Kemp. It grew out of Abdur-Rahim's five-day visit to Seattle last week prior to Payton's All-Star charity game, during which he worked out at the Sonics' practice facility.
"I spoke to Wally Walker and (Grizzlies GM) Stu Jackson, and there was no truth to the story," agent Aaron Goodwin said.
McDyess is perhaps the most sought-after member of the so-called Class of '95 - the first group of players to enter the league under the rookie salary scale that mandates three-year contracts for first-round picks.
Included in that group are Kevin Garnett (who turned down $103.5 million from Minnesota), Joe Smith of Golden State, Rasheed Wallace of Portland and Damon Stoudamire of Toronto. Their contracts expire after the coming season, and their teams aren't allowed to offer them extensions after Oct. 1.
With that deadline less than two weeks away, it speeds up the timetable for teams to either sign their second-year stars or trade them to avoid the possibility of losing them as free agents next summer with nothing in return.
Such a scenario is what's pushing the Nuggets to consider a trade of McDyess.
Sources say two of the teams most active are the Lakers, again dangling Jones, and the Phoenix Suns, who have 16 players under contract for the upcoming season and could package several of them to the talent-shy Nuggets.