Speaking with YES Network Tuesday night, Nets general manager Billy King didn’t rule out making moves following the loss of Rondae Hollis-Jefferson to ankle surgery. It appears one player the team might’ve placed a call about was Minnesota Timberwolves forward Shabazz Muhammad.
By the way, heard the Nets and Lakers are two of the teams that like Shabazz. He has fans. But Milt is not moving him anytime soon. #twolves
— Darren Wolfson (@DWolfsonKSTP) December 9, 2015
Muhammad has quite the pre-NBA pedigree. He was ranked as one of the top recruits in the 2012 draft class, and was expected to go top-five before his freshman year at UCLA. But even though Muhammad slid to 14th in the 2013 draft, he had a quietly solid season last year, averaging 13.5 points and 4.1 rebounds in just under 23 minutes per game with solid shooting percentages. But he also missed 44 games, and his season ended in February following surgery to repair a ruptured ligament in his left hand.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Nets would be interested in Muhammad. The team has struggled to get consistent production on the wing this season, and Hollis-Jefferson will be out for possibly ten weeks following successful surgery this morning. Muhammad is also on a rookie scale contract and locked up at a cap-friendly $3 million next summer.
But as Wolfson later goes on to say, the Timberwolves are not moving him any time soon, and the Nets don’t have the pieces you’d expect they’d need to acquire him.
Things might change if Muhammad expresses a discontent with his limited role in Minnesota — not unlike what Bojan Bogdanovic, who was more openly on the trade block earlier this year, is going through now — or he requests a trade for other reasons. Anything’s possible. But for now, that doesn’t appear to be the case.
