Waiting on Beasley trade

UPDATED:

David Kahn wouldn't talk today about Michael Beasley and the trade agreed upon with Miami late Thursday night because the deal hadn't been finalized with the league office.

That might not come until Monday now, quite possibly because the Wolves have one more move to make before completing the Beasley deal.

Could that move be trading Al Jefferson?

We'll see soon enough.

Now that the music has stopped and LeBron, DWade, Chris Bosh, Amare Stoudemire, David Lee and many others are have found a chair, there are more teams with more money to spend left than there are attractive players to spend it all on.

Might that suddenly boost Jefferson's value enough to secure a deal Kahn likes?

Toronto, Cleveland and Phoenix each now has a $16 million-plus trade exception to use after they all lost Bosh, LeBron and Stoudemire respectively in a sign-and-trade deals.

The Wolves' options now include sending Jefferson and the three years, $42 million left on his contract to Dallas for Erick Dampier's non-guaranteed $13 million contract, sending him to Charlotte for Tyson Chandler's one-year, $12.75 million contract and perhaps a young player or send him to a team with a trade exception for a good young player or players.

No word yet if Beasley will come out to Las Vegas to get to know his own team once the trade is finalized.

But Pat Riley did make it clear Friday why he traded the No. 2 overall pick in the 2008 draft.

It wasn't because he needed Beasley's $5 million salary off the books so he could fit LBJ, DWade and Bosh all under the team's salary cap.

Beasley mostly came off the bench as a rookie, then started every game he played in last season and Riley said he didn't want to mess with Beasley's role again now that Bosh and James will start at the two forward spots.

"We didn't want to do that," Riley said, according to the Herald. "We don't want to do that. We feel like he's a young talented kid, who has a long career ahead of him. This particular move, we felt like, to bring in other complementary players, we had to go in that direction."

Riley knows he and Heat owner Mickey Arison might someday regret their decision.

"Whatever happens, I would hate, two or three years from now -- and Micky and I talked about this -- I know I'm going to probably regret it when he gets 29 (points) and 19 (rebounds) on us one night," Riley said. "He's really a gifted kid."

Here's the Herald's entire blog item on the Beasley trade: