2015TD
Will Utah Jazz Ultimately Deal Enes Kanter?
Jeff Hawkins is an award-winning sportswriter with more than four decades in the industry (print and digital media). A freelance writer/stay-at-home dad since 2008, Hawkins started his career with newspaper stints in Michigan, North Carolina, Florida, Upstate New York and Illinois, where he earned the 2004 APSE first-place award for column writing (under 40,000 circulation). As a beat writer, he covered NASCAR Winston Cup events at NHIS (1999-2003), the NHL's Chicago Blackhawks (2003-06) and the NFL's Carolina Panthers (2011-12). Hawkins penned four youth sports books, including a Michael Jordan biography. Hawkins' main hobbies include mountain bike riding, 5k trail runs at the Whitewater Center in Charlotte, N.C., and live music.
All posts by Jeff HawkinsUpdated15 Oct 2021
The curious case of Enes Kanter.
The Utah Jazz did not extend Kanter’s deal in October and he has since been supplanted in the starting lineup by breakout sophomore Rudy Gobert. The Jazz have been fielding calls on Kanter for most of the year but have really downplayed any desire to trade him, which is likely why he went public with the idea of a trade request.
The problem is while several teams have tried to engage with the Jazz on Kanter, the Jazz continue to act as if they don’t have much motivation to trade him.
Over the last few days, a few teams have been linked to Kanter with the Milwaukee Bucks and Boston Celtics being the two teams that surface the most.
League sources are struggling to understand if Utah will genuinely do a deal or if they are simply trying to gauge Kanter’s real value around the league in advance of free agency in July.
There has been a sense that the Jazz were going to let free agency play out and ultimately match a free agent offer sheet if only to retain Kanter as a future trade asset once he’s locked into a new deal.
This one seems like it could go either way. There are teams willing to deal for Kanter, the question is what will Utah demand to make a deal happen before the deadline?
Via Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders
