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Denial: No Suns’ Gortat for Thunder’s Perkins trade happening

Kendrick Perkins

Oklahoma City Thunder’s Kendrick Perkins looks on as he sits on the bench in the second half during an NBA basketball game against the Utah Jazz Tuesday, Feb. 12, 2013, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

AP

If you’re in the Oklahoma City front office and you watched the Miami Heat toy with your team last Thursday night, it had to make your stomach turn a little. Get to a finals rematch and things may not be pretty.

Maybe you need to make a trade. Find a way to get some points in the paint, one of Miami’s known weaknesses. Which meant this report out of the Arizona Republic Wednesday morning made some sense.

…another source said there was All-Star break talk of Oklahoma City exploring Marcin Gortat and P.J. Tucker for Kendrick Perkins, Jeremy Lamb and a first-round pick.

Interesting. I like it if I’m OKC, Gortat is solid defensively and gives you a lot more offense (well, any offense would be an upgrade).

But the Suns would be stuck with Perkins and his two seasons, $18.5 million after this one. (Oklahoma City can amnesty Perkins this summer, the Suns could not.) Which is probably why we saw this tweet from John Gambadoro of KTAR sports talk radio in the Valley of the Sun.

https://twitter.com/Gambo620/statuses/304280135090192385

The Suns, who are $6.4 million under the salary cap, will be active at the deadline and are having a lot of conversations.

But it’s interesting to see the Thunder are considering some shakeups to their roster outside of just moving Eric Maynor. I don’t expect a Thunder move, but we’ll be watching more closely now.