A quick look at Brook

USATSI

The Thunder’s talks with Brooklyn about acquiring Brook Lopez are dead. Like a popular comic book character, they could rise from the dead at any second.

Here’s my uneducated guess as to where this saga stands: The Thunder have made their interest in Lopez known. The two teams have reportedly had talks for several weeks regarding Lopez. Other teams reportedly interested in acquiring Lopez include the Lakers, Nuggets, Heat and Rockets. The Nets created an artificial deadline of dealing Lopez by the weekend (this notion flew across my Twitter feed Thursday, and it is now a needle in a haystack that I cannot find).

The Thunder made their pitch, and the Nets may have received others. Brooklyn may want something that Oklahoma City is unwilling to part with yet. Maybe it’s something the Thunder won’t part with at all. One side is waiting on the other to blink.

This public haggling is something we usually don’t see with trades, especially trades of the Sam Presti variety. Trades involving Kendrick Perkins, Nazr Mohammed, James Harden and Tyson Chandler came out of nowhere. Not every trade negotiation gets put out for public display, leading to a safe assumption that this has all been played out in the media intentionally. If the trade between Brooklyn and Oklahoma City ultimately goes through, it will be interesting to see what the compromise turns out to be.

There has been much discussion about the real value of Oklahoma City’s reported offer: Kendrick Perkins, Jeremy Lamb, and maybe/maybe not Grant Jerrett. It basically gives the Nets a reserve big man with less future salary obligation and a prospect or two that might amount to nothing. Sounds like not much at all. If the Nets are indeed motivated to move Lopez for whatever reason, it just might be the package that fits. Not every trade is the old fashioned talent-for-talent variety. But this still doesn’t feel like enough in return for Lopez. Perhaps an additional piece, such as the rights to German big man Tibor Pleiss, are holding things up.

Let’s look at the other reported suitors:

Lakers – a package of Steve Nash and Ed Davis gets pretty close to matching salary requirements. That would give the Nets future salary relief and at least a usable frontcourt player. If the Lakers offered up their 2015 first round pick that might get things moving, but the Lakers probably shouldn’t be doing the Oprah thing with future picks right now (“You get a draft pick! And you get a draft pick! And you get a draft pick!”)

Nuggets – Javale McGee is making $11.25 million this season and $12 million next season. He’s played in 14 of Denver’s 38 games this season. That’s up from 5 games played all of last season. Denver could probably accelerate things by putting rookie Jusuf Nurkic in play, which doesn’t seem like a sound decision at all.

Heat – Miami has a gaggle of players on multi-year deals that could be combined and offered for Lopez. Chris Andersen, Josh McRoberts and Udonis Haslem, anyone? Probably not.

Rockets – The lunchtime #Wojbomb last week was that the Houston Rockets were probing on Brook Lopez (make an obvious gynecological joke here). Houston was probably just running interference. They have little need for Lopez, and they’ve tried the “twin tower” thing with Omer Asik before.

An offer could crop up and blow away Oklahoma City’s offer. But given the very public nature of these trade talks, you’d think it would have been made by now.