Tyreke Evans will be headed to the New Orleans Pelicans via a sign-and-trade deal that will also ship the Pelicans' Robin Lopez to the Portland Trail Blazers and Greivis Vasquez to the Sacramento Kings, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports. Wojnarowski added that Portland will need to cough up picks and cash to complete the deal.
NBA trade rumors: Tyreke Evans to Pelicans, Robin Lopez to Trail Blazers in proposed 3-team deal
The New Orleans Pelicans will acquire Tyreke Evans, the Kings will get Greivis Vasquez and the Trail Blazers will receive Robin Lopez.
Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
USA Today’s Sam Amick and The Sacramento Bee’s Ailene Voisin were first to report the trade.
The holdup in the proposed deal ended when free agent point guard target Jose Calderon decided against joining the retooling Kings. That made it necessary for Sacramento to acquire Vasquez, a 26-year-old point guard who was one of the most improved players in the league last season. He averaged 13.9 points and the NBA's third-best mark of 9.0 assists per game.
The trade cannot go official until July 10 because that’s the first day Evans can sign a new deal before being traded.
The biggest player in the trade, Evans, was ready to sign a four-year, $44 million deal with the Pelicans as a restricted free agent. Evans averaged 15.2 points, 3.5 assists and 4.4 rebounds per game last year.
New Orleans will now get their main target while also dumping Lopez’s $5.1 million contract on the Blazers.
New Orleans had until Friday to buy out Lopez's contract for $500,000. That was the plan until the trade talks started up because the team needed to dump salary both to sign Evans and in order for the draft-day trade of No. 6 pick Nerlens Noel for Philadelphia 76ers point guard Jrue Holiday to go through. The acquisition of Holiday made Vasquez expendable.
Portland was high on Lopez all along and has sought a veteran center. Lopez averaged 11.3 points and 5.6 rebounds per game in 2012-13.
Update: New Orleans will also receive center Jeff Withey, a second round pick of the Trail Blazers in the 2013 draft.
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