There are a few reasons why a deal with Chicago would need to wait until July.
- As someone else mentioned, it could be Luol Deng's BYC status. And, taking this a step further, with this much salary coming back to Portland, we'd have to wait for when we're officially under the salary cap to make such an uneven deal.
- Since draft picks can be moved at any time, as long as they're not signed to a contract yet, it has nothing do with Pendergraph or another recent draftee.
- What's more likely is Chicago is wanting to find out if Gordon is staying or going first. Gordon can't begin negotiations with another team or with Chicago until July. Or, to take this further, maybe Gordon is the player that's possibly being sought after by Portland and would be received through a sign-and-trade.
- It could be another player, that's currently a free agent, who's salary is required to make the deal work through a sign-and-trade. Lindsay Hunter, Aaron Gray, Raef Lafrentz, Michael Ruffin, Channing Frye, and Shavlik Randolph are free agents.
- Salaries change from year to year and maybe the deal, the way both teams need it structured, will only work under 2009/10 numbers
If Hinrich is incoming and Pendergraph is outgoing, obviously Chicago would need more in value. Steve Blake and Jeff Pendergraph makes the most sense, but only would work after June 30th. We'd have to use $5.5M of our salary cap space though. This leaves very little left. I don't think adding just Hinrich is a big enough improvement.
Hinrich and Deng seems sexier, but as others have pointed out, Deng's risk doesn't make much sense for Portland to take.
What if we pushed for a Ben Gordon sign-and-trade, sending Outlaw, Pendergraph, and Blake, while getting back James Johnson or Taj Gibson. If we signed Gordon to a deal starting at $8.5M, this would still leave us with $6M in free agent spending money. We renounce our rights to one or more of our overseas guys and we add on .8M or 1.6M more to that spending money. We include Clavor for a future draft pick and we save another $1M. We could still offer Turk a deal starting at around $8.5M or Artest $7M or Ariza $6.5M.
It could just be that we're sending Outlaw, Blake, and Pendergraph for Hinrich and Thomas, Johnson, or Gibson and a future second, but that Chicago wants to deal with Gordon first.
Who knows.