FanPost

Will Andre be a Blazer?

Last night on Talking Ball, Matt Smith from channel 12 sports said that he believes Andre and Rudy will not be on the Blazer roster come fall. I'm not sure Mr Smith is an NBA guru, but I couldn't agree more with the logic.

Earlier this week, we got a preview of what very well may happen with Andre - a rumor that he would go to Miami to help fill in their roster. That's not happening now with the news from LeBron and the signing of Mike Miller, but other teams that lost out on the LeBron sweepstakes are finding themselves today in an interesting position. Well, let's say other team - New York. Chicago will survive with it's young talent and the signing of Boozer, the Nets will continue down their youth movement path, Cleveland doesn't have a lot of salary cap room and flexibility, and the Clippers are the Clippers.

However, New York finds itself in the same situation that Miami was in - a lot of salary cap room, very few players under contract, and dwindling big names available in free agency. They only have one PG on their roster with the departures of Duhon and Sergio - Tony Douglas, and he is very young. I can easily see an Andre trade to NY for a draft pick and a trade exception.

Probably the more likely choice is that they go after Raymond Felton, however, there has been talk that Tony Parker's destination will be New York after the final year of his contract is up this coming season. That seems to make a lot of sense - Parker to New York. If you were New York, would you sign Felton this year to a long-term, big $ contract, or would you find a stop gap solution for this year only - like Andre, and put your $ into Parker in 2011-2012? The latter seems to feel more like a New York move to me.

This would set up for the Blazers to make their one big move in the offseason - starting PG. They still have Pryzbilla's expiring contract, Rudy, and maybe even Bayless or Batum - depending on what caliber PG they go after.