Rudy and his agent just torpedoed Rudy’s trade value. Who will want to give the Blazers anything now that Rudy is likely going to go back to Spain and disinterested in playing in the NBA?

We all knew this was coming, right? There was no way Rudy was coming back to Portland. He kind of picked the wrong owner to pull this stunt with. PA can pay him to sit in Spain for the next two years and barely notice the difference on the bottom line.

He has the contract he wants on the table from Olympiacos and he and his agent will now force the Blazers to release him. The contract is 3 years at €7.2 million euros net income (after taxes) with his agent’s fees paid for by the club. It is = to a 3 year $17.6 million gross NBA contract with the current exchange rates.

This is according to various rumors going through the agent’s circles in Europe.

If he wants out of the NBA altogether, then Nate is completely blameless as far as I’m concerned.

When most players ask for a trade, they’re of the mindset that things aren’t working out with their current team and hope to start over on another team. If Rudy wants out of the NBA altogether, then he is obviously not of the mindset of wanting to start over on another team. He wants to go back to familiar territory, Europe, where he was hailed as a superstar.

This needed to be last years deal – at the time the family left. In any case, I would also hope that most get the other side of this, which is that Rudy and his agent have decided what is best for Rudy. And what’s best for Rudy is to go back to Europe and pick up that $5 million to $6 million contract which was on the table before we convinced him to come to the NBA for pocket change, and is again. His agent is fully aware of what he’s doing. The strategy – one can rest assured – was talked over in detail before the public side of it surfaced. They knew, from the moment they put a demand list of teams on the table, that there was little liklihood that there’d be a trade with those same teams. In the first case teams likely to reach for Rudy were left off the list (most of the NBA), and in the second case, the agent is wise in the ways of the NBA, and knew that they could not place demands on the handful of teams left as it pertains to how Rudy would be used – because no GM or coach would tolerate such conditions. In essence, they gave a semblence of being open to a trade, when in fact, they had only one goal – and that was to get Rudy out of the NBA and back to Spain – where he could get a much bigger payday.

So, it may be about the Blazers to us – but it’s not to them. Portland no longer has a place or a need for Rudy, and the rest of the league isn’t going to trade anything of value for a player who wants to go home. And home is not America.