Andre Miller is cool with being traded. Or not
Your daily non-starter trade-deadline story comes straight outta Denver, via FanHouse, and this time it is Portland's Andre Miller(notes) that is mulling his fate.
Miller is making a respectable $7.2 million this season as one of the NBA's rare accurately paid players. But he's also turning 35 years old in March, stuck on a team full of youngsters that really isn't going anywhere unless both Greg Oden(notes) and Brandon Roy(notes) return to the ranks of the healthy. So with his 2011-12 salary a team option, if declined before June 29, it's easy to see why Miller could be one of the bigger trade chips out there, with the trade deadline just three weeks away.
Then again, with Miller's 13-point, seven-assist numbers skewed by Portland's slow pace (his Player Efficiency Rating is a quite good 18.6), it's easy to see why Portland might want to hang on to the point man who could put a better team over the top.
I mean, I don't know. They don't know. Nobody's really sure, really. Especially Andre. Are you going to be traded, ‘Dre?
"I don't really care, really,'' Miller said when asked in a FanHouse interview Wednesday whether his hope now is to remain in Portland rather than be traded. "You know what I'm saying? I would like to stay put, but it's a business and anything can happen.''
When asked if he believes there's a decent chance he'll be moved by the Feb. 24 trade deadline, Miller said, "Yeah. Yeah.''
"There's a chance,'' Miller said. "A lot of guys can get moved. Where? I don't know. At this point, hopefully it's not a team that's rebuilding. I wouldn't want to go back to like a Philly situation.''
Not sure, no idea, whatevs.
And this really typifies this entire trading season. There are so many teams that are good enough to make the playoffs, and that chunk of postseason scratch, that it's going to be tough to really find many deals that knock teams over. There are no home runs, here, especially with the seemingly dozens of expiring or unguaranteed deals (like Andre's) essentially canceling each other out.
Toss in the weak 2011 free-agent pool, quite a few rookie GMs at the helm (like in Portland) and the impending labor strife that may push the offseason back into late summer at best, and you've got a whole lot of confusion.
And who better to articulate this confusion, and the ennui that sets in after the confusion takes its toll, than Andre Miller. Voice of a generation.
