Despite Prince Trade Rumors, Pistons Not Pursuing Boozer

Despite Tayshaun Prince trade rumors, Pistons not pursuing Carlos Boozer aggressively
by A. Sherrod Blakely
Thursday July 16, 2009, 11:35 AM


The Pistons are in no hurry to deal veteran forward Tayshaun Prince.

Every day, it seems, there's another rumor about what Detroit Pistons president Joe Dumars' next move might be.

Usually, the speculation involves either or both veterans Tayshaun Prince and Richard Hamilton.

The most recent one – sent in by MLive reader TheKayz – has the Portland Trailblazers in hot pursuit of Prince in a three-way deal that would net the Pistons Utah forward Carlos Boozer.

Yahoo! Sports, July 16: Portland is still trying to pry Tayshaun Prince(notes) out of Detroit in a three-way deal with Utah, but Pistons president Joe Dumars hasn't shown an inclination to move Prince and extend Boozer's contract, league sources say. Several league executives are dubious of Boozer as a $14 million-a-year player, which his agent, Rob Pelinka, has told teams it will take to sign him to an extension. Miami could be the suitor willing to pay it.

Portland is one of the many teams that Detroit has had talks with in recent weeks. I talked with Dumars yesterday, and he indicated that there are no deals on the table right now.

He added that could change, but didn't anticipate anything shaking down anytime soon.

Any trade Detroit does now, would have to bring back a big man. Otherwise, it wouldn't really make a lot of sense.

And despite all the reports you've read, Detroit isn't actively pursuing a deal for Boozer. They're monitoring the situation, obviously.

But if they were truly interested in getting something done, they could have pulled the trigger on a deal by now.

Whatever team trades for him, will likely need to give him a new deal that averages $14M per season. That's a ton of money for a talented, but injury-prone, undersized power forward which is among the reasons why Detroit has been reluctant to go after him aggressively.

The Portland situation is worth monitoring, but I just don't see Detroit moving Tayshaun or Rip right now.

Piston Boris wrote:It's interesting to see the national media blowing a lot of smoke over a hypothetical deal that Detroit insiders know isn't likely.

And not only is Boozer injury-prone and undersized, but the rest of the league is wary of being swindled by Boozer who didn't honor a promise with Cleveland owner Gordon Gund to not pursue a deal upon being made an unrestricted free agent a couple years ago.

It's coming back to bite him now.

Commish wrote:Interesting, I forgot about Cleveland... but, no matter how tight the GM circle is, there's always a few that will overlook etiquette to pull in talent. Call it the Sprewell syndrome.