Frye trade rumors, Greg Oden's rehab and more

One of the more interesting things in the rumor mill lately is the rumor that the Blazers are trying to trade Channing Frye LINK. According to this article we at least offered him to Chicago for Tyrus Thomas. That seems a little ridiculous to me as there's no way in hell that Chicago would consider such a deal. You also have to consider the source. The New York post is widely regarded as a rumor spewing rag.

On top of that there's this article LINK, in which they talk about Pritchard sitting down with Channing Frye and swearing it's not true.

A slightly less interesting (at least short term) subject is Greg Oden's rehab. Here's a video of Greg rehabbing in the pool. LINK Looks like he's workin' hard to make sure he'll be in top shape for next season. From what I've heard of Greg's rehab he pretty much gets up in the morning, goes to the practice facility to do some rehabbing in the pool, goes out to lunch somewhere and then spends the rest of his day in a machine that moves his leg for him while he watches movies. Word is, he loves the Comcast on-demand.

Another interesting development, if you wanna call it that, is the free agent crop for 2009. As you may or may not know the major asset we received in the Zach Randolph trade (Other than getting Zach out of town) is cap space in 2009. With Steve Francis (forgot he was part of that trade already?) and Raef LaFrentz expiring in 2009 the Blazers will have a lot of cap space.

It's actually a little more complicated than that, but that doesn't really matter. What does matter is who's really going to be available in 2009. The only really good player that will be an unrestricted free agent thus far in 2009 in Joe Johnson, who doesn't really knock my socks off. The rest of the possible free agents that year are from the 2005 draft and they'll all be restricted free agents. So sure, we could offer Chris Paul a max contract, but the Hornets would likely match. It's almost like those guys aren't free agents at all.

But word is there are some players from the 2004 draft that aren't happy with the extension offers they're receiving. If those players don't get offers they want they have the ability to take their one year qualifying offer. That would make them unrestricted free agents in 2009. The most notable players in that group are Ben Gordan and Luol Deng. There's been a lot of articles about how the two of them aren't exactly thrilled with the offers that Chicago has given them thus far. Here's the latest one LINK It's one of the notes near the bottom of the article.

So there's a little ray of sunshine for people like me that are generally skeptical about the idea of our 2009 capspace being useful.

Words of Wisdom from Bob Ristau: "If you haven't ever lived somewhere and you claim to be a fan of a team from that place, it brings into question the validity of your fandom. Sports fandom is similar to religion in that if you weren't brought up in it, I question your motivations."