Andre Miller Rumors

The most promising rumors on the fringes of the internet involve the Knicks and 76ers discussing an Andre Miller exchange.

Knicks fans who are encouraging a wholesale meltdown of the Knicks for a scratch ticket for the coming NBA draft are having a fit. They are deathly afraid Miller will make the Knicks just good enough to miss the lottery.

There's another contingent who believe that a mythical meltdown of the team in search of cap space. The idea being that Lebron James or some available superstar-quality player will decide to sign with the Knicks. Proponents of such fantasies play right into the hands of superstar agents who routinely sucker the Knicks and Knicks fans into the imaginary bidding war that benfits only the client.

In years when the Knicks did contend for the likes of Grant Hill, Juwann Howard, and others we wound up with Allan Houston who never delivered anything like a ring to the Garden and the others who we pursued likewise delivered nothing to the teams who eventually signed them.

The building of a championship NBA team is no trivial matter and there are no silver bullets. And while unused cap space can occasionally grease the gears of a trade, there is nothing particularly sensible about the world's most valuable NBA franchise behaving like a team from Hicksville.

All of which brings us back to a Knicks/76ers trade. Generally speaking, teams in the same division don't usually trade with one another because they're in contention. Yet neither of these teams is playing so well as to preclude each other this year. And, in fact, if both teams use a working premise that any trade needs to improve the other, both may transcend expectations this year.

Philly fans openly welcome the trade of Miller (usually with Evans) to the Knicks hoping for at least Randolph in exchange.

I have long advocated the trading of Crawford and Balkman straight up for Miller and a Philly pick.

I'm coming to define myself as a win now fan. quite frankly I'm sick of losing and sick of rebuilding schemes - fast, slow, cap-wise or draft-wise. And I don't want foot-soldiers fired - Dolan's the guy who isn't going away no matter who coaches, GMs, or whatever.

I believe Miller can help here in subtle and important ways. He's not a savior but a missing cog.

And I believe the Knicks can help Philly.

As usual, there's a contender for Andre Miller's services, Cleveland. Cleveland was an over-achieving team last year thanks to good-luck and a Lebron James inertia. They resemble a Scott Layden Knicks team with a lone superstar.

Armed with awful contracts and players of no use to anyone, they will try to entice Philly as well. Let's hope they fail.