The Miami Heat have been trying to trade away Mario Chalmers and Chris Andersen since the end of June, and they even said that they are willing to trade the pair for essentially nothing. The problem for the Heat is that no one wants either Andersen or Chalmers. Both players are past their primes, and are a bit overpaid.
We should expect both Andersen and Chalmers to be members of the Heat’s training camp next month. Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald reports that no team in the league is in the market for Birdman, and, at the moment, the Heat expect to bring Chalmers back for another year.
Miami remains willing to dealing Chris Andersen (due $5 million) but hasn’t found much of a market for him, according to an NBA official who has been in contact with the Heat… The Heat expects to bring Mario Chalmers to training camp (as opposed to trading him first) but hasn’t ruled out trading him in October or beyond if it can find a taker, something it hasn’t been able to do to this point.
The Heat want to get rid of Chalmers and Andersen because they need to avoid the luxury tax penalty. Right now their payroll is the second highest in the league, behind the Thunder. They had to pay Dwyane Wade and Goran Dragic a lot of money over the offseason, and Chalmers and Chris Andersen are getting paid $9 million combined next season, so getting their contracts off of the extremely high payroll would help the Heat.
Eventually, I feel like Chalmers and Andersen will be traded. A point guard will get injured for another team, and the Heat will be able to trade Chalmers to this team to be used as a backup, something that a team like the Utah Jazz might be looking for. As for Birdman, bigs are always in high demand in the NBA, and if the Heat are patient, someone will come out and give the Heat an offer for him.
