Ben Gordon will not be going to the Miami Heat as part of a sign and trade. It appears that the Bulls and Heat have discussed potential sign and trades but could not come to anything they could agree on. The only reasonable trade idea the teams could come up with was involving Shawn Marion, and apprently neither team was too thrilled with that. ((http://www.hoopsworld.com/Story.asp?story_id=9795)) They probably discussed a deal of Ben Gordon and Andres Nocioni for Shawn Marion. The Bulls are not interested in trading Ben Gordon for Shawn Marion. While the Heat say they aren’t too thrilled to get rid of their cap flexibility for the 2009 offseason, it is hard to see the Heat passing up this trade, given that Gordon will likely be their top free agent option if Boozer doesn’t opt out. Even if Boozer opts out, with the Jazz in a place to compete, they would likely make a significantly higher offer than the Heat will even be able to make.

This brings up another question. If the Bulls don’t want Shawn Marion in a sign and trade for Ben Gordon, what exactly are they looking for in a Gordon sign and trade. Marion fits two criteria for a trade. 1. He is a pretty good player. 2. He is a large expiring contract, which would allow the Bulls to dump one of their big contracts, such as Nocioni, in the trade. These are the things a team would usually look for in a trade. Paxson cannot seriously think that he will be in a situation to sign and trade Gordon for a star big man after the defamation of Gordon in the media by the Bulls.

One can probably conclude from this that the Bulls are not going to seriously look into a sign and trade, unless a bad team offers them multiple unprotected draft picks, like the Knicks did for Eddy Curry. The problem here is that Ben Gordon is a lot better than Eddy Curry and the teams that have been reportedly interested in Gordon have been teams that are good, or can quickly take a step up to being good (Miami, New Orleans, San Antonio, and Phoenix).

This probably spells bad news for Gordon. If the Bulls and Heat were discussing a sign and trade, that probably means that Miami was the mystery team willing to meet Gordon’s demands. Miami was probably trying to play the 2010 angle in a sign and trade with the Bulls, offering up guys like Mark Blount and Udonis Haslem who expire in 2010, along with lower tier prospects such as Daequan Cook and draft picks. Miami probably would rather get rid of the 2010 guys because they think they will get Boozer, and if not him, at least Okur in free agency, and they want their cap flexibility in 2009 instead of 2010.

It looks like Gordon’s choices are going to be qualifying offer or sign the Bulls long term offer, unless another team steps up, willing to meet Gordon’s salary demands, while being willing to meet the Bulls salary demands.