Despite being forced into an early retirement due to injury, Brandon Roy’s attempt at an NBA comeback seems to have generated plenty of intial interest around the League. Once a top-10 player in the Association, teams appear to be lining up willing to bet that Roy still has enough in the tank… and his knees. According to Adrian Wojnarowski at Yahoo! Sports, the Bulls, Mavs, Pacers and T’Wolves are all interested in signing the former Portland Trailblazer next season.
Wojnarowski, Yahoo!: Roy’s recovery from chronic knee problems has been recently spurred by undergoing the platelet rich plasma therapy procedure that Lakers star Kobe Bryant popularized with NBA players, sources said. The blood spinning procedure gave profound relief to the knees of Bryant, Tracy McGrady and baseball star Alex Rodriguez.
The Golden State Warriors have also expressed strong interest with Roy. The Warriors’ general manager, Bob Myers, was Roy’s agent with the Wasserman Media Group.
After Portland doctors pushed Roy to stop playing in 2011, the Blazers used the league’s new amnesty provision to pay him the remaining $63 million on his contract and made Roy a free agent. He’s been working out for several months and planning a return.
The report went on to know that Kevin Pritchard, who’s now an executive with the Pacers, is the same guy who engineered that draft day deal to bring Roy to Rip City in the first place. For a time, Pritchard looked like a genius for making that move too. The 2x All Star looked like he was on his way to being an MVP-caliber player in the League before his knees gave out. Brandon has the chance to make Pritchard look like the smartest guy in the room again in the event he lands and works out in Indy.
The number being tossed around necessary to sign Roy right now is the full mid-level exception. If my team needed a shooting guard, I just might take a flier on Roy for that number too. He makes a ton of sense for Chicago, who didn’t get much out of Rip Hamilton last season, and he makes some sense in that Dallas back-court too. I also think he could excel with Rubio creating for him and Love commanding attention inside. So after thinking about why everybody should sign him, I think I’m willing to say that I’d sign Roy for the full mid-level exception too. After a long look at his knees of course.
