Heat Intent On Trading Mario Chalmers

The Heat seems anxious to move Mario Chalmers as soon as they can find an amenable deal, a source who’s spoken to the Heat tells Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald. The news is no shock, given that a reports both before the draft and just last week indicated that the point guard was on the block, though Heat team president Pat Riley denied the initial report that the team was shopping Chalmers and Chris Andersen.

Grantland’s Zach Lowe wrote last week that Chalmers and Andersen were available for virtually nothing as the Heat sought to reduce their tax bill. Only the team’s roster at the end of the regular season counts for luxury tax purposes, as Jackson notes, but Miami apparently isn’t in a mood to wait around as it faces the prospect of paying repeat-offender tax penalties should it still exceed the $84.74MM tax threshold at season’s end. The Heat have $92MM on the books as it stands.

Chalmers is set to make $4.3MM this season, the last on a two-year deal he signed with Miami last summer. The 29-year-old has experience as the starting point guard on back-to-back championship teams, though he’s in line to back up Goran Dragic now, and the glut of quality point guards around the league makes him a tougher sell than he might otherwise be. It’s unclear if the Heat are just as anxious to unload Andersen’s $5MM salary, though the focus of Jackson’s piece is on point guards, rather than big men like Andersen, so his omission doesn’t necessarily mean Miami is less willing to trade him.

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