ESPN.com: Knicks Have Interest in Boozer

ESPN.com’s Chris Broussard and Marc Stein are reporting today that the Utah Jazz intend to match Portland’s offer to Paul Millsap but, to do so, must first offload Carlos Boozer and the $12.6 million he’s due next season. No surprise there.

What is a little bit surprising, though, is that Broussard and Stein (doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue like Woodward and Bernstein) are also reporting that the Knicks are among the teams that have interest in acquiring Boozer.

Boozer is an expiring deal so trading for him certainly makes sense from the Mission-2010 perspective but it would also give the Knicks ownership of the bird rights of one of the elite 2010 free agents. It’s not clear that Boozer would be a perfect fit in SSOL but, since the commitment would only be for a year, the Knicks would basically be getting a free look without a whole lot of risk.

The problem is that, since Utah’s greatest need in any Boozer trade is to free up cap space to re-sign Millsap, the Knicks don’t have a whole lot to offer them straight up. Any trade would have to be a three team deal (at least). I think I might have a solution, though.

While the Blazers decided to extend an offer to Millsap, they’ve also shown a lot of past interest in David Lee. Here’s what I propose: First, Utah matches Millsap. Then, the Knicks, Blazers and Jazz execute a three way deal whereby the Blazers acquire a signed-and-traded Lee (and another small contract to make the money work), the Knicks get Boozer and the Jazz get Travis Outlaw and a big, fat trade exception. In fact, if the Knicks also offered Jordan Hill or Wilson Chandler to the Jazz in this deal perhaps they can reacquire their 2010 first round pick. I’m pretty sure (85-90%) that this works under the cap.

UPDATE: I now realize that this trade fails to take into consideration that Lee would become a BYC player after signing the contract. To my understanding, that means that his deal has to be slashed in half when calculating the cap consequences in a trade. So he’d have to be paired with another contract going back to Portland to make it work under the cap. I think Lee and Cuttino Mobley’s deal might get it done.

Thoughts?