LaMarcus Aldridge talk heats up with conflicting claims

On Thursday morning, Chris Broussard of ESPN reported that Portland Trail Blazers free agent LaMarcus Aldridge was not expected to re-sign with the Trail Blazers, per a source.

"“He’s gone,” a source close to Aldridge said. “There’s a 99.9 percent chance that he’s out of Portland.”"

On Thursday afternoon, Erik Gundersen of The Columbian reported that Aldridge had informed the team of his intentions to leave Portland, per a source.

"A Western Conference executive with knowledge of the Aldridge pursuit has told The Columbian that the free-agent has already informed the Blazers that he will not return to the Northwest."

These reports were so prevalent that Trail Blazers President of Basketball Operations Neil Olshey addressed them in Thursday night’s post-draft press conference.

"Jason Quick: Has LaMarcus informed you of his intentions?Olshey: Via ESPN? No. I hung up with LaMarcus a half hour ago. LaMarcus and I speak multiple times every week. He was as bemused by the report as I was. Thankfully, I had other things to distract me today from getting too infuriated about the misreporting.I spoke with LaMarcus, I actually asked him, “How would you like me to address it?” and he said, “Just say it’s not true.” You and I know where we are right now. It was misreported. It’s not true. I can tell you he has not informed anybody in this organization of his intention not to return to the team.We’ve always known that LaMarcus was going to have a robust free agent market, it was a market we were going to compete in, it’s a market we’re still planning to compete in, but in no way has he given us any indication that he was not returning to the Trail Blazers."

While seemingly comforting words at first, Gundersen has now responded with some of his own in a

radio interview

on 1080 The Fan.

"Andy Johnson: What was your reaction to Neil Olshey’s statement last night?Gundersen: Well, I mean, Olshey can’t exactly… he’s going to come out and refute the report. He’s in a position right now where July 1st hasn’t even come yet and he’s trying to do his best to rebuild a roster and trying to control as much information as he can. It’s his best friend in terms of making deals and trying to make moves, so it wasn’t a surprise to me that he came out and denied the report."

This makes a lot of sense, but we will reserve judgment on either side until something concrete happens. Gundersen went on to address fan skepticism, when prompted.

"Johnson: What would you say to fans that say that they don’t trust sources and they don’t feel comfortable in what you’re reporting because they’ve been led wrong by sources before?Gundersen: It’s just that we have done our due diligence on who these sources are, and we’re doing the best job that we can. We took something, and heard something, and were told something that is true—that we believe to be true because of the source that it came from.So I think that the best thing that I can say is that, in our eyes, we are reporting what we believe is to be the truth. That is all I can say on that end. Whatever anyone thinks about the report is up to them. They can be suspicious if they want, and that’s okay. But we stand by it because we think that we’ve done the work on it to justify reporting it."

Having known Erik to be nothing but professional, I tend to think that he does indeed have a source in position to offer information. However, the source being unnamed by nature, I cannot speak for the validity of his/her claims, nor should I. At this point, we know what the situation looks like, but will have to wait for July moratorium before seeing any suggestive behavior from Aldridge himself.

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