Tyson Chandler to Hit the Free Agent Market?

The Mavericks’ big fella, according to reports, will indeed become a free agent, but sounds like he wants to stay in Dallas. From ESPN: “As badly as the Mavericks want the vocal Chandler back to reprise his role as the most impactful frontcourt sidekick Dirk Nowitzki has ever played with, team officials are apparently determined to see exactly how restrictive the new salary-cap rules are after the lockout before trying to re-sign the Team USA big man. The risk there is that [Tyson] Chandler, like Nene, is sure to attract interest from numerous teams, which means that Dallas will have to deal with serious competition to keep him, as opposed to the past two weeks since the championship when only the Mavs could negotiate with him. Besides big-spending rivals such as Miami and New York that sources say would love to try to steal Chandler from the Mavs if they had any financial flexibility, sources likewise indicate that at least two teams projected to have some salary-cap space in the NBA’s new frontier — Sacramento and Toronto — are already making plans to go hard after Chandler when they are finally granted that opportunity. The good news for Dallas is that Chandler, by all accounts, wants to stay in Big D and would presumably have little interest at this point in playing for any team that isn’t in the championship mix. The teams with the lowest projected payrolls for next season (Sacramento, Indiana, New Jersey, Washington, Los Angeles Clippers and Toronto) are all lottery teams. The 28-year-old seemed to tip his hand about how much he wants to return during the Mavericks’ post-parade celebration at American Airlines Center on June 16, when joked LeBron James-style about how he expects Dallas to go on and win ‘two, three, four, five’ championships.”