Portland Wants to Accumulate Picks, Save Money Needless to say, it’s extremely unlikely that the Portland Trail Blazers will trade Damian Lillard or CJ McCollum. With that said, the rest of their roster may be available for the right offer. One general manager said that the team is trying to accumulate draft picks and cut costs. Remember, Portland currently has the second-highest payroll in the league (behind only the Cleveland Cavaliers) at $119 million. And next year, that number jumps to $137 million. That’s not a bad thing when you’re the defending champion Cavs, but it’s a tough pill to swallow when you’re the ninth-best team in the Western Conference standings. The general manager I spoke to made it clear that Portland would listen to offers for Allen Crabbe, Evan Turner, Al-Farouq Aminu and Ed Davis among others if the potential trades allowed them to stockpile draft picks and save some money. http://hoopshype.com/2017/02/14/nba...-pacers-are-all-active-before-trade-deadline/ Not surprising considering Olshey pretty much said as much yesterday. I think Aminu is the most likely to be dealt.
This is great to hear. It means the Blazers aren't opposed to tanking, which may be the prudent choice at this point. But I wonder who would even want any of our players (outside of Lillard and CJ). Maybe Aminu and Davis, since they are decent players on cap-friendly contracts.
I don't mind a Dame/CJ lineup. Breaking it up without adding the complementary pieces too early would be foolish. We're not gonna hit it out of the park with a DeMarcus or Paul George Trade, those are pipe dreams. The following are essentially set: 1: Dame 2: CJ 3: Turner (doubt he's movable right now) 4: ??? 5: ???, Nurkic Everyone is expendable to get a starting 4 or starting 5. Not a huge rush to just dump assets to get someone less than optimal. There are guys like Okafor or Vucevic who I think could still be attainable, they are just waiting for the right combination of assets they'd have to lose to get them makes sense.
Aminu is tradeable. Harkless is tradeable. Davis is tradeable. All of them have some strengths and are on manageable contracts. Unfortunately, those aren't the boat anchors.
If I were GM, I'd be looking at my backcourt and thinking about how next season the Blazers have almost half of the luxury tax threshold committed to just Dame, CJ and Crabbe. That is not sustainable. Olshey has some decisions to make about those 3 guys if he wants to get the cap under control
