The Trail Blazers spent the days leading up to the 2022 trade deadline by surgically removing Neil Olshey’s fingerprints from the list. With Damian Lillard in recovery and Portland sinking to the bottom of the West, new general manager Joe Cronin chose most of the high-priced support cast Olshey had acquired with Corleone-level cruelty: first sending Robert Covington and Norm Powell to the Clippers. and then sharing CJ McCollum with the Pelicans. The returns were modest, at best: a couple of young players and a couple of picks. But he did provide Cronin with something like a blank canvas to draw Lillard’s remaining years.
However, Cronin’s first shot seems quite familiar to his predecessor: just over 24 hours before Thursday’s NBA draft, Cronin agreed to change the selection for the first round of 2025 (via of Milwaukee) acquired in the McCollum deal with the Pistons by Jerami Grant. , a young veteran who fills a gap but may not change the overall landscape of Portland, regardless of who owns the equipment.
Grant, 28, is the kind of defensive-minded striker he does even though he desperately needed previous versions of the Blazers. Two seasons ago, Olshey made two first-round picks for Covington in hopes of filling that exact hole. But, as any blogger will tell you, repeatedly, without even asking, Covington is more of a team defender than a stopper you can throw at the top bands in the league. Grant’s resume is more authentic in this regard: in his last postseason with the Nuggets, in the bubble, his most frequent covers were Kawhi Leonard, Donovan Mitchell and LeBron James. The Nuggets reportedly matched the three-year, $ 60 million surprise he received from Detroit in the low 2020 season simply to keep that defensive versatility at home. And while Grant’s bid to extend his offensive game with the Pistons only produced results at the surface level, he nearly doubled his goal average and chances, but he did so with average efficiency for the Pistons. bad equipment, is a much more versatile offensive option than Covington. While Covington often resigns to the corner waiting for opportunities to catch and shoot, Grant can do so and add some juice to the Blazers ’offense.
The questions, however, are twofold:
1. Are these upgrades worth an additional $ 112 million over four years, the most the Blazers can (and probably should) offer Grant in an extension six months after the end of the trade? Probably not, in the vacuum, but big-wing defenders are becoming as hard to find as big-wingers, and if Grant can help give Portland even a credible defense, then three years in a row between the five lows, Lillard has shown he can push. this team far away.
2. Is a Portland team with Grant appreciably better than the version Cronin changed six months ago? This is a little trickier.
As it stands, this is the core of Portland:
So, Lillard, a small scoring goalkeeper, a wrong quality keeper as a small striker and a defensive-minded striker? Sounds pretty familiar! The Blazers have more financial flexibility than they had under the previous administration ($ 44 million below the luxury tax, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks), but Ameree Simons’ restricted free agency deal, as well as a possible new arrangement for Jusuf Nurkic (or a replacement), he could eat it up pretty quickly.
The difference will probably come from the grand prize of Cronin’s burst of movements in February: no. 7, which the Blazers managed to mount a Who He Play For bonanza until the end of the regular season. However, there are no easy solutions.
No newcomer will offer a very positive value next season, let alone a 19-year-old who didn’t play a single game in his freshman season as Shaedon Sharpe, the current 7-year-old pick in the mock draft of The Ringer. And it would be hard to ask Dame, in view of his 32-year season, to wait for his moment and see the bigger picture, or worse, buy his cooperation with an extension that could pay the 6-foot guard 2 a whopping $ 55 million. at 36; it is easier for Steph Curry to trust the institution when the cavalry includes two future members of the Hall of Fame, not a micro McCollum.
It may make more sense for the Blazers to keep going and change the no. 7 for another young veteran. Yahoo’s Chris Haynes reported Wednesday that Portland is chasing Toronto’s OG Anunoby, another big athletic, defensive-minded wing with room to grow. But even Anunoby, or a player of similar age and ability, probably won’t get Portland to the top level of a West that looks set to be reloaded next season, and Kawhi, Jamal Murray and Zion Williamson are expected reinforcement. quality teams that didn’t even make the second round.
Grant’s trade seems to be a better value than some of the moves made towards the end of the Olshey era. But without an even more pleasing follow-up move, he may also have forged a path that will eventually lead the Blazers to similar results.