Does this trade make sense for the Portland Trail Blazers?
Giving up Damian Lillard is the last thing the Trail Blazers want to do, but these next few months will be very telling of what this organization’s future holds. With Neil Olshey out of the front-office and Portland really struggling, a big move is going to be made that will make or break their future.
At this point, it is very hard to believe that both Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum will be on this roster at the end of the year because these are the Trail Blazers best two trade assets.
Robert Covington and Jusuf Nurkic being in the final year of their contracts definitely draws some interest from other teams around the league, but the players or assets the Blazers would get in return for these two is nowhere near what they could get for McCollum or Lillard.
If Portland was to put together a trade package of McCollum and more to land Ben Simmons, maybe this would be enough to convince Damian Lillard to give them another shot, but it is very hard to believe that he is going to remain with the Trail Blazers for the foreseeable future.
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They did not hire the coach that he wanted this past offseason, management has refused to listen to his pleas for more talent over the years and now being one of the worst defensive teams in the league, how much longer is Lillard willing to sit around and waste the best years of his career?
While he has struggled to shoot the ball this year, a lot of the blame can definitely be put on the Trail Blazers as a team for this because he simply does not have the talent he needs around him. Norman Powell, Robert Covington and Jusuf Nurkic are all great players, but they are not the kind of floor spacers and scoring threats that Lillard needs around him in order to be the MVP-caliber player we have been accustomed to seeing through the years.
By cutting their losses now in this kind of trade, the Portland Trail Blazers can not only get a young, proven All-Star talent in D’Angelo Russell to try and find success with during their rebuild, but they would get so many first-round draft picks that would help them build a sustainable, young core around Russell, Simons and Little.
While they still would not have a first-round pick in 2022, the Trail Blazers would have one first-round pick in 2023, two in 2024, one in 2025, potentially two in 2026 and then they would have three first-round picks from 2027 to 2028.
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This is just too much value for a franchise facing a rebuild to pass up, which is why they could realistically accept a trade package like this in the near future. However, the Blazers are not wanting to give up Damian Lillard at this time and he has not talked about requesting a trade from the Blazers this season.
