Making the Case: Portland Trail Blazers

With Damian Lillard’s loyalty to the franchise and city constantly being tested, the Blazers’ brass has the difficult task of balancing a unique situation now. On the one hand, they need to find a way to field a competitive team around Lillard, lest they push him away to a true title contender.

On the other, they need to ensure that they hold on to their promising young players and future draft capital to guarantee that they’ll have a path to a bright future post-Damian Lillard.

That being said, this trade feels counterproductive for the Portland Trail Blazers. To understand why, it needs to be stated that the Blazers had a chance to land an additional lottery pick via the New Orleans Pelicans. However, due to some creative pick protections from New Orleans’ front office, the Pelicans were able to keep that pick from relaying to Portland by clawing their way into the playoffs.

That selection that would have come from New Orleans was rumored to have been basically guaranteed to be traded to the Detroit Pistons for Jerami Grant. Keep in mind that the pick was also top-four protected and likely to land somewhere between 10-14. Now, though, with only the seventh-overall pick in tow, it seems useless to deal that away for Grant.

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Adding Grant alone after stripping the team of its depth won’t make for any better of a squad than the one the Blazers started with in 2021. Had the Blazers had an additional lottery pick to add a rookie contributor, it would have made much more sense to bring Grant along.

Portland may be best off moving off of the seventh-overall pick, but banking their entire offseason on trading for Jerami Grant would be a mistake in nearly every way.