NBA Trade Grades: Portland Trail Blazers dump Allen Crabbe to Brooklyn Nets

Portland Trail Blazers

Heading into the 2017 NBA Draft, there were reports the Portland Trail Blazers would try to dump one of their bloated contracts with one (or more) of their three first round picks attached as sweeteners.

It never came to that, and although Crabbe is the best player among the expendable trio of Crabbe-Evan Turner–Meyers Leonard bad contracts, it’s a small victory in and of itself that general manager Neil Olshey didn’t have to throw in a future first round pick for Brooklyn to take on Crabbe’s salary.

Crabbe shot a blistering 44.4 percent from three-point range on 3.8 attempts per game last season, but he was little more than a scoring threat off the bench. It’s also worth noting that Portland was outscored by 118 points in his 2,254 minutes on the court last year.

At this point, Maurice Harkless seems like the better option on the wing anyway.

The return in Andrew Nicholson is underwhelming, especially since he won’t be suiting up for the Blazers at all, but the immense luxury tax savings represent another small victory — even in a salary dump involving their best expendable asset.

That’s a decrease of $43.9 million in the luxury tax, and though Olshey’s spending spree from last summer is still taking a toll on the team’s salary cap situation, this deal undoes a lot of the damage.

This trade is not just about clearing up Portland’s books, however. Carmelo Anthony trade rumors have been swirling for awhile now, and though most of them revolve around the Houston Rockets, the Rox would need to move Ryan Anderson — a player the New York Knicks do not want — in order to facilitate a deal.

If the Rockets continue to aggressively pursue a deal for Melo, the Blazers could now conceivably jump in as the third team and take on a useful stretch-4 like Anderson to address their biggest position of need.

In a vacuum, the Blazers clearly lost this trade. They gave up the best player involved in the deal and won’t even be getting a player in return.

However, trades are never executed in a vacuum, and bearing in mind the luxury tax savings and their potential involvement in a Carmelo Anthony trade to bring in Ryan Anderson, Portland did well to dump Allen Crabbe and his massive contract without having to surrender a draft pick.

Grade: B+