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

The Portland Trail Blazers have agreed to send swingman Allen Crabbe to the Brooklyn Nets for Andrew Nicholson. Here are NBA Trade Grades for both sides.

One year and 15 days after the Portland Trail Blazers matched a four-year, $75 million offer sheet for Allen Crabbe, the Brooklyn Nets finally got their guy.

As reported by ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski, the Blazers have agreed to send the 25-year-old swingman to Brooklyn in exchange for Andrew Nicholson. According to Woj, the Blazers plan to waive and stretch Nicholson’s contract, paying him $2.8 million a year over seven years.

After including a 15 percent trade kicker in their offer sheet for Crabbe last summer, the Nets will catch another break in this deal, with their new arrival agreeing to waive his trade kicker.

Crabbe had a career year in Rip City (at least statistically), averaging 10.7 points and 2.9 rebounds per game while shooting 46.8 percent from the floor and 44.4 percent from three-point range — all career-highs.

However, he also finished with the third-worst plus/minus on the roster and only slightly increased his numbers in the first year of his inflated new contract. In short, his season wasn’t good enough, especially for an underwhelming 41-win team.

The question is, with the Blazers dumping Crabbe’s deal and the Nets getting a useful three-point marksman, who won this exchange? To sort it all out, here are NBA Trade Grades for both sides.

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+

Brooklyn Nets

In terms of talent being exchanged, the Brooklyn Nets did very well to get Allen Crabbe for the remaining three years and $19.9 million on Nicholson’s contract.

In his 10 games with the Nets last season, he averaged only 3.0 points and 2.7 rebounds in 11.1 minutes per game while shooting 38.2 percent from the floor — hardly the kind of numbers that leave an impression, even for a Brooklyn team devoid of talent that’s searching for diamonds in the rough.

Crabbe’s salary is inflated to an alarming degree, but it’s less of a problem for the Nets, who lack the draft assets to rebuild or the established talent to attract free agents. In other words, there are only so many avenues for this team to get better at the present moment.

In Brooklyn, Crabbe will take on a larger role and should be able to spread the floor from three-point range.

Head coach Kenny Atkinson has quickly become renowned for his emphasis on player development, and with Crabbe only being 25 years old, he fits the mold of what the Nets are trying to build.

With Jeremy Lin hopefully healthy, DeMarre Carroll entering the fold and D’Angelo Russell joining the backcourt, not to mention the drafting of Jarrett Allen and internal growth from Caris LeVert and Rondae Hollis-Jefferson, the Nets are suddenly a more interesting team.

The Nets owe the Boston Celtics their 2018 first round draft pick, so they have no incentive to tank next season.

Yes, they have some albatross contracts on the books between Crabbe, Timofey Mozgov and DeMarre Carroll, but this is the best — and only — way for a team like the Nets to start creating a winning environment for the future.

The biggest struggle may be for Atkinson, who now has a plethora of multi-positional players to choose from when selecting his lineups.

Allen Crabbe is hardly a blue-chip prospect, but the Nets eventually got one of their restricted free agent targets, and even better, it happened after the first year of that massive four-year offer sheet.

The Nets probably should’ve pushed harder for a first round pick to take on Crabbe’s contract, but seeing as how Brooklyn made him that offer sheet in the first place, general manager Sean Marks probably didn’t have as much leverage there.

All in all this is another solid move for Marks, even if the Nets will likely be one of the worst teams in the East again next season.

Next: 2017 NBA free agency tracker - Grades for every deal so far

Grade: B