Portland Trail Blazers: 4 reasons to trade 1st-round pick
By Ty Delbridge
2. Cap relief
The Blazers will head into the 2019 summer about $24.4 million over the salary cap.
That means they will not be big-time spenders in free agency this summer and will also have a hard time bringing back some of their own free agents with Rodney Hood and Enes Kantar hitting the market as unrestricted free agents with no Bird rights.
If the Blazers want to bring in new talent or bring back their own guys, then they need to shed some salary before free agency starts on June 30. The best way for them to do that is to attach their No. 25 pick with one of their more significant contracts.
Teams have been known to give up picks or young talent to get them off a bad deal. Recently, the Los Angeles Lakers traded former No. 2 pick D’Angelo Russell and Timofey Mozgov to the Brooklyn Nets to get off of Mozgov’s big contract after just one year into his deal with the team.
Lakers got Brook Lopez and the No. 27 pick that turned into Kyle Kuzma. Lopez left after one year and Russell just made his first All-Star appearance for the Nets in 2018-19.
Luckily for Blazers, they have three players who make a good amount of money next year who are on expiring contracts, and that makes it a lot easier for the team to trade them to another organization.
Teams are more likely to take on a bad contract when they know they only have to have that player for a few months instead of multiple seasons. The three guys Portland should look to move of off if they can this summer is Evan Turner, Meyers Leonard and Maurice Harkless.
Portland will have to find a team who is rebuilding and values assets (draft picks) enough to take on some money for a season. Some good options for the Blazers would be a team like the Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls or Memphis Grizzlies.
Trading a draft pick is something franchises don’t usually like to do, especially when nothing really comes back in the deal and the trade is just get rid of a player but in this case, it’s better to trade the pick instead of Zach Collins or Anfernee Simons.