The Athletic (subscription required) dropped a 40-player “trade board” that ranks and talks about the most likely players to be traded this NBA season. Three Portland Trail Blazers made the list… and in their view, none of them will command much of a return:
Coming in at No. 19 was Robert Williams III:
Trade Value: Second Round Picks
Williams’ career has been a disappointment. After making an All-Defense team in 2022, he’s simply been unable to stay on the court. He’s played just 77 games in the last three and a half years. When he’s out there,
he’s very valuable because he is a mobile defensive player who has awesome help instincts and can protect the rim. He’s also an efficient finisher at the rim who can operate in short-roll situations on offense with his passing vision. The good news is that he’s been able to play in 16 games this year and has seen nearly 250 minutes of action. But I don’t know that you can rely on that to continue, either, given that teams have to work hard to manage his knee.
Williams’ $13.3 million contract is expiring this year, which means the Blazers will have a choice as to whether they continue to work with him on his injuries or if they try to cash in at the deadline for whatever they can get. A team with an established starting center looking for a difference-maker off the bench is the best situation for Williams. For 15 to 20 minutes per night, he can be an impact guy. But that also holds true for the Blazers, who want to be competent and solid but have precious little center depth behind Donovan Clingan if they were to trade Williams with how raw Yang Hansen is. The team wants its identity to be on the defensive end, and the 226 minutes with both Clingan and Jrue Holiday on the court have resulted in a terrific 111.1 defensive rating that shows the potential. They just need to find reliable answers when those players leave the court.
At No. 32 they had Jerami Grant:
Trade Value: Salary Dump
Grant has been on the list of worst contracts in the league essentially from the moment he signed his deal in Portland for five years and $150 million. That remains true, as he’s overpaid by a pretty significant margin. But the good news for Portland is that he’s at least reverted back to averaging 20 points per game this year while hitting 40 percent of his 3s. He’s posting a true-shooting percentage 4 percent above league average and has been a helpful offensive player. The issues tend to come on defense, where Grant is no longer the athletic presence he was back in his days with Oklahoma City and Denver. Still, even with those problems, this projects to be his most valuable season in a Blazers uniform since 2023.
Grant is slated to make $32 million this season, followed by $70.5 million in the next two years total. That’s 20 percent of the salary cap for a player whom the Blazers seemed ready to move on from as a starter entering the year before injuries cratered their first trimester. The good news for the Blazers is that they don’t have the need to get off this money right now, as they’re under the tax and have a ton of space against the first apron entering next season. Yet it wouldn’t hurt if they could find a way off his deal, as it could create avenues toward re-negotiating and extending Deni Avdija’s contract at some point in the next two years. This feels like a situation where the Blazers are willing to take advantage if a team gets desperate for wing scoring but don’t need to make a move yet.
Finally at No. 35 they had Matisse Thybulle:
Trade Value: Salary Matching in a Trade
Thybulle feels like a more likely player to move than Williams above him, if only because it would be fairly easy for the Blazers to excise him from the roster without losing any value. He’s only played in five games this year because of a thumb injury and only played in 15 last season, too. This is the final year of Thybulle’s $11.5 million deal, and the Blazers should look to move him or Williams for a more established interior presence on the defensive end who can allow them to survive minutes when Donovan Clingan is off the court. Thybulle hasn’t been all that useful on an NBA court since about 2022, when he made his second All-Defense team. I’m not sure what his future holds in the NBA at this stage, but the Blazers certainly have a mechanism to improve by utilizing his expiring salary.
Maybe the biggest quibble with these characterizations is Jerami Grant as a salary dump. Did he have a horrendous year last year? Absolutely. But he’s had a much better season this time around, pulling his effective field goal percentage above his career average. At 31 with $70M and two years left on his contract after this season, it’s not hard to understand why his value has fallen since the Blazers paid him in 2023. Still, he plays a position of leaguewide importance and has just enough on-ball juice and shooting to give a good team a minutes-sopper during the regular season – or even some emergency first- or second-option duties if your best players are injured, fouled out, or resting.
The list also featured former Blazers players CJ McCollum (No. 12, Second-Round Picks Plus Salary Matching), Anfernee Simons (No. 20, Cheaper Salaried Player), and Jusuf Nurkic (No. 27, Salary Matching).
Who do you think are the most likely Blazers to be traded before the deadline, and do you agree with The Athletic’s takes here?
