It happened. Damian Lillard asked for a trade less than 24 hours after free agency opened. per The Athletic’s Shams CharaniaLillard has also stated that he prefers to live in Miami, which was widely reported prior to this official request.
It will be interesting to see which team Lillard ends up joining, but I want to focus on the team that he is leaving. They are now stuck with a $160m contract for five years, signed by the Blazers shortly after Friday’s opening of free agency.
I wrote on Friday night how Portland was at risk with that contract, especially since the inevitable Lillard request hung over the franchise. I did not expect the request to arrive an hour after I woke Saturday morning, but I knew it would come. When it happened, the Grant contract would look a lot different. You can also find out more about the following: bad.
Here we are.
Grant was a third-option, non-All-Star. The only reason I gave him a salary similar to Jayson’s Tatum contract was to guarantee that he’d be back in Portland. By giving him a salary above the market, he wouldn’t be able to refuse it.
If not, then who else would Portland have bid against to get Grant for that price? He is a good football player, but not a superstar. The following are some examples of how to use good. He is 30 in March and doesn’t seem to fit as well on a young team behind Shaedon Sharpe and Scoot.
The Blazers can technically revoke their offer to Grant. This isn’t official. It would make financial sense. There’s no chance they’ll do that. What if all the other teams had already given their money out? The Blazers are a team that agents would never trust again. Portland will be stuck with the deal for quite some time.
Grant receives a lot more than just money. It’s about the years. I don’t like the Mavericks for giving Kyrie Irving a $126M contract. I also wonder who else they might have bid against. It’s a 3-year contract, at least.
Grant’s fifth-year option is still a four-year commitment. A long way away It’s not fair to tie a fringe All-Star to such a large sum of money when he will be in his 30s by the time this contract expires. Flexibility will be key under the new CBA. This deal is not flexible. This is not Tobias Harris. But it’s close. Trading him will be very difficult, if it’s not impossible.
Grant would probably be worth closer to $120m in normal circumstances. Even the $130 million that Houston gave Fred VanVleet (which was also a slight overpay, but Houston has the cap space and, again, it’s only a three-year deal) would’ve been understandable, even for a team without Lillard that wants to remain competitive with Scoot, Sharpe, Anfernee Simons (or whoever they trade Simons for) and whatever comes back for Lillard.
What if you had to spend $160 million in five years?
It’s believed that Portland and Grant have been working together for months, with the announcement being a formality. I find it hard to believe that Portland agreed to pay that amount of money against no competition months ago. Shame on them if they did.
I believe that number was Lillard’s. The front office made a risky if not outrageous move, either because they were willfully naive or didn’t know how to negotiate.
Show me again the team who was going to give Grant this kind of money, that many years or the combination of both. We can discuss this if the reporting is released. Under the new CBA, I would not hold my breath.
Grant’s loss is not something I would want to take lightly. Perhaps they should have tried to trade him during the last season. The same goes for Lillard. It’s never easy to cut ties with an icon of a franchise, much less a superstar. But the lesson here is that teams don’t need to wait for star requests. They should act in their own best interests.
Before being forced to a corner, it was in Blazers’ best interests to trade Lillard. Before they gave Grant the $160M. They almost told the league that they would not trade Scoot before they drafted him. It’s not exactly the best negotiating position.
Who is going to make a Godfather’s offer now to the Blazers? What? They’re getting a few draft picks, and possibly Tyler Herro and Kyle Lowry’s expiring contracts from Miami? If they were wise, they would accept what is a better Brooklyn offer, which includes a bunch of draft choices, Royce O’Neale and Spencer Dinwiddie along with Cam Thomas, Patty Mills, and possibly Royce O’Neale. But, you know the way these things work. If a star tells a team he wants them to have him, that’s what they get.
Now the Blazers find themselves at Lillard’s mercy once again. Henderson is the only thing they got right. Portland’s attention should have shifted from trying to sell Lillard to trading him the second that Hornets decided not to take him. It was not going happen.
ESPN’s Kendrick P. Perkins suggests that Lillard told the Blazers about his trade request when they met on Monday. If the Blazers had any knowledge of this, and still When Grant handed me the money, I didn’t know what to do.
This is tough. Neil Olshey – as insufferable and obnoxious as he was – got blasted by the Blazers for not making a “big move”. But big moves don’t just happen. And the Blazers were faced with some salary restrictions.
Grant is their new addition. It’s likely that Lillard will be traded for less money than he is worth. This request would have been fine if it had appeared out of the blue. It didn’t. It’s been blowing in this direction for some time, regardless of the date Lillard said it.
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The same goes for Bradley Beal and the Wizards. It was an inevitable trade for years. Washington could have gotten a large haul in exchange for Beal. But they waited. The Warriors did not receive a first-round draft pick, except for the highly protected pick 2030 that they received from them in the Chris Paul trade.
They should have paid more attention to the evidence that was right in front them. They should’ve been ahead of the game. Now they may end up playing from the back to start Scoot Henderson’s era.