NBA trade grades: Breaking down the three-team Damian Lillard trade
Portland: B+
All along, I've felt that trading Lillard before training camp was the right move for the Blazers. It's easy to talk about waiting for the best possible deal in July, with little pressure to make a move. Urgency clearly set in for Portland as next Monday's media day and the start of training camp approached.
With one caveat, the Blazers can now look to a future built around recent lottery picks
Scoot Henderson and
Shaedon Sharpe. They've also locked in Lillard's trade value without having to risk the possibility of an injury or age-related decline making it more difficult to deal him than it is now coming off an All-NBA season.
The key caveat, of course, is that Portland has swapped one 33-year-old All-Star point guard for another. Holiday isn't the kind of young talent a star trade would typically return, and without any ties to the Blazers or the kind of drawing power as Lillard, it seems inevitable Holiday will be traded again soon. Just how much Portland gets in return will determine how this deal compares to the possibility of sending Lillard to his desired destination, the
Miami Heat.
From this trade alone, the Blazers aren't returning nearly as much volume in terms of draft picks as Miami could have offered. Portland got a single first-round pick outright, though it's a potentially great one. Even if Giannis extends his contract, by 2029 he'll be 34. Lillard will be 38. The odds Milwaukee is still a contender by that point are remote, and there's a reasonable chance of the Bucks bottoming out without either star (or, as noted, their own picks in between now and then).
The young talent the Blazers did add comes with baggage. The Suns' willingness to part with Ayton, 25, without getting any above-average starters or any draft picks showcases just how eager Phoenix was to move on from the 2018 No. 1 pick. Ayton gets a fresh start in Portland at a position where the Blazers had no promising player on the timeline of the rest of their young core.
If Portland can get the kind of performance we saw from Ayton in the 2021 playoffs, when he averaged 15.8 points per game and 11.8 rebounds per game while helping the Suns to the NBA Finals, getting him at this low cost is a bargain. Admittedly,
I'm skeptical that such a transformation is coming, but in the worst-case scenario, Ayton's current deal expires in time for the Blazers to have massive salary-cap space in the summer of 2026, when Henderson will be entering the final year of his rookie contract.
Camara, the No. 52 overall pick in this year's draft out of Dayton, is by far the lowest-profile part of this deal, but Portland likely also values him. Camara played well for Phoenix at summer league in Las Vegas, averaging 16.3 PPG and 7.0 RPG in four games. Camara has a better chance of playing time with the Blazers than if he had stayed with the Suns.
Above and beyond the potential to reroute Holiday, Portland still feels like a team in transition. The Blazers re-signed
Jerami Grant to a five-year, $160 million deal this summer, and the 29-year-old forward feels out of place on a team that's rebuilding. Adding Ayton makes it unlikely Portland will bottom out, but this trade now puts a timeline on the Blazers contending. Ideally, they want to be contenders again by 2028, maximizing the potential value of pick swaps then and in 2030, when Henderson (24 in 2028) and Sharpe (25) will be hitting their prime years.
As a result, more change is sure to come in Portland. The Blazers can continue the process with clarity now that they've secured value in a Lillard trade that seems to have left all sides satisfied.
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The Bucks got a B+ as well and Phoenix a B-
Last verse was rough to hear but we already knew that.