Portland’s real issue: Next year’s tax. Yes, Portland got out of the tax by making this trade. The Blazers were $3 million over the luxury-tax line Friday morning; after this trade, Portland will be $1 million under, because it traded $28.5 million in contracts for $24.5 million. Financially, the rest of the league should send Portland a fruitcake (or a similar gesture but with something edible); merely by executing this trade, the Blazers likely added nearly $1 million to the payout for every other team below the tax line. More on that in a minute.
Perhaps just as importantly, the Blazers avoid a pickle regarding
next year’s tax. Because Bledsoe is only guaranteed $3.9 million of his $19.3 million salary for 2022-23 and presumably would be waived before that guarantee hit, the Blazers shaved $6 million off next year’s tax number; they now have $17 million below the tax line and will need more money than that if they wish to re-sign
Jusuf Nurkic and
Anfernee Simons. Did I mention they also need to sign five more players after that? Yeah, the long-term cap situation here still isn’t great.
Speaking of which …
Does this foretell a CJ McCollum move? Powell being gone seemingly clears the way for a Lillard-McCollum backcourt with Simons as a high-minutes third guard. Or not. One way for Portland to clear a lot more room is to deal McCollum, who is owed $69 million over the next two seasons; one rumor making the rounds, for instance, is that the
Pelicans would send them
Tomas Satoransky,
Josh Hart and another contract to bring in McCollum. (Draft picks may also be involved.)
A move like that would give the Blazers about $16 million more in contractual wiggle room for next year (or $29 million if they waived Hart, who is good but has a weird contract that is non-guaranteed each of the next two seasons) added to the amount above, which obviously would make it far easier to reconstruct a decent roster around Lillard, Simons and Nurkic.
