If the Portland Trail Blazers are to avoid the despair of a half-decade rebuilding project, they need to make a big splash on the NBA trade market this summer. Portland has the coveted combination of young talent and draft picks to spend. Fans and analysts understand this, so the Blazers have been coupled with multiple star players in trade speculation.
Today and tomorrow, we’re going to look at the hottest names circling Portland’s orbit. We’ll start with a quartet we ran a poll about last week, adding a prominent center into the mix.
For each player, we want to evaluate how good the fit would be, the cost of trading for and keeping the player, and the probability that the player’s current team would actually consider dealing them.