Jerami Grant, Damian Lillard, Oklahoma City Thunder, Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)
For the first time in ages, the Portland Trail Blazers have the luxury of possessing all their future draft capital. They of course could use these future picks to try and acquire meaningful contributors on rookie-scale deals. Using the draft to add effective role players on minimum, multiyear deals is a great strategy for a star-studded team to round out the roster.
For those clubs that don’t have the time to wait for rookies to grow into the players they need or don’t trust themselves to find gems in the crapshoot that is the NBA draft, both of which should apply to the Portland Trail Blazers, using their future picks as trade assets for veteran complementary pieces is a much more risk-averse direction.