With free agency winding down, some veterans are still holding out for the right opportunity. Here are ten players the Portland Trail Blazers should target.
Even after a busy offseason to date including three trades, three signings and a sneaky good draft, the Portland Trail Blazers are far from done. With 13 players on the full-time roster, the Blazers still have two additional roster spots and a two-way contract space to dish out.
Although Portland’s young pieces are expected to take a big leap forward to push the team towards title contention, grabbing an experienced veteran as insurance would be the smart move to make.
Jason Quick of the Athletic reports that the Blazers are still in search for one more piece — ideally a center to back up Hassan Whiteside — to head into the season with a rounded out rotation.
According to source, Blazers will add one more player this summer - a center - and will enter training camp with 14 players. Will talk this and more today at noon in my @TheAthleticNBA Q&A https://t.co/0Mx8BE0ec5
— Jason Quick (@jwquick) July 17, 2019
This would grant the Blazers with a roster worthy of competing for a title while also leaving one roster spot open to explore a big mid-season trade or navigate the waiver wire to pick up a quality player.
While Quick stated that the Blazers focus is on picking up a center, the pickings come slim this late into free agency. If a suitable replacement can’t be found, Portland might be better off picking up a different positional player and waiting for a better option to open up at the trade deadline — akin to Enes Kanter last season.
For that reason, we’ll be focusing on a broad range of potential free agent targets while simultaneously taking account for biggest holes on the Portland Trail Blazers roster.