Portland Trail Blazers: Why Rodney Hood needs to be traded at the deadline

Rodney Hood has had an up and down career so far in his seven years in the NBA. The Portland Trail Blazers wing has spent time on three different teams, and is now fighting to stay in the NBA after a serious Achilles injury ruined his 2020 season.

Hood hasn’t regained the form that we came to expect before his injury, but has improved of late with a few nice games in the new year. Unfortunately, he has been sidelined with another injury recently. Hood is now on the fringes of the Blazers rotation.

Why do the Portland Trail Blazers need to trade Rodney Hood at the deadline?

Hood has had some nice moments in a Blazer uniform, but the guard/wing rotation is at a place where it needs urgent reviewing before the 2022 season. The main reason, is that Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum will have new extensions kicking in. Those will combine with Gary Trent Jr’s extension, meaning that the Blazers will have a significant amount of money committed to their back-court.

Trent will be a restricted free agent, so he could garner offers anywhere up to $20 million a year. When you add the $70 million of McCollum and Lillard, the Blazers will have at least $80 million committed to their back-court.

Before this season, general manager Neil Olshey also said that the Blazers didn’t want to go into the repeater tax. This means that the Blazers aren’t able to go into the tax in either 2021 or 2022.

Because of the level of salary that’s already committed to for 2022, the Blazers cannot pay Trent and keep Hood, unless they dumped Robert Covington or Derrick Jones Jr and brought back a lesser salary.

Hood has been a strong player for the Blazers, but unless there is a change of heart where they go deep into the tax, Hood has to be moved. Though a trade to try and get better may not make sense, this would be a trade for financial reasons.

Hood actually has a second non-guaranteed year on his deal, so this makes trading him more interesting. This type of contract means that a team could trade a two-year or three-year deal to the Blazers, and then bring back Hood’s deal as basically a one-year deal. By cutting him before the cut-down deadline next season, a team could cut salary by sending out a multi-year deal.

This obviously complicates things for the Blazers though, as it means if they bring back a multi-year deal of similar value, that they haven’t achieved the goal of cutting salary. But, they could bring back two players, one of which has a multi-year deal of say $5 million, and another who has a single-year deal of $4 million. So in 2022, their salary obligation would just be $5 million.

There’s no need to go any deeper on the salary cap details, but Hood needs to be moved. With some teams trying to get in or out of cap space in 2022, then this is a good time to move him.

As Hood has improved slightly as the year has gone on, maybe a team bites on a deal as they think he could get back to his old self. If the Blazers are effectively dumping him, then a team may think that they could get a bargain by rehabbing him and then having him available to be in a rotation.

Alternatively, the Blazers could move him before his guarantee date next year as well. Though a trade at either time may not have a return that makes sense, the Blazers aren’t trading to upgrade, they are trading to get off salary.