The Portland Trail Blazers have a rather complicated salary cap situation for the upcoming 2022 season. They have limited resources to improve the team in this free agency period, and no picks in the NBA Draft.
Portland Trail Blazers: Salary cap and NBA Draft pick update for 2022
The Draft part is pretty simple. The Blazers have no first or second-round pick this season.
Last season on draft night they traded their 2020 and 2021 first-round draft picks away to the Houston Rockets in exchange for Robert Covington. Their second-rounder was traded in 2019 to get off Nick Stauskas, Wade Baldwin, and bring in Rodney Hood.
The Blazers won’t have a pick in this draft, but, we have seen Neil Olshey buy second-rounders in the past if he likes someone in the Draft. That would mean committing an asset like cash and a future second-round pick, but there’s no reason this wouldn’t happen if there was a player he liked.
The salary cap and roster sheet are slightly more complicated.
These are the players that are locked in right now to guaranteed contracts.
Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, Robert Covington, Anfernee Simons, Nassir Little, and CJ Elleby.
All these players are locked in for now, and unless they are traded, will be on the team opening night in November.
Jusuf Nurkic has a partial guarantee on his contract, that will almost certainly be picked up when the new league financial year kicks in. There’s no way the Blazers don’t pick this up, as the salary is just $4 million per season if they didn’t guarantee the whole number, meaning Nurk’s camp would force the Blazers to cut him so he could join a new team. So Nurk will be returning too.
Next, is Derrick Jones Jr. Jones Jr had a rough 2021 season after signing a two-year deal in 2020. He has a player option for the upcoming season. I think there’s a good chance that Jones opts in.
The option is worth $9.7 million. As his market isn’t that strong after he fell out of the rotation at the end of the Blazers season and didn’t play in the playoffs, I can see him opting into this and trying to have a bounce-back year to get himself a big payday in 2022 Free Agency.
These eight salaries that are basically locked in, bring the Blazers salary bill to around $114 million. When you add the dead salary of Andrew Nicholson at $2.8 million, the Blazers are around
Next, is Norman Powell. Powell has an $11.6 million option that he will certainly opt-out of. His market is quite robust and said to be between $14 and $20 million a year. Fans may balk at the upper end of this number, but starting wings who can shoot the three at 38 percent and are only 28 years old, are getting this type of money.
Powell at four years – $80 million isn’t a bad deal for the Blazers. He is the perfect insurance for a potential McCollum trade because of his skillset. Powell is great at attacking off the dribble and is one of the better slashers in the NBA. Because of his strength and athleticism, he is actually a better fit next to Lillard than McCollum. Re-signing him at around $20 million makes sense.
Next, is Zach Collins. Collins will be a restricted free agent this summer if the Blazers extend him a qualifying offer. A qualifying offer is an amount that sits on the team’s books before they decide to sign that player to a contract. It is basically a placeholder that sits on the team’s books.
For, Collins, he won’t have much of a market, so they would likely decline to offer him a QO ( qualifying offer ) and then make him an unrestricted free agent. This means anyone can make him an offer without the Blazers being able to match.
Enes Kanter is the next free agent. Because he signed a two-year deal with the Boston Celtics prior to the trade to the Blazers, the Blazers have his early-bird rights. This means that they can re-sign him to a deal up to 175 percent of what he was earning previously. I’m not sure of Kanter’s market, but this will be more than enough to keep him, as he earned around five million last season.
Carmelo Anthony is next. His situation is simple. He was on the veterans minimum last year and doesn’t care about making more than that to come back. If he wants to come back then he probably will, on that same deal.
Lastly, is Harry Giles. Giles didn’t have the year he wanted after injuries limited his role down the stretch of the season. He showed some nice moments early in the season on defense that showed he can still play in the league. After a down season, his market is likely to be the veteran’s minimum too.
When taking into account the $114 million that’s already spoken for above, and the cap number of $136 million, it’s clear that Powell’s likely deal of around $20 million takes this team very close to to the tax. Keeping that in mind, the team will have no cap space, and will only use the smaller version of the mid-level and maybe only if they have enough dollars to stay under the tax.
All of the above means that the Blazers will only have the money to bring back their own free agents and maybe one or two other guys. This will make for an interesting off-season.