Portland Trail Blazers: Grading day one of 2021 Free Agency

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Cody Zeller, Jusuf Nurkic, Charlotte Hornets, Portland Trail Blazers (Photo by Jacob Kupferman/Getty Images) /

The Portland Trail Blazers make Cody Zeller their backup center on a one-year deal

It was obvious that the Portland Trail Blazers needed to upgrade from Enes Kanter at the backup center spot and they did just that on the first day of free agency—or at least they attempted to.

Cody Zeller might be the face of mediocrity in the league. If a big is better than Zeller, he’s probably a pretty decent option. If he’s worse than Zeller, he’s got to be subpar.

The details of Zeller’s newly inked deal haven’t been released yet, aside from that it will be a one-year deal. There’s a couple of reasons that lower the grade of this signing.

Firstly, in today’s league, it’s imperative that an NBA team has a big that can either shoot threes or threaten the paint with his verticality. Neither Zeller nor current starter Jusuf Nurkic do either of those things. Nurkic mitigates those negatives with his strong positional defense and excellent playmaking at his position. Zeller does none of it.

Secondly, while it was crucial that the Blazers secure a backup center quickly, it seems like they rushed into this deal with Zeller. No matter the amount of his contract, there were and still are available bigs that would have certainly raised the Blazers ceiling higher than Zeller does, that could have been signed for a minimum contract.

While Zeller is a decent find, he doesn’t move the needle at all. This is the story of his life in the NBA and story of the Neil Olshey free agency experience.

Grade: C-