The Portland Trail Blazers have three players entering free agency in 2022: Jusuf Nurkic, Robert Covington, and Anfernee Simons. It’s highly unlikely that they retain all three, considering that Nurk and Ant are both due for significant pay raises and Jody Allen hasn’t been the type of owner to willingly go into the luxury tax for basketball purposes.
Even if Allen was willing to shell out to keep the band together, it makes about as much sense on the court as it does in the checkbook. The Blazers as currently constructed are not championship caliber and if Portland re-signs all three of their impending free agents, they’ll have no room to operate to improve their team.
Just between Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum, and Norman Powell, the Blazers have over $92 million of their cap space committed for the 2022-2023 season according to spotrac. That’s over 77 percent of the projected salary cap. That being said, Portland has some tough decisions to make as to which of their impending free agents they plan on keeping and which will be allowed to test the market. Better yet, perhaps the Blazers will move one of the three expiring contracts before the trade deadline, eliminating the risk that they could lose one of their assets for nothing.
The Portland Trail Blazers might not be able to afford to keep Jusuf Nurkic; should they trade him before his contract expires?
Between he, RoCo, and Ant, Nurkic is the most likely to be moved.
Covington is too important to the team as he stands as the squad’s only positively impactful perimeter defender. He likely won’t command much more than the just under $12 million per year he made on his last deal. Portland will be hard-pressed to find someone who can replicate RoCo’s supplemental scoring and elite help defense in free agency.
Anfernee Simons is a young prospect burgeoning on the edge of stardom. While the Blazers are overflowing with talent at the guard position, someone with Simons’s potential is simply too great of an asset to give up on. They should do everything they can to ensure that he signs his second deal with Rip City. Even if his long-term future isn’t in Portland, retaining him as an asset is a key step to maintaining the team’s ability to improve the roster.
That leaves Nurk on the outside looking in. The Bosnian Beast is every bit as talented as the former two players, but in this case, it might be to his detriment. While traditional centers are being phased out of the NBA, someone with Nurkic’s smart positional defense, effort on the boards, and ability to be a secondary playmaker will certainly command more than $10 million a year on the market.
He’s young enough for basically any team looking to improve their roster to take a chance on and a lot of them will be able to outbid Portland. Even if he doesn’t receive an insurmountable offer, should the Blazers sign him long-term, locking up their cap space to bet on his improvement and against his injury history?
Nurk is too good for the Blazers to be able to afford next offseason and too risky to commit major money to, but he’s also talented enough to nab Portland a pretty good return in the trade market.
Essentially, Nurkic has outplayed his stay in Portland. As beloved as the Bosnian Beast is in Rip City, he’s simply too great of a player to take a pay cut and trading him could be their best chance at upgrading the team.
Nurk’s loyalty to Portland has never been in doubt, but who can really blame him for taking on a much better monetary offer once he hits free agency next summer? Portland should take the initiative here and move him, instead of taking the risk of losing him for nothing.