The Portland Trail Blazers seem to be at a crossroads. On one hand, an All-NBA point guard in his prime is putting pressure on the team to load up for a run now. On the other, the Blazers have a budding teenage star in Shaedon Sharpe and the No. 3 pick in this month’s NBA Draft.
That’s an illusion, however. There is no chance the Trail Blazers will do anything other than their best to put a winning team around Damian Lillard, the best player in franchise history. That means using the third pick as the means to an upgrade that will give Lillard the co-star he has lacked for a long time.
Thankfully, the latest NBA rumors suggest the hype around point guard prospect Scoot Henderson is lining up a Blazers’ partner to make a win-now trade.
The team going after Scoot Henderson
Shams Charania of The Athletic reported on Monday that the New Orleans Pelicans are making a hard push to get a top pick in the 2023 NBA Draft, with their eyes set on G League Ignite guard Scoot Henderson. With the Charlotte Hornets rumored to take Alabama wing Brandon Miller with pick No. 2 (and Victor Wembanyama the Fort Knox of locks to go No. 1 to the San Antonio Spurs), the Trail Blazers could be in line to benefit.
The Blazers aren’t going to trade the No. 3 pick for just anyone, but the Pelicans might have a player who would be worth the move. Let’s look at a potential deal to turn the potential of a draft pick into the surety of a former All-Star.
How the Blazers build the trade
The Pelicans have a deep roster with plenty of tradeable players. If they are going after a top pick, they will likely hope to use their depth and future draft picks to avoid giving up one of their two stars.
The Trail Blazers can’t let that happen.
There’s a version of the trade in which the Pelicans offer Trey Murphy III, Jose Alvarado and Jonas Valanciunas for a package centered around Jusuf Nurkic and the No. 3 pick, but that’s not enough for Portland. Future picks don’t do them a ton of good right now, although they could be flipped for other veterans.
Even trading for Zion Williamson is risky with his health concerns.
The only player on the Pelicans that the Blazers should trade the No. 3 pick for is Brandon Ingram.
This is a lot for the Pelicans to give up for the No. 3 pick, and if they truly have their eyes set on Scoot, they will first try offering this sort of package to the Hornets to make Henderson a lock. Yet, at the end of the day, if Henderson is the generational prospect they think he is, this is what they have to pay.
Simons is a prolific young scoring guard and would make an excellent partner with Henderson as a long-term backcourt pairing. This kind of deal would likely signal a resetting of the roster into a younger core, so CJ McCollum would likely be moved on to another team. In the end, the Pelicans can’t get to Henderson any other way.
If the Pelicans do talk their way into this trade, do the Trail Blazers pull the trigger?
Would the Blazers make this deal?
Moving the No. 3 pick is a difficult proposition. A number of all-time players have gone No. 3 overall, from Michael Jordan to Carmelo Anthony to Joel Embiid. Yet, if they are going to move the pick and give Lillard a co-star, moving it for an All-Star wing is a strong path for the Blazers to take.
Ingram had a career season last year, averaging 24.7 points, 5.5 rebounds and 5.8 assists per game. On the plus side, he shot 39 percent from deep, but on the other, he was shaky from the midrange. Defensively he has all of the tools but is slender and inconsistent.
He’s not a superstar, but as the No. 2 on a team with Lillard and Jerami Grant, he might just be set up for success.
In our construction of the deal, we included the No. 14 pick coming back from the Pelicans, because Simons is a talented young scorer in his own right and Ingram isn’t an established perennial All-Star. That may not be how the deal would ultimately be constructed, but the plus side is that the Blazers could still use that pick to either draft a center (such as Duke’s Dereck Lively II) or trade for an upgrade over Nurkic.
There probably isn’t a better player than Ingram who will be available on the open market, and he fits in perfectly with the core Portland is putting together. He is young enough to slowly take the torch from Lillard and be around for a very long time. This is a deal the Blazers should make.
Trade grade: A