Jerami Grant won't be remembered as the hero in the Portland Trail Blazers' exhilarating, improbable play-in victory against the Phoenix Suns on Tuesday night. That label will go to Deni Avdija — rightfully, to be fair — who scored 41 points, including the game-winning and-one on a possession where he somehow maneuvered through 80 percent of the Suns defense.
But Grant's 16 points in 19 minutes were crucial off the bench, and his two corner three-pointers in the fourth quarter were hugely important in erasing the 11-point deficit, which I still can barely believe the Blazers did.
Maybe I'm a prisoner of the moment as the Blazers head to their first postseason in five years. But right now, I'm hard-pressed to think that trading Grant for scraps at any point in the past two years would have been the right decision, despite fans wanting the front office to shed his contract.
In other words, it took four years for Jerami Grant to play a postseason basketball game with the Blazers, but when he did, he made the most of it and was a key component to the team winning in thrilling fashion.
He hasn't produced like a player on a $160 million contract is expected to, but if the choices last night were Grant and his contract or whatever guys the team could have gotten for Grant in a trade... The choice would be obvious.
Jerami Grant just had his biggest Blazers moment
It wasn't just the 3-pointers in the game's final minutes that made this game so big from Grant. On the final possession, after Toumani Camara locked up Devin Booker and Jalen Green missed a 3-pointer, Jordan Goodwin grabbed an offensive rebound just a few feet from the basket with plenty of time to kick the ball back out.
Instead, Grant stipped him cleanly, then smartly ran down the court and dunked the ball to effectively end the game. Gutsy plays from the (tie) longest-tenured Blazer.
Last year was disappointing from Grant, I will readily admit that. He looks only semi-interested in playing each night. But he was energized in 2025-26, and has been pretty steady in his role. Sometimes, it's okay to keep good players around through rebuilds, and Grant is an example of that. He's never going to be a star-caliber player, but multiple huge moments in the franchise's most important game in almost a decade do make the decision to keep him around much more palatable.
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