With the No. 11 overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft, the Portland Trail Blazers selected Cedric Coward. However, the rights to that pick have been dealt to the Memphis Grizzlies.
Here are the full details of the trade, per ESPN's Shams Charania:
Trail Blazers receive: 2025 pick No. 16 (Hansen Yang), 2028 first-round pick (via Orlando), two second-round picks
Grizzlies receive: 2025 pick No. 11 (Cedric Coward)
Blazers received a haul to trade out of the lottery
Memphis now lands its Desmond Bane replacement with a reliable floor-spacing wing in Coward. Coward hovered around 40 percent from beyond the arc in his final three collegiate seasons. Shooting is absolutely a premium in today's NBA and the analytics support that. It's certainly something the Blazers could have used more of as well, as a team that finished bottom five in three-point efficiency the past two seasons.
Coward would have been a perfect fit to help unlock Portland's young core, as Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Deni Avdija all like to get downhill and attack the paint. At 21 years old, Coward is more of an NBA-ready and immediate-impact prospect relative to the other prospects taken in the late lottery. That would have been a huge boost for Portland as they clearly are looking to compete for a playoff spot as soon as next season following their aggresive win-now trade for a 35-year-old Jrue Holiday.
That said, this is an absolute haul for the Blazers and was an offer too good to refuse. That 2028 first-round pick from Orlando will likely be the late first round, given the direction they are headed with a young core of Paolo Banchero, Franz Wagner, Jalen Suggs, and now, Bane. But Portland was picking at 11 in a draft class that many viewed as having a consensus top eight prospects. They were on the outside looking in and needed to trade up or back in the draft in order to maximize value.
The second-round picks also make up for the questionable Jrue Holiday deal, where Portland somehow had to attach two second-rounders to get that deal done.
Landing Hansen at pick No. 16 just goes to show that trading back was the right call. As polarizing and surprising as the pick was, Portland clearly already had a player in mind.
Thanks to this fleece, the Blazers are well-positioned to continue adding to their young core. They now add this to the Milwaukee Bucks' valuable first-round picks. These will become even more essential as the Blazers continue to get deeper into the salary cap by retaining their young core in the coming seasons, particularly if Jerami Grant and Holiday remain on the roster.