The Portland Trail Blazers should consider whether they can pull off a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade, but ultimately such a deal doesn't make the most sense. What would make sense is leveraging their draft picks to land a rising star in Austin Reaves -- and he could be more available than everyone thinks.
Two years ago, the Trail Blazers traded Damian Lillard to the Milwaukee Bucks for Jrue Holiday and some future Bucks draft picks. They flipped Holiday to the Boston Celtics for more draft picks. Now they have Holiday and Lillard both back on the team, and they still hold the draft picks. It was a tidy bit of business for Joe Cronin and company.
Those Bucks picks had real upside at the time; now that upside is being realized as the Bucks consider trading Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is reportedly in discussions with his agent about requesting a trade. If he does, the natural place for the Bucks to look is to a team holding some of their own future draft picks. Get those picks back, and Milwaukee can enter a rebuild.
That would give the Blazers an advantage in trading for Giannis themselves, of course, but they are not the most natural fit. Deni Avdija is best deployed at power forward and is breaking out as an All-Star level player this season. He is obviously no Antetokounmpo, but he is younger and on a steal of a contract. Including him in the deal is pointless as it would pull them further away from contention; keep him, and the fit of Giannis and Deni is a difficult one.
The Blazers also cannot trick themselves into thinking they are ready to contend in the Western Conference. Would a team of Avdija, Holiday and Antetokounmpo challenge the Oklahoma City Thunder? The answer is no.
That does not mean, however, that the Blazers do not hold an advantage were a Giannis Antetokounmpo trade to materialize. The Bucks still want those draft picks that the Blazers hold -- outright or swaps in 2028, '29 and '30 -- and that gives Portland power to insert itself into a larger blockbuster deal.
Enter the Los Angeles Lakers. They would certainly love to pair Luka Doncic and Giannis Antetokounmpo, but working out a trade would be difficult. The Lakers would need to find matching salary for Antetokounmpo but also include enough value; with their available draft picks limited, that almost certainly means including Austin Reaves in the deal.
The Bucks may not want Reaves, however; he is playing at an All-Star level, to be sure, and his breakout start to the season appears real. At the same time, he will hit unrestricted free agency this summer and be in line for something close to a max contract. Will the Bucks want to pay him while entering a rebuild? The answer is probably not.
The ingredients are all present for a delicious Portland meal.
The Trail Blazers can trade for Austin Reaves
Credit to the Third Apron podcast for first floating this idea, but the pieces all fit together extremely well. The Milwaukee Bucks want to get back their future picks to regain control of their draft. The Portland Trail Blazers have three years of control to trade. The Los Angeles Lakers would want Antetokounmpo but don't have picks to trade -- but they do have a young star guard that Portland would love to have.
The Lakers' trade for Antetokounmpo could revolve around the expiring contract of LeBron James or it could be built with the rest of their contracts. Reaves would be routed to the Trail Blazers, and they would supply the bulk of the draft capital over to the Bucks.
Reaves is playing on a whole new level this season. The counting stats are gaudy: 28.4 points per game, 5.5 rebounds, 6.7 assists. For comparison, the only Portland Trail Blazers players to put up 28-6-5 over a 20-game span are Damian Lillard and Clyde Drexler. Reaves is doing so with a 67.3 percent true-shooting percentage, an elite number.
The difficulty of building a team around Reaves comes not on the offensive end, where he looks poised ot be a pick-and-roll engine while also knowing how to work off of another on-ball star like Luka Doncic / Deni Avdija (similar games if on different levels). The difficulty comes on defense, where Reaves plays hard but lacks the athleticism and size to be a positive force.
The Trail Blazers are set up as well as any team in the NBA to support Reaves. Toumani Camara is a top-5 perimeter defender, Avdija is a plus on that end, Donovan Clingan is a rising defensive star in the paint. Jrue Holiday remains a defensive force, and Jerami Grant is not a slouch. Role players like Robert Williams, Matisse Thybulle and Blake Wesley are all difference-makers on defense. Not all of those players would survive the trade, but many would.
The Trail Blazers building around Deni Avdija and Austin Reaves looks like a brilliant path forward in the Western Conference. Shorting the Bucks makes sense, and they shouldn't give up those future Milwaukee firsts for nothing, but Reaves looks like an ascending star on track to, like Avdija, make his first All-Star team this year. That's a player worth taking a swing on.