The 2026 NBA trade deadline quickly approaches; at 3 PM EST on Thursday, February 5, NBA fans will settle into the latest iteration of basketball drama as they see which teams are laying their cards on the table, and which are shirking from the postseason limelight.
Decisions made in these final hours signal the future of some entire franchises—will Milwaukee blow it up and trade Giannis for scads of draft capital? Will the Jazz finally free Lauri Markkanen? Does Philadelphia think they can make a playoff push?
Many of these questions will be answered at or around the specified time. Until then, teams seek to make incremental adjustments to shore up inefficiencies or prepare the team for a big change. Your Portland Trail Blazers have done just that with a trade this morning:
Atlanta Hawks receive: Duop Reath, 2027 second-round pick (via ATL), 2030 second-round pick (via NYK)
Portland Trail Blazers receive: Vit Krejčí
Grading the Trail Blazers trade for Vit "Heat Czech" Krejčí
Getting right to the point, Krejčí is a capable and long guard who can shoot extremely well and is a plus defender at four positions, with most of his time spent at point guard. Perhaps most importantly, he has a reliable and frequent long ball, with 5.2 of his 6.7 shots per game from beyond the arc. He converts them at 42.3% this season, a welcome change from the team-wide 33.6% the Blazers are shooting this year, dead last in the league.
Though Krejčí is primarily a bench piece, he’s answered the call when asked, with four games of scoring 20 or more. In those games, he’s shot a blistering 71% from 3 on a staggering 38 attempts. That kind of firepower will prove invaluable as the Blazers seek to climb the ladder of the West.
As for defense, Krejčí’s career defensive box plus-minus is -0.09, which means that Vit is only slightly worse than average. Two of his years saw this number in the positives, and with his -1.0 DBPM rookie season as an outlier, his DBPM sits at 1.15. The vacillation between positive and negative showcases Krejčí’s versatility—he’s a high-level glue guy that serves as a release valve in high-octane offenses like Portland’s.
Krejčí’s contract is another point of discussion altogether—like that of Deni Avdija, Krejčí’s salary is incredibly low while his contract’s duration is quite long. Krejčí is on the books through 2028 with an average annual value of 2.67 million. Each of those years is non-guaranteed.
With all of that said, the Blazers gave up very little in this trade. Duop Reath was recently ruled out for the remainder of the season with stress fracture surgery, and the 2027 second-round pick in the trade was originally Atlanta’s to begin with. Though Atlanta is flush with rangy three-point specialists, it’s hard to think they couldn’t have gotten more elsewhere—it’s as good a trade for Portland as it is a confusing one for the Hawks.
Grade: A