Rumors Surfacing of Houston, Portland, NYK Trade

[Case2012]

I would say that's strange to sell a team that was in the WCF's last season, but considering that they're selling for BILLIONS now, it's not weird at all.

[Soulyss]

I wonder if Houston's owner putting the team up for sale will put the dampers on a possible Melo trade

I doubt it, as long as Morey is in charge of basketball ops it should be relatively seamless I would guess unless they get bought by a crappy owner.

[Ripcity4life]

OK i was not gonna start another thread for this little NON- Melo nugget but some might find this interesting specially since we have Nurkic.

This is from the sporting news :

Toronto has sought to deal Valanciunas since the February trade deadline. They’d had conversations with Detroit and New Orleans then, sources said, and continued to have discussions around Valanciunas at the draft, but talks with the likes of Sacramento, Phoenix, Charlotte, Portland and Atlanta did not get very far.

[Downtown]

OK i was not gonna start another thread for this little NON- Melo nugget but some might find this interesting specially since we have Nurkic.

This is from the sporting news :

Toronto has sought to deal Valanciunas since the February trade deadline. They’d had conversations with Detroit and New Orleans then, sources said, and continued to have discussions around Valanciunas at the draft, but talks with the likes of Sacramento, Phoenix, Charlotte, Portland and Atlanta did not get very far.

Yeah I bet they didn't get very far with Portland since we have Nurkic.lol. As I've said before since I live in Canada I get a huge dose of Raptors games and Valanciunas really isn't anything special. He has talent but is very mechanical in his game.

As far as Anthony goes if the latest rumours are true that they're looking to rebuild then "IF" he agrees to waive his no trade clause for Portland you can imagine the Knicks only wanting young guys like Harkless, Crabbe, Vonleh, a first round pick, and Collins and Swanigan( I'm not saying all or any of those guys but just likely that is what they're looking for).

[DusterBuster]

News has come in from the Melo front via Woj. Blazers players have reached out to him but he's not considering waiving the no-trade clause to come to Portland. Smh

[The Sebastian Express]

No shock on that.

[Butter]

Shift focus to Dwayne Wade as a primary salary dump.

[Fitz303]

News has come in from the Melo front via Woj. Blazers players have reached out to him but he's not considering waiving the no-trade clause to come to Portland. Smh

Was that on sportcenter or something? I don't see anything on twitter

Edit: nvm.. Just saw it

"Portland's players are reaching out to Melo," Wojnarowski said. "Portland would love to get involved in this and become a team that Melo would consider. ... They would like for Carmelo to waive his no-trade and go to Portland, but right now, that's not something Melo's considering."

[Billy]

Not particular surprised that he'd be resistant--but I wouldn't necessarily think that will spell the end to the pursuit entirely. It's been fairly well documented that Melo is still expecting to go to Houston, and given the fact that Houston was "on the 2 yard line" for 3 or 4 days before everything fell apart, I wouldn't necessarily blame him for wanting to hold out for that. I am sure that Houston has been trying incredibly hard to find a deal to the Knicks liking, but I imagine that is not an easy feat without many interesting young pieces. Morey has shown he can get crafty, but there are limits to how much can be done once you get down to a certain point.

I would think that if this thing drags out a week or two that Houston likely doesn't have a deal that will meet NY's requirements. NY has already stated they'd keep him rather than let him walk for nothing--so they may be motivated to trade him, but not to get it all over with. If Cleveland is unable to step up in that time, it might give Portland another window. It'll be interesting to see if Portland's players continue to keep up with him and try to convince him further.

[Wizenheimer]

I just had a thought about the Melo situation and it's something I don't know about....whether it exists, or if it's legal or allowed under the CBA

anyway, Melo has a no-trade clause; he also has a trade kicker. Are they welded together? I mean, if he waives the no-trade clause, does that eliminate the trade kicker? Technically, they could be separate and just two layers of control that Melo was able to build into his contract, so I'd seriously doubt they were connected

I would assume that he may very well waive his kicker to be traded to Houston; that would make it more palatable from NY's POV as that kicker represents 4M dollars the Knicks would have to give Melo as he walked out the door. Adding insult to injury

but in the very remote chance he waived his no-trade clause for Portland, he'd almost certainly not waive the kicker. That would cause NY to ask for more in the deal. And for Portland, it would then mean that Melo's trade salary and cap-charge would be 30.2M. That's pretty significant. The Blazers would have to send out at least 24M and if they just made that level of 'investment' they'd be bumping their tax hit from 42-43M to 66-68M. Harkless + Leonard doesn't make it. Harkless + Aminu + Davis doesn't do it either. Harkless + Leonard + Davis does, but it adds about 19M in luxury tax. Of course, the big problem with that, besides the tax, is that the minute the Blazers start trying to squeeze in a bad contract like Leonard's, the value of their overall offer falls dramatically

personally, it really sounds like this rumored deal crashed and burned for 2 reasons: Houston was insisting on Anderson being included and Portland was insisting on Leonard being included. And nobody wanted those guys.

Portland "wanting Melo" just seems to me like it was the Blazer front office trying to justify dangling one, or some combination, of their albatross contracts. Other then Lillard and CJ, those three contracts are their 3 next biggest salaries and at least one would need to be involved in a deal this size. Portland is showing up at silver auctions with a bunch of brass

[Downtown]

At least you can't fault Olshey for trying. But the flip side is if any of the rumours are true it's looking like contrary to what some say the contracts of Leonard and perhaps Turner are albatross ones.

The one way I can see Olshey getting out of it is using the strategy the Sonics did years ago with Vin Baker and his then almost $20mil contract(hard to believe a player like that got that much way back then). I can't recall the exact deal but instead of taking back an equal value contract Seattle managed to dilute it into three unwanted ones of Vitaly Potapenko, Kenny Anderson, and I forget the third. The end result was they got one that was an expiring, one that had a couple years left, and one that although being longer was at a lesser amount they could live with.

Of course it's a different situation with the Blazers having a full roster so unless they waive a couple players this strategy might not work(it might not anyway). But I'm just thinking about what I've been reading with us taking on one big contract such as Anderson or Anthony with combining players and instead we should be doing the reverse and taking two or three smaller unwanted contracts for one bigger contract.

[DusterBuster]

At least you can't fault Olshey for trying. But the flip side is if any of the rumours are true it's looking like contrary to what some say the contracts of Leonard and perhaps Turner are albatross ones.

The one way I can see Olshey getting out of it is using the strategy the Sonics did years ago with Vin Baker and his then almost $20mil contract(hard to believe a player like that got that much way back then). I can't recall the exact deal but instead of taking back an equal value contract Seattle managed to dilute it into three unwanted ones of Vitaly Potapenko, Kenny Anderson, and I forget the third. The end result was they got one that was an expiring, one that had a couple years left, and one that although being longer was at a lesser amount they could live with.

Of course it's a different situation with the Blazers having a full roster so unless they waive a couple players this strategy might not work(it might not anyway). But I'm just thinking about what I've been reading with us taking on one big contract such as Anderson or Anthony with combining players and instead we should be doing the reverse and taking two or three smaller unwanted contracts for one bigger contract.

I just think, as Freeman and Holdal have been saying, people should get used to the fact that Portland is going to carry these contracts for at least one more year. They're going to be far easier to move when they only have 2 years remaining vs 3.

[Wizenheimer]

At least you can't fault Olshey for trying. But the flip side is if any of the rumours are true it's looking like contrary to what some say the contracts of Leonard and perhaps Turner are albatross ones.

The one way I can see Olshey getting out of it is using the strategy the Sonics did years ago with Vin Baker and his then almost $20mil contract(hard to believe a player like that got that much way back then). I can't recall the exact deal but instead of taking back an equal value contract Seattle managed to dilute it into three unwanted ones of Vitaly Potapenko, Kenny Anderson, and I forget the third. The end result was they got one that was an expiring, one that had a couple years left, and one that although being longer was at a lesser amount they could live with.

Of course it's a different situation with the Blazers having a full roster so unless they waive a couple players this strategy might not work(it might not anyway). But I'm just thinking about what I've been reading with us taking on one big contract such as Anderson or Anthony with combining players and instead we should be doing the reverse and taking two or three smaller unwanted contracts for one bigger contract.

I was curious about that trade so I looked it up

the Sonics traded Baker (2 years left at 12.4M + 13.5M) + Shammond Williams (1 years at 2M)

for

Anderson (1 year at 9.2M) + Potapenko (3 years at 5.24M + 5.7M + 6.2M) + Joseph Forte (2 years at 1M + 1.1M)

so, in terms of guaranteed salary, the Sonics traded 28M for 28.4M; in terms of the next season, it was 14.4M for 15.4M; in terms of the 2nd season after the trade, it was 13.5M for 6.6M. And of course, in the 3rd season it was zero for 6.2M

and this was before Baker had clearly demonstrated he couldn't stay healthy anymore although there were some pretty significant indicators
*****************************************************

the only thing about that trade that might have a little weight toward Portland's situation is the salary reduction in the 2nd year; that's when, without any significant changes, Portland luxury tax bill could approach 100M dollars (if you assume Nurkic is going to get a hefty deal)

I'm not sure how much credit you can give Olshey for "trying" to do something he has so far failed to do. He's also tried to sign all-star level players but has failed at that. In fact, he let one free agent walk away without an offer (Robin Lopez) who was better then any free agent Olshey has signed in 6 off-seasons as the Blazer GM. Not much credit available there in my view

for all we know, it could have been Olshey's insistence that Leonard be included in the Melo deal that torpedoed that trade. We heard that the three teams involved in the trade were trying to get a 4th team involved to take an unwanted player/contract; and shortly after we heard about that the Knicks pulled out of the trade. Those are fairly faint dots to connect but it may have been Olshey "trying" that was the monkey-wrench

my hunch is that Portland's front office has been looking for salary relief since before last season's trade deadline but has discovered that the market is terrible and the prices were way too high. They were sitting on those three first round picks and I'm fairly certain any talks had other teams focused on those picks and Paul Allen didn't want to give those up. I'd imagine that the Blazers will be looking for cap-relief trades involving their bad contracts into the beginning of next season; if nothing shows up, then I'd anticipate that Davis, then Aminu will become available. And if the Blazers stumble out to another poor start like they have the previous two seasons, then Harkless and draft picks may become available. Paul Allen won't want to pay 43M in tax for a .500 ball club

[zzaj]

The whole notion of Olshey trying to make trades is pretty silly, IMO. Most of us knew that it was going to be nearly impossible to offload the contracts of Turner/Crabbe/Leonard as soon as they were signed. I wouldn't be surprised if the whole show of trying to get Melo to the Blazers was Olshey, despite it being a complete non-starter, "trying" to show Lillard that he cares about upgrading the team.

It's not rocket science. You can't trade players that are playing at half (or below half) the level of their contracts when you are a team that is over the salary cap. It just doesn't happen.

Like it or not, and despite what Olshey has said in the past, when those contracts were signed the Blazers made a team commitment to the internal improvement of Turner/Crabbe/Leonard and building through the draft. In order for the team to get better Turner has to find a role and fit better, Crabbe has to suddenly play defense + get to the FT line, and Leonard has to change just about everything about his game.

There is close to a zero chance any of those players gets moved, and there is close to a zero chance any "upgrade" player can be brought in without including one or more of those players. Perhaps the only chance will be at the trade deadline for some completely disgruntled player...the Dwight Howards of the world...which IMO, would be a massive setback for the franchise.

The Blazers are better off waiting a year until those contracts don't look so absolutely heinous. Maybe Crabbe or Turner will look a little better, and that will add a teeny bit of value.

Our best bet as Blazer fans is to double up our sacrifices to the Basketball gods, in hope that at least a couple of Vonleh, Harkless, Crabbe, Turner, Aminu, Davis, Leonard, Collins, Layman and Swanigan, either break out or play above their contracts. That and the whole team staying healthy...

[Agenda42]

for all we know, it could have been Olshey's insistence that Leonard be included in the Melo deal that torpedoed that trade. We heard that the three teams involved in the trade were trying to get a 4th team involved to take an unwanted player/contract; and shortly after we heard about that the Knicks pulled out of the trade. Those are fairly faint dots to connect but it may have been Olshey "trying" that was the monkey-wrench

Meyers may be the fifth wheel, but I think the best guess as to which monkey wrench was a problem was Ryan Anderson.

my hunch is that Portland's front office has been looking for salary relief since before last season's trade deadline but has discovered that the market is terrible and the prices were way too high. They were sitting on those three first round picks and I'm fairly certain any talks had other teams focused on those picks and Paul Allen didn't want to give those up. I'd imagine that the Blazers will be looking for cap-relief trades involving their bad contracts into the beginning of next season; if nothing shows up, then I'd anticipate that Davis, then Aminu will become available. And if the Blazers stumble out to another poor start like they have the previous two seasons, then Harkless and draft picks may become available. Paul Allen won't want to pay 43M in tax for a .500 ball club

Portland was a big buyer when contracts were at their highest. Now they want to be a seller when prices are, if not low, at least more moderate. Oops.

I think you will see the Blazers make some cost cutting move, either at deadline or next draft. In particular, there is a good chance that Swanigan is a cheap rotation player next year, and that will allow Portland to move a big. These contracts are hard to move though. I don't know how this is going to work.

[DusterBuster]

I think you will see the Blazers make some cost cutting move, either at deadline or next draft. In particular, there is a good chance that Swanigan is a cheap rotation player next year, and that will allow Portland to move a big. These contracts are hard to move though. I don't know how this is going to work.

I think Swanigan is gonna be a cheap rotation big this year, allowing Portland to move say an Ed Davis for little or nothing in return.

[Waynearchetype]

I think you can pencil in Davis being sold off since he is an expiring. We aren't going to resign him, and we have actual big depth now. That is an easy one. Probably to a playoff contender out east for a late pick. Getting rid of him by the deadline takes all the money off the years books as far as taxes go, even though we will pay most of it, right? I can imagine showcasing him early (hopefully he returns to form after his surgery)

[PDXKnight]

I think you will see the Blazers make some cost cutting move, either at deadline or next draft. In particular, there is a good chance that Swanigan is a cheap rotation player next year, and that will allow Portland to move a big. These contracts are hard to move though. I don't know how this is going to work.

I think Swanigan is gonna be a cheap rotation big this year, allowing Portland to move say an Ed Davis for little or nothing in return.

That'd be nice. Of course moving Meyers would be even better but who knows what his market is. Supposedly Davis played injured most of last year, if he can play like his former self he might actually be worth holding onto for a po run

[DaVoiceMaster]

The problem is that Nurkic has not played a full season since coming into the league and Davis is our only backup center. I'm not ready to hand over major minutes to Collins if Nurkic goes down and I think we all saw that Vonleh at center did not work that well either.

[DusterBuster]

I think you will see the Blazers make some cost cutting move, either at deadline or next draft. In particular, there is a good chance that Swanigan is a cheap rotation player next year, and that will allow Portland to move a big. These contracts are hard to move though. I don't know how this is going to work.

I think Swanigan is gonna be a cheap rotation big this year, allowing Portland to move say an Ed Davis for little or nothing in return.

That'd be nice. Of course moving Meyers would be even better but who knows what his market is. Supposedly Davis played injured most of last year, if he can play like his former self he might actually be worth holding onto for a po run

Moving a guy who's not playing anyway doesn't open up more minutes for Swanigan though...