Trail Blazers Offseason: Trade Market & Contract Extensions for Shaedon Sharpe and Toumani Camara

Trail Blazers Offseason: Trade Market & Contract Extensions for Shaedon Sharpe and Toumani Camara

In today’s show, Keith Smith from Spotrak and the Front Office Show joins the program. We talk about the Blazers financial situation heading into the 2025 off season. Welcome to Locked On, Blazers. Let’s get into [Music] it. You are Locked on Trailblazers, your daily Portland Trailblazers podcast, part of the Locked On Network. Your team every day. What’s up world? It’s your past first point guard and trailblazers reporter Mike Richmond. You’re listening to another episode of Locked on Blazers, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, available wherever you get podcasts and also on YouTube. Thanks for making this show your first listen coming at you each and every weekday. So make it a part of your daily routine. Make it your first listen. Tell your friends to do the same. It’s Locked on Blazers, your team every day. In today’s program, returning for a offseason tradition, friend of the program, Keith Smith joins you’ve read his work on spot track about as good as it gets when it comes to tracking the financial machinations of the NBA and you’ve heard him on the NBA front office show streaming live a couple times a week. Keith, how you doing? Welcome back. I’m doing well. Thanks for having me. Let’s start with the Blazers sort of big picture situation as they head into the offseason. Keith, where do the Blazers stand in terms of like, you know, whatever spendable cash and assets to move and and sort of their financial situation at large? Yeah, they’re in a better place this coming off season than they were a year ago in the cap going up obviously is the the main driver of that uh for Portland and giving them a little bit more flexibility. I think when we talked a year ago, we were talking about like this team’s a little into the tax and you can’t be there when you’re not a playoff team and and did that they they took care of it. They they handled it. They ended up not being in the tax. But this year they’re about 14 15 million under the tax line. That should give them more than enough flexibility to do what they need to do whether that’s signings or in trades and and those things. They don’t have any major free agents of note. So that’s, you know, also a good thing for flexibility reasons. There’s nobody that it’s like, “Oh my gosh, we got to give this guy a $30 million a year contract.” So I think they’re in pretty pretty good shape. They’re certainly if you’re under the tax, they’re nowhere near the first apron. They’re miles away from the second apron and all the restrictions that come with that. So even if they do a move that triggers a hard cap at one of those aprons, they should have more than enough wiggle room underneath it that it’s not really going to be a be a real factor for them. Yeah, they’re obviously not going to be a tax team. Apparently, um, you don’t need to be a tax team to make the NBA finals anymore. All of a sudden, cheap teams are making the finals. Um, I believe you pointed out those for the first time since 2002. We’re likely to have uh multiple teams in the finals that didn’t pay the tax. I’ve been yelling on here, you have to spend to win. And apparently, you just have to have uh either play in the Eastern Conference or be Sam freaking Prey. Uh, but those are the two ways to do it. Um the Blazers, they don’t, you know, there’s not a big like a fat free agent crop this year, right? There’s not, this isn’t a really juicy free agent class. This isn’t a position where um where where the Blazer are going to be chasing free agents. And quite frankly, they’re not a team that has traditionally chased bigname free agents regardless. Most of the team doesn’t sign stars in free agency. So really, we’re talking about trades. Are there anything with the Blazers financial situation that would sort of limit their flexibility when they are making deals? What might they bump up against in challenges when trying to craft deals out there? Yeah, nothing that like immediately jumps to mind. The the challenges when we get into trades or when it’s like like this rumored Kevin Durant to Minnesota idea is that’s two second apron teams trading with each other at the trade deadline. And that would have been really really hard to pull off. Now much easier in the off season because you have teams that can take on a salary for you. Brooklyn Nets primarily uh this summer, but other teams have exceptions or if it’s like a 10 or 12 million dollar guy in the deal, they they could take that contract on and act as a facilitator. So for Portland, the good news is it’s kind of good news for them that it’s not a great free agent class because anybody going in this summer that’s like, man, we really need a forward th this summer to kind of take us to the next level, you’re probably not getting it through free agency. So now that turns into, well, who has tradable players? and and Portland certainly got a number of guys that are there and again pretty good shape because they’ve got the apron clearances there. So even if they were to do a deal where they took on a little bit in a trade, not the end of the world because they’re not going to get stuck um is the best way I I can kind of put that. I’m curious, do you think expiring contracts have value in 2025? Because the Blazers have a variety of expiring contracts of varying sizes, right? like they have a giant one. And DeAndre, do you think we will see expiring money be valuable this year? Is expiring money valuable in this new cap situation? Yeah, I do. I I think there’s various ways now that expiring money has real value. It used to be you wanted expiring contracts if you were lining up to have cap space in an off season. But now where these teams have the apron issues, whether it be first apron or uh the the dreaded second apron that you’re dealing with for some teams, having an expiring deal is great because that means, hey, we can get out of this in a year. And and if it’s a team where it’s like, let’s say a team like Phoenix was, hey, let’s run it back with DeAndre Aton because then he can come off the books a year from now. really helps us clean things up. Now, the the guys that would have to go back to Portland are probably not guys they’re really overly interested in. So, that’s not a great example, but but you’re in a spot where yeah, I think expiring contracts do have real value again because there’s so many ways you can use them, if you will, um to to create flexibility for yourself beyond just the traditional let’s chase cap space. But that said, next summer’s free agent class should be better. We’ll see. Extensions have a way of doing a number on that. Um, but when we get into the summer of 2026, there could be better free agents. And there’s going to be a number of teams with cap space um that’ll have it just the way contracts are kind of lining up. And when those teams are chasing cap space, yeah, they’d love to get off maybe 2530 million if they can by virtue of a a deal expiring at the end of this coming season. That’d be huge. So yeah, you you’re not like no one’s going to be here’s a first round pick, you know, for just an expiring deal, but but you would be in a position where you could do better with that. is would the way to sort of maximize that in your eyes be to take back long-term money from teams or is that or is this just sort of a shuffling like you could take two-on-one because I think what the Blazers might have to decide here is whether they’re willing to kind of get worse in the immediate term and and like what what their appetite is for sort of trading out expiring money and getting paid to take on bad bad contracts. Is that is that the path, right? Is that how to maximize it? Yeah, it can be for sure because what you can do then is even if you’re not like like I was saying, no, no one’s giving up a first round pick for DeAndre Aton, but the way you could get a first round pick for DeAndre Aton’s salary slot is by taking on maybe somebody’s whose deal may maybe it’s a little less per year. Maybe it’s 30 million next season. So, you save a little bit of money, but then there’s two more years attached to that. And that could be how you plus up uh your return in that. And that that’s the way you do that to go dead. That’s how you can get it. There’s a couple other guys on the roster that I think are in slightly different positions just because I think their trade value is as basketball players versus contracts is probably a little bit higher. Um, and that there’s definitely options there for Portland. When I wrote about about the Trailblazers offseason on Spa Track, one of the things I wrote about was did they’re in a little bit of a weird spot because they had this really good second half of the season and I don’t know a lot of people even really kind of noticed because I think people had written them off. I know East Coasters like me it’s like they play at 10:00 at night. to Marty in bed, you know, and then then because I the number of people are like, “Wait, Tammani Kamar all defense like what what,” you know, and that’s awesome because he’s really really good and and that’s really cool for him to get that recognition and and see that and then um but but where that could put you in a weird spot is if they’re like, “Well, this is who we are now. We’re a really good team and we’re this will carry over into the future seasons.” that gets really tough to kind of swallow if you’re Portland because what you don’t want to do is well let’s double down on this group and let’s go add guys to this and let’s move some of these guys out but bring on more money because then the next thing you know you’re you’re a 500 team for the next three years which we know in the west isn’t going to be good enough. You’re not you you’ll barely even make the playing tournament if that. So now I think they just have to be very careful to balance. Yeah, we had a nice run in the second half, but keep your long-term vision in mind of, hey, it might still be best to move some of these veterans, get some other guys in here and do some different things. Yeah, I think we are very sympatico on that. Is the that’s a tough balance, right? Because I would imagine that their appetite for being like truly bad again has really diminished, but if you if you cha if you chase it, you just end up mediocre forever. And I think that’s that’s the real challenge here. That’s like that was kind of in some ways the curse of competence during the Damen Lillard era was that they just were like pretty good all the time and they they didn’t ever they never you know reached the highest highs because of some salary limitations and maybe the Damon CJ pairing but they weren’t awful and so they weren’t they never they never had a single-digit pick during the Dame Lloyd era. They never they never got back there after they drafted him. So, uh, the curse of competence is tough, particularly in the West when like winning 45 games is is just straight up not good enough, which is which is an impossible bar, but it’s also the reality of the bar. Um, you mentioned some trade pieces. I want to talk to you about sort of trade value with some of the Blazers and how how you view them because it’s always good to get an out outsers’s perspective. We’ll talk about that in the second segment. Join us there, won’t you? But first, I want to tell you that today’s show is brought to you by Monarch Money. You ever check your bank account and ask yourself where did all your money go? You know, you’re buying things, you’re dining out, you’re buying stuff online, you’re treating yourself. When you’re out in the world, it’s easy to lose track. But with Monarch Money, you’ll have a personal CFO giving you full visibility and control over your finances. 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And I think both you and I agree that it’s he’s mostly salary ballast as opposed to like really intriguing piece at his price point. But the Blazers have some other expiring contracts. They have some other tradable players. I it’s hard for me to imagine a situation where Denny Abdia and Tuani Kamara or any of the recent lottery picks and Sharp and Scoot and Klingan get traded. But there’s there’s a very real world in which guys like Ery Simons or Matis Style get traded. In my eyes Simons is probably the most valuable of the trade pieces, albeit not like a super juicy one. How do you view him as a trade asset? Um, particularly heading into his final year of his contract. Yeah, I think for some teams he is definitely a positive value. Uh, one, he’s a good player. Does he have his flaws? Sure. He’s never going to be a great defensive player. I think we’ve realized now he’s probably never going to turn into being a real point guard who’s going to be the engine of an offense. But he is a really good secondary playmaker. He can really shoot the ball. He can score. And know, you know, I I’m not Mr. Yay points guy, but I’m also, last I checked, you still probably need to score about 110 points a game if you’re going to win. So, they do still have value to score. Um, so I think for like the right kinds of teams, he has real value. Now, some teams might be a little shaky because he is an expiring contract and that runs into potentially some issues where man, if we can’t get him extended, that could cause us some challenges, you know, with keeping him and resigning him and how much would he need to be resigned for. But there’s other teams like we talked about with Eightton where it’s like hey actually him being an expiring contract is is okay for us because we we we can you know use it even if the trade itself doesn’t work out on court at least on the cap sheet we can get clean maybe uh if you know he moves on next year. So I I would say positive value. I don’t think you’re getting like two first or a lottery pick or anything like that but you know you get get a first round pick for him in trade maybe an interesting player who can be kind of helpful. That’s that that’s that’s not a bad return for a guy who in my opinion as an outsider has kind of been squeezed out because Henderson and Sharp are are clearly the future in the back court in Portland. Yeah. I mean, they haven’t they haven’t actually squeezed him out yet, but they’ve made a lot of decisions over the last two years. It’s like, hey, man, you’re you’re part of the next thing. Um you’re not part of this thing that’s right now, but you’ll be part of part of some someone else’s next plan. Uh we’ll see what their appetite is for for that. Um he’s obviously extension eligible. He has been since last July. So there is a world in which the Blazers could like give him a big contracts, but boy would that be a surprise to me. Yeah, that I feel confident that’s not coming. I feel pretty good with that one. Me too. But they’re they’ve um they’ve gone ways that I would not have guessed in the past for sure. But I’m with you. I am I would I’m in the 90 percentile, but um there’s a that that’s a scary 10%. What does Jeremy Grant have trade value? Like at his price point and the coming off the season he had like what what if the Blazers wanted to move on from their oldest player? What what does that look like? Yeah, this one’s a little weird. And especially as I talk to teams around the league, there are still teams that really value what Jeremy Grant does where I hear teams say if you can bring Jeremy Grant in and he’s your fourth best player, you’re probably a pretty good team. you’re you’re probably in pretty good shape because he can still shoot. Last year was a little bit of a weird year. Um, but he can do enough off the dribble where that’s helpful, but if you’re asking him to do too much, it gets really kind of weird and and he, you know, he overextends himself and things get a little messy. So, I think where you are with Jeremy Grant, it’s a pretty narrow market for teams that would say Jeremy Grant’s the guy we need that can put us over the top because what you need is one the role where he can come in, he’s not asked to be your first or second best guy, but you also need to have the salary structure that can kind of support bringing in Jeremy Grant. It sounds super weird to put it this way, but a team where he would make an awful lot of sense is the team he came from in Detroit because they have the salary structure that could could support him, but they don’t have um but it’s not going to happen for any number of reasons, but that’s the type of team you’re looking at. A team that’s kind of up and coming that has the ability salary-wise where all right, we could take it in because the deal is not going to crush us on our books and then we go. Another team that I think could be really sneaky for him that I think would be really interesting is a team like Memphis if they wanted to maybe cash in some chips and say, “All right, you know, we’re we’re not going all in on like a KD trade which is going to cost us a core guy, but we can get to Grant’s number through a couple other ways.” That that could be team that’s interesting. But yeah, that’s where he has value. Again, you’re not going to be you’re you’re not going to be going live and jumping up and down in your studio there screaming and yelling, “But we got four first for Jeremy Grant and you know, everything is great.” Like, it’s it’s going to be a return where it’s going to be like, “Okay, it’s fine.” And a lot of the value for Portland probably is we’re out of the contract long term and that at least gives us a little bit of clarity in that direction. Do you think they’ll have to pay to get off that number? Do you think they’ll they’ll have to Do you think like he’s a negative contract such that they would have to pay to get off it? I don’t think they should have to. I don’t think they will. And like if I if I was, you know, if Joe Coronan calls me and says, “Hey, what’s your advice?” I would say just ride it out another year. Ride it out at least to the trade deadline and see because I’m I’m certainly not going to put myself in the position to start giving up first round picks to get off contracts right now because they’re not they’re one, they are nowhere near bad enough to bottom this thing all the way out that you should even be thinking about that. and two, they’re not good enough to be we got to get off this because that means we can go get player X instead. So, I I would I would ride it out before I’d consider giving up a contract. Now, challenge is you get like another year deeper, you may in that. If he is another year at this year, you probably in a position where now you have to give up uh something to go off deal, but I would be very careful with that. Yeah. I just I I think in this climate of the new CBA, I think chasing bad decisions with other decisions is really is dicey. Like I think what Memphis did with Marcus Smart where they traded first to get him and then traded first to get off him, that’s going to hurt them. Like that hurts your flexibility in the future and and because the margins are really slim now because of how punishing the aprons is for aprons are for particularly expensive teams. like once you get good, if you’ve kind of screwed up the margins by chasing some bad decisions, it really limits your ability to extend that window. Now, like you said, the Blazers aren’t a good team. They aren’t they aren’t a team that’s worried about contention window or anything like that. But if you trade out picks and then you end up in the contention window and it’s like, huh, 2032, huh? Like, whoops, wish me, you know? So, so I I feel like that is I I’m with you. I I would say like, okay, this Jeremy Grant contract’s too big and he forgot how to make two-pointers. He shot 40% at the rim last year. Let’s just hope he he figures out how to make twos again. Like maybe maybe another year he figures it out because the worst thing I think in my opinion they could do is cha chase a bad decision with a worse one. I that that seems um that that seems to me to be to be would be a bit of a costly mistake. I want to ask you about a couple things. The Blazers have a couple guys who are extension eligible this summer. Uh namely Shaden Sharp and Tumani Kamara. Is the Brinks truck coming for two Blazers intriguing youngsters? Let’s talk about that to close the show. Join us [Music] there. Still a pass versus point guard, still Mike Richmond. Still listen to Locked on Blazers chatting with Keith Smith on spot track and the NBA front office show. Keith, the Blazers have a couple, they have a bunch of guys who are technically extension eligible, but two notable ones. Let’s start with Shaden Sharp. Is this the summer that Shaden Sharp gets a whole bunch of money and goes from interesting prospect to deeply invested youngster that must live up to the billing as whatever it is? And what does a what does a reasonable contract look like for someone like Sharp? My projection for Shaden Sharp’s extension was 112 million over four years. Um that keeps them out of the full max territory. Uh, with that they they could you could even push that out to like 140 over five and that’s fine. I would I’m not even going to scream if it’s 150 over five and it’s 30 million a year. Like that’s that point it’s like all right, it’s fine. I’m not giving him a max deal. I’m not giving him any kind of designated player language where hey, if he jumps into, you know, the territory of AllNBA, you know, we’re going to bump him up. We’re just not there. We we don’t have a long enough book or history to need to for that to be a thing. But and and I know people hear those numbers and then they’re like 28 million 30 30 million that’s that’s well less than the max now. Like that I know that’s starter money. Yeah. Yeah. You it’s and this is where like if people have listened to me on other shows on on the network here, they’ve heard me say this. You got to start thinking about these things in terms of percent of cap and not in in just the raw dollar because the raw dollars are it’s monopoly money at this point. Real, right? Like Yeah. It’s crazy. I mean, I tweeted about Shaden Sharp. We’re closing in on him being a $500 million player. Um, you know, when he signs his next extension, we’re going to have a hundred million dollar player within a decade, you know, in a in a single year. Like, that’s how close we are to this. So, yeah, you start talking about 2830 million, that’s a lot of money. Sure, I’ll take it if someone’s offering, but you’re good, right? Like, that’s not going to ruin your cap sheet or anything. And I think what that does is that gives you the security of we took care of you, but we didn’t we didn’t go crazy in this. It’s it’s like a similarish framework is like Jaylen Johnson um with the Hawks, who I think was slightly more proven as a I can really be a good player on a good team. Um just a little bit more so than Sharp. That’s why a little bit more. And then we’re adjusting obviously we’re a year later cap has gone up. So that’s where I would be comfortable with with them if they they did that. You know, something in the 28 to 30 million average annual value range. That’s not the worst idea. What I would consider doing too is again to use Jaylen Johnson as the comp. I would consider doing it as a flat number where you pay a little bit more in year one because next summer before Portland does anything with Sharp or Kamar on new deals, they could have like 70 to 80 million on the books and that’s it. like they could have a ton of salary flexibility and I would rather pay shaden sharp and we’ll get there when we get to Kamara maybe a little bit more in those early years because we went with a flat structure than the standard we start low and we climb high because then when we’re a little bit later in the out years it becomes well let’s say scoop blossoms and we got to extend him and now that’s a big number too and then we got to get into a um position where it is like we’re going with a um you know we’ve added another guy or a third guy or Denny Odia needs resigned and he’s really popped as you know a guy if if Sharp’s number is just a little bit lower in year four year five that’s so much the better for for Portland. So I would consider because they have that flexibility let’s plus it up. You can’t frontload in the NBA the way like you can in like baseball or in football. It doesn’t really work that way. But you can frontload a little bit and I I would consider doing that for Portland’s uh cap sheet just moving forward down the line. Is there a world in which you think Shane Sharp says 4 for 112? No way. Like I can play myself into more money. I mean he may, right? He may look at it and say, “Hey, if I’m fully healthy and I have a big season in year four and I go off, yeah, he may say that’s not enough.” I assume his gonna start with we need need the max. We need the 25% max. And I’m sure Portland’s gonna be like, we’re not giving it to you. Then then it becomes, can we find middle ground? And that’s that’s why sometimes these guys languish out there a little bit. I don’t know that Jaden Sharp’s going to be one of those it the the rookie scale extensions do still have to wait till midnight on July 1st. Free agent negotiations can start at 6 PM Eastern, but you get to midnight, I don’t know that that’s going to be one we hear about right out of the gates of like, man, they locked into, you know, max because those are usually max type guys. This could be one where we’re in we’re into the middle of July or even into, you know, August time because you could still get those done all the way up to the start of the season and that’s where it may hang out there a little bit because I don’t I I don’t know. But yeah, you’re I mean your premise of could he say it’s not enough? Yeah, I think that could happen. I don’t think it will, but it certainly could. Yeah, I think the Blazers are better off offering right where you’re at, like in that 25 28 range and saying like here’s the money. Here’s like if this is long-term money for, you know, like $25 million a year for 5 years. This is like this is a changes your life and the life of your great grandkids. Go for it. Um and he’s and you know, and and seeing if that ends up being an undermarket deal, right? There’s obviously risk with any of those contracts, but um but I but I think Sharp’s not a max guy and when you’re not a max guy can get a little bit dicey because you’re like um I could what if I play myself into max money? But I think the Blazers should start low this summer and then if Sharp if Sharp earns a big old contract, that’s great news, right? Like if he has the year that that demands that you pay him more money, that’s like a that’s probably a that’s a good problem to have in some ways. Maybe not for your cap sheet in the hole, but like when having really good players is the point. So if he play if he gets into it. Um and one one other thing just real quick, what’s really good is if they don’t get it done, they make him a restricted free agent. They take care of it. They still Portland from the team perspective still controls the process next summer, summer 2026 with him as a restricted free agent. Yeah, you could run into some team with cap space throws him a big off for sheet and we’re we’re living in the Allen Crab world again. Um, which you know, let’s face it, he’s far better than Allen Crab and I don’t know that Shawn Marks is going to be quite that crazy again. But, you know, it’s but yeah, I mean that is risky a little bit, but it’s not the end of the world. One thing you can’t do is if you if you don’t extend him and he comes off a big season, they can’t pull the what Utah did with Gordon Hayward back in the day, which was we’ll go see what’s out there for you and then we’ll match it and then Charlotte gave them gave them the offer sheet with the player option and Hayward never got over that and then left uh you know a few seasons later. Like you got to be really careful because these guys have long memories and so do their agents and it’s like don’t play games. like if you if you can’t get something done, he has the breakout year, just take care of it yourself and don’t even let it get to an offer sheet silliness and and just handle it that way. Yeah, there’s definitely some there’s definitely a tightroppe walk in the restricted free agent world because you can I mean, even with DeAndre Aton, uh like the Suns clearly didn’t want him and then they’re like, “Go get your money.” And he did and they came back and said, “Okay, we’re giving it to you.” And it’s like the the relationship was open was over and they had agreed to give him 25% of the cap on top of the relationship being over. Um, it was that’s that gets a little bit messy. Um, real quick, shout out to the summer of Tyler Johnson and Alan Crab in Brooklyn. $125 million for Tyler Johnson and Alan Crab. Um, it was by Auto Porter Jr. a year later. Yeah. And the funny thing is I think Markx might have eventually acquired all three guys at some point. Do it later. And I know Krabby did a year later when the restriction was lifted. He was like, “No, I’m still getting my guy here.” So yeah, a little little weird. Uh, Tumani Kamar is extension eligible. He’s fascinating, right? Because he seems part of the Blazers core. I think you could argue he was the Blazers second best player last season behind Denny Abdia. Um, is what’s a reasonable number to start at? I know you wrote about this in your your offseason preview. What’s a reasonable number for the Blazers to target with Tumani Kamar? Yeah, I think with Kamar. So, so this is where this one’s a little more complicated, but I’ll try to keep it simple for folks because he’s on essentially a minimum deal, which is the way he was he was signed. Um, the the Trailblazers, they can’t People get stuck on this because it is a little bit of a weird thing in the CBA. People are like, well, it’s not an extendable number. You can only give 140% you or 40% bump off of, you know, the prior salary. Like, what is yo that that’s not enough? But what happens when your number’s that low? It actually works off the average player salary, which is it to to keep it really simple, it’s always right around the non- taxpayer mid-level amount. So, you’re talking 14 to 15 million in that range um for next next year, which is what they’d be extending him off of. So, if the Trailblazers extend him off of that, how it would work is they would decline his option um for the 20 Look, let me make sure I get Yeah, 26 27. They have an option on that. They decline it and then they extend him off of that number. And this would all kind of happen flowing right into one into the other. And then they extend them off of that. That works out to be about four years, 89 million is about what they could do using that extension off that um estimated player salary. There’s a world where if I’m Tammani Kamar, I’m like it’s not enough. Like I like like I just made all defense. I I think he’s a way better offensive player than people even know. Um he shot it really well this year. Yeah, shot it really well. And what was impressive to me is as the year went along, started doing a little bit more selfcreation, a little bit more off the dribble stuff. You know, it’s still you’re you’re not running your offense through him by any means, but at least now it’s not catch and shoot only. It’s I can catch make couple drimp. So now I think what happens if you’re Portland is you get into a position with Tammani Kamara where what you end up doing is you at least make that offer right let’s let’s there it is well I’ll go there I’ll go all the way to that number and if he says it’s not enough then what we do is we decline his option for next year anyway um when we get there you make him a restricted free agent and then it’s all right now what do we need to do where are we going now uh with this because if they do that process Then what happens is he becomes a restricted free agent in the summer of 2026. They have full bird rights. And then if it’s all right, you need 25 million a year versus 22. Great. We can go there with with that. So a lot of great options for Portland. I try to get it done sooner rather than later because remember I mentioned in the summer 2026 we might have a bunch of teams with cap space and when we have a bunch of teams with cap space that’s awesome for players because there’s more sometimes more cap space than there are players to spend it on. And then what happens is you got teams kind of standing around with like uh all the Max guys are gone. You know what? Let’s go get Let’s go give Kamar a $30 million a year offer sheet because worst comes the worst. Portland matches it. Now they got him on a little bit bigger of a number than what they really wanted him at. So I would try to get it done this summer if they can. If they can’t, not the end of the world. The other nice thing that can carry all the way into the season because that because he’s got that team option, they would have the ability, let’s say, let’s say we’re we hit the trade deadline and Kamar’s like, “Yeah, that big offer she’s not coming for me this summer. 22 million a year sounds awesome. They could still decline that option and extend them.” That’s kind of the the way it went down with Andrew Nemhard is there. And then sometimes what you get out of that from the player side is you might be able to be like, you know what, but I need a player option on four or whatever it is. So then they get get the ability to kind of control things a little bit down the line. So that that’s what I would look at if I’m Portland. I I would really push hard to get him extended this off seasonason if I can or in season. But worst comes to worse, I’m not I’m not going to mess around. I’m going to get it done uh this coming year because I’m certainly not Well, it sounds great. Let’s pick up that team option and have him for like $2.8 million. That sounds awesome because how good he is. Then he’s an unrestricted free agent in 2027 and you’ve probably potentially ma majorly messed up. That’s the Jaylen Brunson situation, right? You know, no, you decline that. Make him a restricted free agent. Take care of him. He’s too good to to mess around with. Is Tami Kumar’s dad an assistant coach for any big market basketball teams? Not. But maybe not today. Might be by the end of next season. He will be. Exactly. when when he gets hired this when he gets hired this summer, you’ll know the deal. Exactly. Like, oh no, the Clippers are coming. Exactly. I think um yeah, I think the other thing to factor with like sort of the Tumani versus Shaden Sharp thing is that Sharp, you’re paying for the future, right? He’s he’s I believe he’s I believe his birthday was yesterday. Um I we’re recording this a little bit early, but it was his birthday was last week. Um but so it’s like he’s 22, right? You’re you’re buying his his into the future. Tumani Kamar is like a dude who would help any playoff team right now. Like he would play for he’d play for anybody. So his the the list of suitors willing to give him 22 million bucks to put them over the top is going to be massive, right? Because you’re not pay you’re not buying upside. You’re buying like immediate impact. So I I do think he’s he could have while his number might be lower, his list of suitors would be higher just because of the like the flavor of player that he is. And I think that is something to factor in 100%. You could plug him into the NBA finals right now and he’d play a role for the Thunder or if the Pacers end up closing out the Knicks like the Pacers without a question. You could just drop him in there and he’d be fine. I I have no issue with and that’s that’s Yeah, those guys are that’s the kind of guy everybody wants, right? If you can defend, you can make shots and you can do do some stuff a little bit off the dribble. Perfect. Let’s go. Yo, and that that’s again it’s I know it people might blink at like 22 25 million a year like you know what are we doing? But that that that’s where we go with this stuff. Yeah, that’s low-end starter money. We’re going to we’re going to swear off dollar values on the on lockown blazers. We’re only going to be talking eight it’s well we’re talking seven 17%. This is we’re talking a 17% deal here. So um yeah I I’ll be honoring you Keith by by only giving a percentage of the cap. Uh, if folks are looking for more of your work, Keith, where can they where can they find it? Yeah, if you like this kind of stuff, uh, spottrack.com, like I referenced, the Trailblazers offseason preview is posted. There’s a little tag at the bottom, which was just a little add-on because I had written it before the lottery. Not enough change to add a huge difference there, but tagged a little bit of a, you know, add-on analysis to the bottom uh, post lottery, but that’s up. Uh, we’re through, I think, a little over half the league now. Um, you know, with those we do them in order of elimination. So, spottrack.com for all that stuff, all your salary needs. I, you know, I believe that we have the best uh publicly available salary sheets out there for anybody wants that stuff. And if you’re pushing learn percent of the cap, we have that next to every salary. It’s right there. It’s right there in the charts, baby. Yeah. um with that and then if you like this kind of discussion uh you mentioned it at the top of the show but NBA front office show that’s my podcast with Trevor Lane right now we’re kind of about three times a week in our offseason mode but as we get close to the offseason we’ll go back to going five days a week when there’s news and rumors and all that stuff and we get closer to the draft and then the summertime every Friday is our live show we call it front office Friday we have a blast in there it’s really the listener show to ask questions and do whatever they want uh with that one and then we go live uh in the offseason around the draft free agency. Whenever there’s a mega trade or transaction, uh we go live about as quickly as we can to get on it. We were live within I think it was 10 minutes of realizing, all right, Luca did get traded. Like, okay, this is real. Shams didn’t get hacked. We We were live within about 10 minutes and still the most watched thing we’ve ever done. So, uh yeah, we have a lot of fun over there. It’s it’s really it’s it’s good stuff. Keith’s the best. Um, Spottrack is an an invaluable resource for anyone trying to be smarter about how NBA salaries and machinations work. Also, great UI. It looks beautiful. It’s very easy to navigate. So, uh, yeah. So, check out Keith’s work. Um, and he’ll be back because he’s, uh, he’s generous with his time, Keith. I always appreciate. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. Dear listeners, come back for more shows later this week. It’s what we do wherever you get podcasts and also on YouTube. Tell your friends about the program. I appreciate you listening. I’ll talk to you soon. Hey y’all, a real quick postcript reminder. Uh I am on vacation this week. So you are listening to or you just finished listening to Monday’s program. We’ll have another one on Wednesday and a third one on Friday. Three shows this week. Uh not not five like you’re used to, but I’ll be back from vacation and we’ll get it popping next week with five more shows. Uh appreciate this one. Come back for next week’s show. Uh tell your friends. Peace. Hey,

Keith Smith of Spotrac and @NBAFrontOffice joins the program to talk about the Trail Blazers offseason outlook, including the trade market for Anfernee Simons and Deandre Ayton and potential contract extensions for Shaedon Sharpe and Toumani Camara.

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