The Portland Trail Blazers’ PERFECT Offseason! Realistic Trade & Draft Ideas For The Offseason

The Portland Trail Blazers’ PERFECT Offseason! Realistic Trade & Draft Ideas For The Offseason

what’s going on y’all welcome back to basketball and more importantly welcome back to Ideal Off season this is a series where I put the GM cap on for a little bit and help a team navigate through their off season now we try to make this series as realistic as possible meaning we take a look at each team’s individual needs and try to help best guide them to better position them post the off season right if you’re the Washington Wizards you weren’t a very good basketball team this last year but you got a lot of interesting young guys that you’re trying to build upon and I want to try to help give you a better future if you’re the Lakers you got Luca and LeBron you’re trying to win a championship so we’re going to help you try to do that and in this video we’ve got the Portland Trailblazers a team with a lot of really exciting players and I’m not going to lie I’ve been really looking forward to doing this one cuz I think this one’s very interesting but here’s what we’re going to do we’re going to go and talk about their current roster their salary cap situation and their assets we’re going to put together a plan so we can do some realistic trades go through a mock draft go through free agency using realistic numbers and scenarios all so that we can better help the Portland Trailblazers going forward but before we do that make sure you guys like subscribe and comment i’ve responded to every single comment to my YouTube channel up to this point and I intend to keep on doing so as always go watch the other Ideal Offseasons here it’s by far and away the most popular series on my channel i think I’m really the only one on YouTube doing content quite like this so I think it’s a pretty cool thing and go watch my do they fit in the NBA series videos um they are a lot of fun and I think they’re uh pretty unique even though they get uh demonetized every single time uh you guys seem to like them and I like doing them so we’ll keep uh we’ll keep pumping those out but anyway let’s talk about Portland and that brings us back here to the ideal offseason spreadsheet this is a spreadsheet that I created just to kind of help articulate and visualize the story that is ideal offseason um really really quick if you guys want access to it it’s really simple go down to the description of this video you’ll see a link to join my Discord click that join that it’s free and then you go to the announcements channel and there’s going to be a link to download it there also free uh post whatever you make uh have some fun with it yeah anyway let’s talk about Portland what an interesting season right this team when you went into the season you were like “Okay there’s like this weird mix of like talent that you can’t like not play on the team and there’s also these young guys that you kind of want to put on the court and see what happens.” And it just wasn’t the best mix right they’re like kind of in this spot where they’re trying to rebuild but there’s some roadblocks in the way on their roster the team wasn’t too great to start the year but they kind of had this hot streak at the end of last season where a lot of things started coming together we started seeing a little bit of shine out of some of these young players and I think if you were to ask a lot of Portland fans they’re like “Okay let’s just kind of get these guys out there on the court and let’s see what we can do with these guys cuz we’ve got this interesting young core and a couple really fun basketball players that I feel like maybe the average NBA fan isn’t even completely aware of.” And so we’re going to be giving them some attention today i can uh I can promise you that but overall I try not to put too much emphasis on like the end of basketball seasons like March and April in the NBA aren’t always exactly real per se um I’ve talked about that in a lot of other videos if you’re curious what I mean by that you can ask me down in the comments i’ll try my best to explain it but in essence though I I do believe in a lot of the players on this team i think it’s a very interesting group now are they on the path to contending anytime soon probably not but I I think what the Portland Trailblazers haven’t done historically very well is building rosters to kind of help support the the growth of younger players right um we can look at guys like Scoot Henderson we can look at guys like a Shaden Sharp or something right and uh up to this point I don’t feel like the organization’s done a very good job of being like “Okay we just took this player that’s very good at this right with this high draft pick um we’re not going to really let them do that at the NBA level right?” Like when Scoot Henderson came into the NBA as like a pretty highly touted pick right someone that I think is extremely talented uh they go and put him with a center like DeAndre Aton that’s completely contradictory to his play style and uh it doesn’t really help him out at all they throw him out there with like no shooters no spacing i’m like “Okay well how is this guy kind of supposed to have success?” And I feel like the front office just has not been very good at that as of late but again the talent is here so what we’re going to do today is kind of help uh restructure this out a little bit so we can maybe see a bit of the shine that’s beneath the surface but let’s start off with talking about the roster um if you’re new to these videos ABC what are these numbers right here uh these are EPM numbers epm stands for estimated plus minus it’s basically this really really advanced statistic that we have in basketball that gives us a numeric value as to how good somebody is at offense defense and then just overall as a player i then take those numbers and index them so that we can get a 0 to 100 score comparing them versus everyone else in the NBA zero being the worst at something 100 being the absolute best in the NBA at something right so as always statistics don’t never tell a perfect story they tell a story and I think this is one of the better statistics that we have it’s pretty all-encompassing in a lot of ways and very individualized but I never want you to just be like “Oh uh Ryan Roupert here is the 10th percentile he’s just absolutely ass.” Well there’s context around that that we need to uh talk about and understand because there’s things that stats can’t capture but anyway they’re here on the screen just to kind of help us tell the story first guy here DeAndre Aton on the last year of what was a max contract extension at the time uh DeAndre Aton’s a really good basketball player like he’s a really good player he doesn’t always play basketball the right way though and I think we all kind of understand that um I’ve personally been on the other hand or on um on the other side of a DeAndre Aton ass whooping which is um it’s it’s something man i’ll I’ll tell you that but um DeAndre really big really strong really athletic really skilled in a lot of ways too like uh we all know how much we hate how much he kind of operates kind of around the free throw line and [ __ ] like that and it’s annoying but he can really go get you buckets if you really need him to uh so he’s got value and everything but the problem is he clogs up um a lot of operating space for modern basketball and like sets that you like to try to run in certain areas and I personally think that that’s hurt the development of guys like a Scoot Henderson and like a Shaden Sharp maybe even Denny in some ways but um he is talented though and he has use somewhere you’ll see he’s kind of just like average all around the board and I feel like if he went to a place that could really like rope him back in to kind of like what they had going uh with like Monty and Phoenix like you could get something pretty productive out of him but thankfully he’s on the last year of a contract so he won’t be too hard to move and we are going to try to move him in this video uh Jeremy Grant who got a really weird contract from this team uh at the time and it still continues to be a little bit weird um pretty solid basketball player overall he’s falling off pretty considerably and his ability to get to the rim which was kind of his strong suit um in a lot of ways like he can’t really get there anymore he’s not the best finisher at the rim at least in this last year maybe it’s just an off season for him it’s hard to tell again it’s it wasn’t a very well constructed team so again that’s part of the context that we need to take into account to be like okay well uh he’s playing with all these other guys maybe maybe that’s kind of hurting him a bit much but defensively he’s still pretty solid and it is a hard contract to take a look at i’m not exactly sure how we’re going to move it but we’ll explore it uh Anthony Simons here offensive powerhouse defensively not all that great he’s got one year left on his deal and honestly feels like another guy that Look we we’ve all seen a thousand Anthony Simons trades this offseason we’re going to make one as well in this one it just doesn’t seem to make sense to keep him on this team and give him another extension it doesn’t feel like we’re actually building towards anything if we do that but overall Anthony Simons really really good offensive player i actually think he has potential to be a good defensive player well everybody does to some extent right but um I just don’t think he’s ever necessarily been um I guess put in situations where he can get a little bit better at those i I I don’t want to go into too much detail on that but I I’m just saying I think he can be at least like an average defender um let’s talk about Denny denny’s my favorite player on this team he is absolutely awesome um transition he’s amazing um Denny’s one of those guys where we were talking about earlier you draft a guy and then you don’t let him do like what he’s supposed to do and you wonder why it doesn’t work right when the Washington Wizards drafted him as a guy that was extremely ball dominant coming from like overseas and stuff they’re like “Wow it’s the it’s one of these point forward guys that everyone kind of covets right uh he likes to play in transition likes to play fast get others involved.” Well then they didn’t really let him do that all that much at the end of his Wizards uh career that last year um he really started to ramp it up and then the Wizards traded him for God knows what reason that that made no sense to me um Portland you’ve got this guy that can get you 20 points any single night plays really fast can make others better around you or around him on an extremely cheap contract that I’m pretty sure is like it decreases like overtime as well so one of the best value contracts in the NBA younger guy still that I think is going to keep getting better we want to prioritize getting this guy out on the court as much as possible um we really really like Denny uh Robert Williams we all know what he can do defensively he’s awesome on offense he’s just a lob threat but he is hurt all the time this last year was no different uh we’ll see if he gets moved in this video uh Matis Thyel uh another guy that was hurt most of the last season but overall like we know he’s one of the best like uh one-on-one kind of defenders in basketball always getting his hands in the passing lane he’s become a much better three-point shooter if you haven’t been paying attention the past couple seasons um so I’m not mad if we keep Thball definitely going to accept his player option because again he was hurt this last year so I think that’s fine i’m cool with having some 3 and D on the team um you by the way I want you to notice like some of the young guys that we’re going to be focusing on here have a lot lower defensive numbers and that’s something to pay attention to uh we got to keep a little bit more defense on the team so that we just don’t have all these young not as talented defensive players out there just kind of running around like chickens with their head cut off we need to support them with other defense um let’s move on to Scoot Henderson team option we’re definitely accepting that team option here uh Scoot Henderson came in as this kind of highly touted prospect maybe kind of John Wallish right in the sense of like extremely talented athlete that can get up and down the court um one of the things that I liked about him when I was evaluating him because I also put him that high in a lot of my rankings and you know I was doing things professionally at that point um is I was like “Wow this guy just kind of really seems to like get like the first couple parts of offense really well already which is like okay he knows how to play with some pace he knows how to get in a pick and roll situation and can kind of operate with with like lob threats and stuff like that i’m like “Wow that’s that’s really cool.” Especially for a guy that can get up and down the court so much he he doesn’t play too sped up um and then Portland just kind of didn’t really let him do stuff like that and again DeAndre Aton’s in his way so he comes off these screens and doesn’t really go anywhere and Scoot’s not a great shooter so I don’t really know what he’s supposed to do in those spots so we’re really going to try to pull the talent or give I need to say this correctly we need to make sure we put a team that makes sense around Scoot Henderson otherwise we just wasted this draft pick on nothing because we didn’t do like the basics even to support him with anything so Scoot Henderson we like him a lot uh we want to make sure we provide for him shaden Sharp a team option again we’re going to be accepting that you you’re going to have to start talking Shaden Sharp extensions and stuff like that at some point we’re not going to talk about that in this video i’m not the biggest Shaden Sharp guy mostly cuz for the past couple seasons um I’m kind of like I just don’t know what I’m trying to make with him like incredible athlete incredible talent but he doesn’t really seem to understand basketball that well portland doesn’t really seem to be teaching it to him all that well but this last year I’m not going to lie like I actually saw like quite a bit of growth in like his game and again it’s still flawed in a lot of ways but I’m like okay he is taking his time and reading things a little bit more now and there is a little bit of this i’m still skeptical overall because you know that’s my job as a scout to be that way only so many people can be great right i think all of us think that everybody’s going to be great sometimes and like not everybody is but I’m like yeah let’s at least keep trying right he’s extremely talented scoring like 18-ish points a game in the NBA as a 21-year-old right like there’s that’s saying something right there we we got to keep trying to nourish that and put the right pieces around him so we like Shaden Sharp donovan Klingan rookie from this last year i believe he was like number three or four on my big board this last year and I think um I think Portland Trailblazers fans kind of saw why right defensively he was awesome um and we should probably just start off by saying he looked so out of shape last season i don’t know what was going on with him but he used to be so much more mobile than he was uh coming into this season it really caught me off guard so hopefully somebody’s addressing that i don’t know if he was injured or not i don’t have any intel on it so I don’t know but defensive monster i love seeing the like 24 rebound gains that he’d have with like four blocks or whatever awesome stuff um one of the things I thought was really cool about him coming in is I’m like I see the hints of him being a really smart just like basketball player to where you can give him the ball kind of at the top of the key and just let him playmake for others be that kind of Sabonis bam out of bio type of hub and the Blazers did start to do stuff like that and all of a sudden guys like Shaden Sharp and Scoot Henderson because they have guys that they can work off of now started to play a lot better and the Trailblazers started to win a couple games and uh so we saw some of that you saw a little bit of the three-point shooting like it might be kind of there but uh Donovan’s definitely the center of the future going forward we got to clear some space for him to get some playing time uh Chris Murray oo not quite the same as Keegan um pretty good defensive player but we have yet to see any real offense out of him he’s got a team option that I’m just going to accept because he’s cheap why not um but if he has to be thrown into a move then be it as it may right uh DWOP Wreath uh non-G guaranteed contract that I’m going to guarantee i like DOP wreath um again just kind of a lob threat kind of guy not the smartest defensive player of all time but he’s athletic so he can make plays sometimes it’s a little bit easier for big men than it is for guards in that instance but um again one of those players where you play him with like a Scoot Henderson you kind of see oh wow Scoot Henderson’s one of the best like pick and roll players in basketball so we can see him kind of use that lob threat and get to the hole a little bit more it’s just it’s better for everybody i’m not guaranteeing you he’ll be around by the end of this video but I guess we’ll see uh Ryan Roert uh he’s got a team option who i know Portland Trailblazer fans um had a lot of people tell me that he was going to be really good last year in Ideal Offseason i was like you guys really think so like he’s a young guy and I believe in all the young guys like I’m going to keep fighting for him but I’m not necessarily seeing it uh it’s a team option and I think I’m going to need the roster space so I’m going to be letting go of Mr roert sorry uh he showed a little bit of three-point promise in his first year it took a big dive this last year again don’t want to give up on him completely but um for the sake of this video I think I’m going to need the roster space so he’s going to go and then Tammani Kamara a guy at the end of the roster here non-G guaranteed i think we should let him go no could you imagine could you imagine i I think Portland Trailblazers fans might have just had a little heart attack like yes Tammani Kamara actually coming in at like the highest overall player rating on this team and that’s probably correct honestly Tammani Kamar is awesome like defensively like monster right um doesn’t quite fall into that like top tier of like defenders but he’s really really good at what he does came in as a rookie and I was like “Wow look at this interesting guy.” And I didn’t really even scout him at all so he was quite a shock to me i’m like “Oh this guy kind of has like the basis of an offensive game down right now.” Like he’s got a little while to go but I’m like “Oh he’s got this little floater he’s ripping and he’s attacking close outs correctly that’s cool.” And this year he brought a little bit more again like he got a little bit more creative with the ball and he’s hitting some open threes and doing a little bit of everything on offense look at this we got a like a above average offensive player honestly upper 2/3 and then we’ve got almost a top 10 percentile defender young uh small forward yeah sign me up we’re guaranteeing your contract my boy this is one of the best value contracts in the NBA right here um so we’ve listed off a couple guys there right um guys like Denny guys like Scoot Henderson Shaden Sharp Donovan Klingan Tammani Kamara right those are kind of the guys that were like “We need to get them some more playing time we got to keep them on the court.” But uh with that we got to talk about luxury tax and um money and all this stuff now so uh for those of you new to the channel there’s four levels to the NBA salary cap if you want an in-depth explanation as to kind of what those mean you can go watch my Phoenix Suns ideal offseason video i go into a lot more depth about what they all kind of mean there but here’s a brief rundown uh first level is the salary cap level just in itself when that number hits zero which it has for us um you can no longer offer um anyone else outside your own players anything more than a minimum contract there are exceptions to that but those are a little bit complicated so I’m not going to get into it in that video that’s kind of just the overall basis for it uh the luxury tax line we’re $19 million away from that so when that hits zero we uh our team just gets a lot more expensive for our owner right and that interest starts to compound it’s a scary thing right then we have the first and second aprons these are newer to the NBA these were put in place so that star players wouldn’t be traded quite so much bring a little bit of evenness to the NBA and basically what they do is once you cross into these it gets a lot harder for teams to make moves the NBA puts you in a little chokeold and says like you can’t trade this guy you can’t sign this guy over here you don’t get this exception anymore so you better really like your team that you have and you better think it’s a contender which most contending teams are very expensive and find themselves there well then you better like it because the only way to go is down like that’s that’s just what happens right once you get into those aprons the only way to go is down from there you can’t really go any higher so uh we find ourselves above the cap but below the luxury tax right now pretty common place for NBA teams to find themselves uh right now um I would like to avoid the luxury tax because here’s the thing i want this team to be competitive next year i really really do like I don’t want this team to just absolutely bottom out we’ve got enough interesting young talent and again we’re going to talk strategy in a second but I’m not needing to pay the luxury tax right now i don’t think that’s very smart so that’s where we’re going to try to stay draft pick-wise it’s not a great arsenal for how not so good our team is right this team isn’t very good it didn’t even make the play right we saw a little bit of hope and potential but the West is pretty dang good right and we don’t exactly have a treasure trove of picks um you’ll notice the 2026 first round pick is missing that’s technically lottery protected i think it’s to the Bulls actually which look I I do want this team to be competitive if they make the playoffs great i think that’d be interesting for this young group i think that’ll be hard with this core considering how good the West is but again I want this team to be competitive next year i want to give these young guys a chance to go out there and do something and try to develop otherwise this team is just running in place and doing nothing right so if we lose that pick so be it but I wouldn’t mind g gaining some more assets along the way too just because we we really don’t have that many to speak of for not being a very good basketball team so with all that being said what’s our strategy now what’s kind of what’s kind of going on here well again main thing is is we got to get the young guys on the basketball court i want to get them out there and playing and we got to figure out who’s worth keeping and who isn’t right because right now we’re just running in place by playing some of these other guys um a ton of minutes the Jeremy Grants the DeAndre Aens the Anthony Simons that we know probably aren’t a part of our future right but we also know that the right way to build um a successful basketball team look at the Detroit Pistons right this last year you need to have the right vets and role players around them to support them right so that’s another thing we’re going to be looking for is to try to find players like that to support this group and help this group grow and uh build in the right direction so the other thing we have to keep in mind though is the level of competitiveness that we want this team to kind of embody this next year um again all these young guys I I I keep saying I want them to be competitive like I I want to be realistic and say that this core that we’re kind of talking about probably doesn’t win you a ton of games in the NBA but we have to see what they’re capable of right we just have to otherwise what was the point of any of this right like I feel like these guys can be something so I want to see what that is so we can best figure out how to build them going forward but if you were to look at this group do you really see that like 1A option that’s worth building around maybe not necessarily um and so that’s kind of the tricky thing with this group right is it’s in this weird kind of in between purgatory of things um so I I’m I’m not just going to be throwing out draft picks left and right trying to go get like stud players or whatever i think this next year just needs to be okay keep cap flexibility right like we don’t want to take on anything like too crazy in terms of long-term money on this team we got to get some vets on this team right that is the best way to help these young guys grow is we need to get some vets on the team right um probably need to get some shooting and some spacing because we’re missing a little bit of that with this group uh we want to get the young guys playing and we’re not just bottoming out either so with all that in mind let’s start moving on to the trade portion of the video and try to make some moves happen and that brings us back here to Fanso fanso is a really cool website that lets you do like mock trades mock drafts all these other cool little resources that they have here i’m not sponsored i just kind of like to give him a shout out uh every time cuz I think it’s a cool website and by the way did you just skip like the last 15 to 18 minutes of this video oh my god you ignorant swine go back and watch it we just get you just missed out on so much context why i know about 55% of you did that normally it’s 65 but that number has been decreasing so more and more of you are starting to watch the actual like substance part of the video where you’re learning why we’re doing what we’re doing and then I don’t have to see dumb comments of like EVC EVC why’d you do that well you you skipped the video that’s what happened but anyway trading people that’s what we’re here to talk about right now so we’ve got three open roster spots currently we’ve got one pick at pick 11 this year which is great we can add another interesting young talent uh to this team to kind of help support this group that’s awesome um but free agency is there anybody in free agency that we’re trying to bring back matis Styel we already talked about him delano Banton’s a I like Delano Banton a lot um I’ve actually been on the other side of uh playing against him as well and I think Delano Banton’s a cool player i like him a lot um I just I don’t think there’s going to be a role for him this next season so I’m not going to hold a roster spot open for him if he’s a if it gets to that point where we have a spot available cool but I’m not going to hold out hope for it and then uh we already talked about Rooper i don’t need Jabari Walker back on this team i just I don’t think he’s that good at anything in particular um I know some Portland Trailblazers fans really want to believe it but the reality is the reality unfortunately and then McGawans and Minier I just nah don’t need to worry about them so we got three roster spots um who would who do we want to move first i think the Anthony Simons move is probably the easiest um so let’s start off with that um I see two teams maybe three that make a lot of sense the Orlando one that we’ve drawn up a thousand times i see the Miami Heat as one where we could do like an Anthony Simons Terry Rosier kind of swap that way we still get a point guard back maybe we collect a couple second round picks along the way as well that could be kind of interesting and we don’t take up a lot of long-term salary that could be that could be something right and like Miami could benefit from them as well there’s probably also a way to do a Dallas trade here because they need a point guard just kind of for this season i’m not sure what we would actually get from them that we care about that much because again we’re not looking to take back somebody that’s going to take away playing time from other people right um I’m not I’m not really wanting to do that if we were to do an Orlando Magic trade right we all understand we’ve done this trade a thousand times right we know why Anthony Simons to the Magic makes a lot of sense they need scoring they need offense they need someone that can dribble the damn basketball that’s what Anthony Simons can do right he can get buckets in a instant for you he’s 20 plus every night that if you throw him out there for enough time right um they need a guy like that and they’ve got assets to give back to us um in the sense of draft picks cuz they don’t need all their draft picks this year and I wouldn’t mind having another draft pick so that’s what I’m kind of deciding between right now is do I want the immediate salary relief after the season because here’s the thing we’re going to have to take back KCP in this which does one thing for us it gives us a solid vet on the team which I’d be cool about but we do have to pay him next season right and that pushes us closer to the luxury tax and I’m not quite sure we’re going to be able to avoid it if we bring him in the other guy we’d probably bring in is Cole Anthony who we could actually use like we’ll bring him off the bench or something like that it’s just like a six-man scorer type um that’s cool by me i’m I’m fine with that um I I don’t hate Cole Anthony at all but neither of these are guys that the Magic necessarily need we’re by far giving up the best player in this so we would probably collect a late first round pick from them but again with the Heat we get the salary relief terry Rosier not sure what kind of level of vet you’re necessarily getting with him and the experience he’s had in the NBA and then you collect some seconds or something i don’t know i don’t know what I would rather have here i think what I’m going to do and again uh the MA the Mavericks one I’m sure we could figure out something with that and maybe even a Phoenix Suns one um but I think what I’m going to do is I am just going to go with the Orlando one i think it’s simple um I know it’s probably expected but let’s just let’s just draw it up quick so KCP goes over there cole Anthony goes over there and then we’re going to take pick 25 with this i don’t think it’s pick 16 i think we get their second first round pick out of this they they don’t need all these draft picks anyway they can’t roster them all so this makes perfect sense i feel like for both teams we’ve all seen it a million times cool nice simple trade uh we do take on more money which is a little bit scary um because again we’re riding a we’re riding a thin line right now so this is now Contavius Caldwell Pope cool i need to expand this so we can see all of them and we’ve now also added Cole Anthony uh to this group right here so we lost about $7 million in cap space right there um and this actually allows us to move Scoot Henderson kind of into our first five again do whatever you want with the lineup and the rotation i don’t care i just have it here to kind of visualize it in the video more so and now we have Contavius Caldwell Pope here so we got a vet we got a guy that hopefully can shoot the basketball hopefully I’m hoping he can play off guys like Denny or something like that a little bit more than he was able to play off of um guys like Fron and um Paulo in Orlando i I knew the Cavius Caldwell Pope thing wouldn’t work in Orlando but it was it’s whatever right we I I get what they were trying to do um so cool that’s that’s fine right oh we also now have um is that Orlando’s pick is that what we collected i know it’s Denver’s first round pick so we now have the Nuggets 25 first round pick we now have pick 25 as well cool i think that that’s fine i’m I’m chill with that deandre Eaton’s next that’s probably the next guy I want to try to move right how How do we move DeAndre Aton well he like I said he’s he is a valuable player like he really is it’s more so just a matter of like okay who needs a center and who doesn’t want to like who is okay with it maybe just being a one-year trial period right i say what we do is we just look through all the teams and be like what are some possible destinations like these teams right here like maybe you could do a Bucks like Damen Lillard level thing but I for the idealness of this video and it being more so about the Trailblazers not all that interested the Hawks probably not the Bulls the Bulls are probably a potential destination just because um maybe they’re trading a Kobe White this off seasonason knowing the Bulls they probably won’t and they and maybe they move on from Vousvich and they don’t want Josh Giddy all by himself uh with no other offense on the team aiden could provide that for a season that’s kind of interesting uh the Miami Heat they’ve got enough bigs the Toronto Raptors no brooklyn could just take them on for us but that doesn’t seem to make a ton of sense none of these other teams probably okc Houston know the Lakers lakers need a center really bad and uh here’s the thing lebron is doing like a one-year contract thing right now maybe this is the last harrah for him i don’t I don’t know so maybe you want to maintain some cap flexibility after this i mean Dodo’s on a one-year ruy’s on a one-year lebron’s on a one-year then’s on a one-year right and he could be on a team with a really smart coach and really smart basketball players that can just put him in the positions that he needs to be in at all time he’s like I said he’s extremely talented so I have no doubt he’d be actualized really well there so that’s probably option number one right now denver no the Clippers no timberwolves no unless they want to do a Rudy swap and I don’t really want Rudy the Grizzlies need a center that’s for sure we could look at something with them that one’s going to be a little bit harder salary cap matching wise cuz again it’s um all this money did I cancel the Orlando Magic trade i did my bad let me just let me just fix it really quick everybody calm calm down calm down everything’s going to be okay move them back pick 25 comes back to us cool cool cool i didn’t add a third team that’s on me uh the Warriors could be another one i don’t think they can afford him though and we’re not making them give up like Draymond Green that just doesn’t make sense the Kings no like I’ve seen a couple people talking about like Sabonis things um and when I mean a couple I see I’m talking about a lot of Portland Trailblazers fans for some reason wanting to go after like Sabonis that doesn’t make sense to me um don’t quite understand that Sabonis is a good player but why like you’re not really that close to contending why would you go after a player like that good right now um Dallas no no no no okay this has to be the Lakers and the Lakers can make this work right they’ve got the contracts to make this work i think this is pretty simple i don’t need Rui Hachimura i really don’t want to bring him in um I just want guys that are going to be off the salary books or just be kind of role players for us that’s what I’d like to take in and the other thing I want is I want this 2031 pick i told you guys I want to add another draft pick to the arsenal here to kind of have in our repertoire i want this 2031 pick they were willing to give it up for Mark Williams i think we can get it for Eightton but it’s going to be a little bit more complicated so let’s let’s just draw this out we give you guys DeAndre Aen there you go he’s an expensive player i need to take a couple guys off your team i’ll take Jared Vanderbilt off your team for salary uh purposes um it’s fine he can be a role player for me uh just get some rebounds play some defense it’s fine maybe won’t play a ton of minutes um it’s $11 million we’re probably not going to be good within the next couple years anyway so it’s not a big deal i can take him on i don’t want to take on any more money than this though long term that’s the only contract I’m really willing to take on um at this point um Gabe Vincent yeah you probably have to throw him in to this trade that’s fine might try to reroute him later and then Maxi Cleba who from I I actually have on pretty good authority dude’s a pretty great locker room guy and pretty good onc court coach kind of the kind of the guy I’d like to have on this team right again we want more vets we want more guys that can really teach these guys and I I hope you guys can understand this um I know some of you most of almost all of you don’t actually work in like basketball and you don’t actually know what it takes to grow a team you need these type of guys on the team to get more value out of your young guys you will get a better Donovan Klingan and a better Scoot Henderson and a better Denny because you have a KCP or a Maxi Cleba on your team you need vets you need vets they’re so important um okay that trade works financially right that just works cool yeah that makes sense uh I’m good at mental math i want this 2031 first round pick but here’s the thing they’re going to say “Hey expiring contract we don’t know what we’re going to have to pay him or whatever we’re going to say in the argument we took three players that you just don’t even want on your team right now and you need a center desperately.” Right here’s the thing i can sweeten the pot a little bit though you need more than just one center you need a center rotation uh I can’t give you Robert Williams for financial reasons but I’m willing to throw in Wreath for you here uh I do like Wereath i really do but for the sake of maybe getting this pick very um almost unprotected I’m going to say we’ll let it be like top three unprotected or something send that back to us here and then I’m cool with this because we also need to open up some roster space as well to actually use our draft pick so that’s another reason we have to send Reath away cuz otherwise we’re running out of draft space to use the two draft picks we have this year so I’m fine with this the Lakers get a whole center rotation out of us and we got a first round pick we got some vets um these guys will be off the books soon anyway it’s not a huge deal let me just see kind of where we’re at after all of this then so now we have a Lakers 31 first round pick that is um top three protected so we have that now we no longer have DeAndre Aton or Dwap Reef on the team cool cool cool we have now added Maxi Cleba here we have added Gabe Vincent and then we have added who was the other one that we added i already forgot it was uh Jared Vanderbilt so let’s add Vanderbilt to the team okay we actually saved money on this didn’t we like let me let me just go back a couple steps like where were we at um with Were We’re at $12 million away from the luxury tax and now by the end of this we’re at 16 million okay so we’re actually going in the right direction am I doing my math incorrectly 35 2 111 11 Oh yeah no okay okay yeah we know we do save money on that that’s on me that’s on me cool wreath is gone eaton’s gone donovan Klingan you now have the starting center responsibilities i know it’s scary but it’s okay uh we’re going to throw Rob Will there um who else do we need to throw out here somewhere maxi Clea you can just go back here as a reserve we like having you as a vet we’ve got Gabe Vincent right here now cool jared Vanderbelt um you’re going to get more PT I guess than Chris Murray uh most likely would but you’re on the team in case we need you he’s very redundant to Jeremy Grant but is what it is right it is what it is we’re still not in the luxury tax yet which is good um now again we only have one roster spot left and we’ve got two draft picks so we need someone else to come in and save our asses a little bit so let’s make this happen that means we call up the Brooklyn Nets that means we call up the Brooklyn Nets is there any way we can convince them to take either Jared or Gabe uh Jared’s obviously going to be a little bit harder uh could be more valuable to them um I guess here’s what we have to think about um the Nets not trying to be good at basketball this year but what they do want to do is be a trade partner to people right they want to help facilitate things so they can collect assets along the way what’s going to be better for them is having is it Gabe Vincent or Jared Vanderbilt i don’t actually know because they can use Jared Vanderbilt over more years as a salary cap guy because it’s not like they’re just going to be good two years from now right and then Gabe Vincent’s gone after this year i don’t know looking at what they have positionally they could just use a point guard on the roster maybe they want Vincent to fall off the books i don’t know um this is kind of where I’d leave it up to you guys because again they’re very similar salaries here like you let me know what you think the Nets would prefer to do in this situation cuz I I could genuinely see it from both standpoints they might just want to have this contract here and debatably a more valuable player at times um uh just to help facilitate trades over the next couple seasons or something or would they rather just get off the money because maybe the Nets are trying to sign some people in free agency i don’t I don’t know what they’d prefer to do honestly I could see both um for the sake of this video and it being ideal offseason I think I’d prefer that they take Jared Vanderbilt so I’m going to reroute him to the Brooklyn Nets here but now I’ve got to give something up to make this happen i don’t think the Lakers need to give something up here i think I need to give something up here uh one of the things that we have is we have quite a few like 2027 picks here um we’ve got like this Minnesota one that we could give up and what are they looking at for 2027 like second round picks they only have one right now it’s a Lakers one and it’s enough years away to where they don’t feel like they have to push assets completely down the line um is there anything else we’d be okay with giving up we have this like Knicks second round pick um it’s probably more expensive to get them to take on Jared Vanderbilt though um we probably have to give them like two seconds or something to do this versus like a Gabe Vincent’s probably one because we’ll say hey it’s a year they’ll say well for this one it’s three years right and we know you don’t want to pay Jared Vanderbilt and like Jeremy Grant which I’ll say yes you’re right um by the way this is the whole point of ideal offseason we we try to make it realistic and go through the debate that would most likely happen it’s really cool I get to be I get to listen in on some of these things sometimes with the team that I work for and um it’s interesting by the way small note um for those of you that think you your players are untouchable They’re not the names that I hear getting thrown around scary as [ __ ] like sometimes I go sometimes though it surprises me the people that think are untouchable we had this conversation in the Discord recently um there are very few players that wouldn’t that won’t be uh traded in the NBA your team is throwing them around like like I don’t know someone working in the corner but anyway let’s see i think this Charlotte second round pick they have the right to swap it that’s probably not as good as just like a Minnesota unprotected one but they’ll probably be pretty good so I say we just throw them these two like 2027 picks i don’t need three 2027 picks so I’ll send both of these over to uh the Nets right here they just take on the salary cuz look they they they just need to pay somebody this year um I think this is fine i think I’m cool with this so now I don’t have to take on Jared Vanderbilt anymore i have plenty of luxury tax space now chris Murray gets to move back up the rotation that’s so exciting for him i’m so happy for him um and that’s fine so these 2027 picks are like gone now um I must have forgotten to like list one or something cuz I believe we still have one 20 one more 2027 pick by the end of this we still have the Timberwolves one so I’ll just list that on here for the uh for the sake of it so there we go 27 second round pick cool cool cool cool um this is great i think those are the trades that we kind of wanted to make i think it’s going to be too hard to move a Jeremy Grant at this point like I just I don’t know who’s going to want him i I did a little bit of thinking like off camera about it and I just got no clue i just got no clue uh Robert Williams maybe that like if he like gets started and he’s hot throughout next year i kind of want to keep him for that reason like one it’d just be good to have a good backup center if he gets hurt again then his value stays the same he’s not that valuable right now anyway but if he’s healthy and he’s playing well then let’s let’s sell him while he’s high right so that’s that’s kind of what I’m thinking with him everybody else I’m cool with i’m cool with keeping Matis on the team and all these other guys so we’ve got a pretty full roster we’ve got two first round picks in a good draft class let’s go use them all righty back here with the Fan Spo Mock draft simulation a pretty cool thing that’ll kind of help us add a little bit of realism to this so we’ve got pick 11 here all righty what do we want to do what do we want to do i think um uh Oh Coniple already win i feel like a lot of Blazers want him um there’s there’s some interesting players here man there really is i see Kasparus Yakonis here uh a guy that I personally have fifth on my board this year um and that’s like a professional thing that I’m turning in um so we got him here um it’s also important to note for the 25th pick there might not be as many guards at that point in the draft so um it gets a little bit more forwardy at that point in the draft so it might be worth taking a guard here but another thing to keep in mind is we want to get players that support these guys we said we want to support guys like this if I get somebody that’s very ball dominant well now now what’s the point of having Scoot Henderson and Denny right we’re wanting those two guys to be our primary ball handlers and then giving it to Shaden Sharp at times a little bit too right and I do have like a Cole Anthony and he’s not a part of the long-term plans but like I’ve got plenty of options of guys that are going to need the basketball this year and I want to see a little bit of Donovan Klingan hub and um while I like that Yakonis is able to play without the ball a little bit it’s not exactly um the option that excites me a ton um in this case just because um while I think he’s maybe the best player available right now I I want to be true to the point of this video and do what the Trailblazers need to do and that’s support the guys that they already have on the team so what that’s looking like to me is I I think we need some shooting some guys that don’t need the basketball that can make Scoot Henderson’s life a little bit easier that can uh uh feed off of Denny and Donovan and uh Scoot when they’re attacking the rim or something like that and that’s when I start to look at Cedric Coward Liam McNeely maybe Jace Richardson Carter Bryant um all guys that probably don’t need the basketball a ton like Cedric had the ball a lot in his six games in college um a lot of it was just kind of going back to the basket and making tough shots but he can shoot the [ __ ] out of the basketball he’s strong he should be a good defensive player he like knows how to come off screens well and stuff and again we know he’s going to be able to shoot so I don’t mind that whatsoever uh Liam McNeely projects to be like entirely an offball guy like as soon as he starts dribbling the ball he can’t shoot anymore could be a solid rebounder for us um but again he didn’t actually shoot that well in college he’s a little bit younger carter Bryant’s more of an upside type guy another project um again probably not a guy that’s going to need the basketball but long-term could be an interesting 3 and D guy jace Richardson’s a guard that doesn’t necessarily want to have the basketball a ton but he can shoot he knows how to play off ball really well i think that that could be interesting i think where I’m leaning though is probably more so towards Cedric Coward i think he’s going to be a little bit more ready to go coming into this draft class and I know this guy can shoot the [ __ ] out of the basketball right so I can just picture like okay Scoot Henderson Shaden Denny they’re trying to like get all this dribble drive kind of action going you got Klingan running um Dunker spot you got Kamar who can attack close outs well and then you’re subbing in guys like Cedric Coward who are coming off screens and having a bit of gravity because they can shoot the basketball creating space for these driving lanes so uh for the what pick are we 11 i want to take Cedric Coward here let’s throw Mr cedric Coward right here he would make this much money i’m glad that we have so much room before the luxury tax i was really worried we were going to have trouble with that this um this video so he gets a nice four-year deal um just going to throw him here for now it might be a situation this year where we tell like a KCP hey dog you might not get a ton of minutes out there because we got to get Cedric out there a little bit but you know is what it is right still good to have the vet on the team would like to see him on the court at least earlier in the season we’ll see where Cedric’s at um at another point so we’ve taken him now we got pick 25 um this one what could we use right uh we’ve got a couple bigs on the team but with how often Robert Williams gets hurt Maxi Cleba’s been hurt a lot recently might not be the worst thing to add one more big to the team maybe a spacing big could be interesting cuz we have a lot of guys at other spots right now we’re pretty good at the point guard position right now so I don’t know let’s uh let’s see what’s available so right off the bat Joan Beeringer definitely a project center um he’s pretty pretty much just run jump dunk block shots not going to be probably anything more than that uh pretty new to basketball uh I see Danny Wolf here that’s an interesting look uh Danny Wolf also has the potential to play maybe not center because he can also put the ball on the floor a little bit um and you see now I’m starting to enter a territory where it’s like okay Danny Wolf is interesting right cuz the whole pick and pop nature he’s a really good passer he can put the ball on the floor a bit are we doing a disservice by to Danny Wolf um the thing that we said we don’t want to do by taking a guy like that knowing damn well we’re trying to put the ball in Denny’s hands and Scoot’s hands and Klingan’s hands even a little bit and Shaden that’s how I kind of feel about that so I’m kind of thinking I want to avoid that a little bit now there’s Walter Clayton here we don’t really need that kind of scoring guard necessarily there’s no appenda here who’s an interesting offball player really physical big and strong dude um used to playing without the basketball maybe feels a little bit redundant to like the Camaros the Matise Thybballs like and we’re going to have Grant for a while still so I’m not sure if that’s the way to go we could go with Sarif he’s a more long-term project needs the ball as well h interesting interesting there’s Kobe Brea there’s the shooter we could be talking about we take him in way too many videos i feel like we haven’t taken him in a while but we’re not taking Kobe Brea um first round most likely uh who else has been taken already that would have been interesting maybe a Sorb or Rashir Fleming could have been cool reo could have been interesting but he wasn’t going to most likely fall to us there maybe it is Danny Wolf man maybe it is maybe we say look you’re not going to get to have the ball quite as much as you did in college but maybe what ends up happening is you’re more of a short roll type of guy right that’s a really important thing in basketball actually if you’re going to have like people be as good at with the ball as like Denny or Scoot or something like that having that short roll option is pretty important and I don’t think that’s what Klingan is wolf would 100% be that Denny’s is actually a great option for that um he is like probably the ultimate short roll guy um but maybe just having another big or something presuming that we’ll try to do something with Robert Williams or we just think he’s going to get hurt at some point he is a little bit older so maybe just considering who’s available again I feel bad this feels extremely hypocritical to take him but I just don’t see anything else that I really want that’s not going to give me either the exact same problem or it just doesn’t make sense we could trade the pick but I don’t know who we’d be really targeting with that um I think I’d just rather add another shooter kind of at that center spot because when you look at it here like Denny’s an okay shooter like um Grant actually not a bad three-point shooter he’s just not shooting the ball well in general right now chris Murray can’t really shoot it um so maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing to add a little bit of shooting to the front court here so all right fair enough we’ll take uh we’ll take Danny Wolf with the 25th pick again I feel bad it feels hypocritical but at least these guys could play well off of the guys that we’re trying to um trying to benefit right here so there’s Danny Wolf um just throw him we’re going to move Maxi Cleba down and we’re going to move Danny Wolf here so we drafted two kind of older dudes maybe more mature guys that are going to be able to space the floor hopefully play off of these guys let them do what they’re supposed to do out there and um hey maybe maybe they become starters for us long term who knows but um I’m happy with this i’m happy with these draft picks overall i think this was um I think this was a good thing we’ll get rid of these and you’ll notice here we’re out of roster spots so this is another video where we don’t have to go to free agency guys we’re done this is the 2025 2026 Portland Trailblazers right here so let’s recap let’s recap here so we prioritize the young guys we said there are enough really really interesting young players on this team that haven’t gotten a chance to shine we’re we’re thrusting them into the starting five this next year and we’re going to let them play but we wanted to make sure we supported them with some vets so we we went and got the Maxi Cleos we’re keeping the Jeremy Grants on the team we went and got uh Contavius Caldwell Pope Gabe Vincent’s here right we’ve got some more mature players that have been on some winning basketball teams that can support these young guys it’s really really important this reminds me of like um what team was it i can’t remember exactly what team I’m trying to think of it feels like that one Minnesota Timberwolves team where like Zack Lavine was on it with like Carlanthony Towns and like Wiggins but they had like a ton of really old guys on the team as well like they had Kevin Garnett I think it was Taan Prince um somebody else somebody else was on that team i can’t remember the other old dudes they had like Ricky Rubio on there i think Andre Miller was on that team too or something so that’s that’s kind of the vibe I’m going for with this like let’s see if we can’t uh help raise the talent level of some of these young guys by supporting them with all these um veteran players we had another first round pick which is cool so we have a bit of future assets uh going forward and we’re trying to win some basketball games this year if we can make the play in that’d be cool maybe spark some things that keep pushing these guys in the right direction and uh we took some interesting rookies that we think will be able to play well off these guys but not demand the ball too much so I’m I’m feeling pretty good about this i’m feeling wow I didn’t realize Maxi Kleba’s numbers were this low this year oh boy but that’s why we have them down there but anyway we avoided the luxury tax as well that’s good uh this gives us flexibility going forward because all these guys are coming off the books at the end of this next year no more of this no more this no more of this uh we’ll have to probably pay him but no more of this we have a ton of cap space after this season so I’m happy with this i’m I’m happy with this but let me know what you guys think down below i know there’s a lot of Trailblazers fans um in my community that have been waiting for this video so happy to finally provide it for you i need to go um hop in the car now and um I need to get driving cuz we’ve got like some workouts and stuff that we have to do a couple hours away so uh your boy is done pre-recording for a bit thanks so much um let’s move on to the comments of the video all right y’all comment of the video is coming from our most recent mock draft i’m just flying right through it it comes from 1043 that said as to the Thunder should be vetoed by Adam Silver i’m not exactly that high on Asen but I get the point really all of their picks it’s just starting to get unfair at this point yeah at the time of this I I don’t know who’s playing the Thunder in the finals or anything but it it is starting to get ridiculous somebody stop the Thunder what are we gonna do for their ideal off seasonason just like nothing i have I have no clue i’m not sure what I’m going to do for that one i guess I didn’t do much for the Celtics one last year so I don’t know but anyway I appreciate you guys as always i’m going to get going now thanks so much bye power [Music]

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————————————————Video Contents————————————————
00:00 – Intro
01:32 – Team Breakdown
20:24 – Trades
38:03 – Draft
48:03 – Comment Of The Video