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Trail Blazers Agree to BUYOUT with Deandre Ayton | What’s Next for Portland in Free Agency?



Trail Blazers Agree to BUYOUT with Deandre Ayton | What’s Next for Portland in Free Agency?

in today’s show the DeAndre Aton era is over in Portland the Trailblazers have agreed to buy out the final year of Eightton’s deal sending him into free agency and sending the Blazers into a surprising DA free season welcome to Locked on Blazers let’s get into it you are Locked On Trailblazers your daily Portland Trailblazers podcast part of the Locked On podcast network your team every day what’s up world it’s your pass 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 Monday through Friday 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 today’s show we’re talking on the eve of free agency the Blazers a very surprising move agreed to buy out the final year of DeAndre Aiden’s contract he was owed $35.5 million for this upcoming season and would be a free agent in the summer of 2026 and now he’s a free agent in the summer of 2025 the Blazers have agreed to buy out the final year of his contract as first reported by Sham Strani of ESPN uh lockdown Blazers can independently confirm the news that that news is indeed real as you were listening to this uh I do not have the financial details just yet but uh the Blazers and a pretty stunning move all of their recent all of their recent moves have been pretty stunning right the the Drew trade was pretty surprising uh the young draft selection young Hansen draft selection pretty stinking surprising and now on the eve of free agency free agency begins you are listening to June 30th show i’m not going to release this a little early on late Sunday night but uh you are listening to June 30th show the free agency begins in earnest on June 30th at 3 p.m pacific time here in Portland and before we get into all of that before the league gets into all of that the Blazers are no longer in the DeAndre Aton business they have agreed to a buyout with him and he is a free agent wow i think that the like the the the final outcome here is not particularly surprising right you draft Donovan Klingan at seven then you draft Yang at at uh at 16 right like backto-back first round picks and like Yang in some ways is like a lottery pick right cuz 11 you trade back it was a pretty good trade uh to get another to get another unprotected draft pick of the future but like you know um sort of like targeted high first roundy picks a true lottery true top 10 pick and then another like uh go get your guy type of first round pick in in with Klingan and Yang in back-to-back drafts like the moment they drafted Klingan the writing was on the wall the DA’s future was was was shortterm in Portland right he became very clearly a short-timer and not a longtimer but he was still on the roster um I think the trade of Drew for for Drew Holiday indicated like oh yeah the Blazer going to be like going to try to be competitive and uh you know I I think there’s still a fairly fairly good case to be made that DeAndre Aen would be their most productive center particularly in the early part of this season or at least like um at worst their second most productive center by a lot heading into this season um just because I think the uncertainty of Rob Williams health and the fact that Young Hansen is 20 years old and making a a major transition from from the CBA to the NBA and like obviously Aiden’s better than Dub Breath but like even if you’re a big clinging believer like Aiden is at worst the second best center on the roster and like after they’d made some moves it’s like hey you know maybe they’re not like going all in on finishing six but like this is a team that is going to try to be competitive more than anything else this is a bit of a surprise what’s not a surprise that they’re no longer business with Aiden right this was going to happen one way or another as been has been speculated on the show several times at $35.5 million just hard to trade right he’s he’s he’s hard to trade because um expiring contracts in and of themselves have value if you are willing to take on other people’s money which is what the Blazers did with the Drew Holiday trade are making a bet that they traded hey this is like a somewhat ownorous contract but we think this is a better basketball player and a better basketball fit if nothing else and we’ll sort of like we’ll deal with the back half of paying a a 37year-old $37.5 million in in that’s for that’s a future problem but a current problem we think this helps and if you were going to flip it again with DA with with Aiden it would be a similar type of thing like that’s where expiring contracts have value you take on you say “Hey this contract expires in in in the summer of 2026 do you have something with multiple years on it or at least at least an extra year on it that you’d like to get out from under that uh that payments that like that’s where you get the upside in those in expiring contracts and I think it’s pretty clear a couple things there was not a real market for Aiden services so there wasn’t a bunch of people lining up and if maybe if there was a market for for for DeAndre Aiden services it wasn’t with the type of the type of package that the Blazers felt comfortable with now you could say “Oh well the off seasonason is just beginning.” But I would argue that the Blazers have been canvasing the league about trying to trade DeAndre Aton for at least since February right like they they’ve certainly like you do your job like even if they weren’t actively shopping him you find out kind of what he’s worth and and certainly since the season ended in April right like they’ve been figuring out talking to every team in the league and like “Hey we have this tradable big contract what do you want for Aiden?” Clearly what this move suggests is that the Blazers did not find even something that was close to a palatable deal i I I don’t think this is stunning in the overall outcome i do not think it is stunning that the Blazers are um no longer in the DeAndre in business they they sent us every single signal imaginable that anyone that could possibly read the tea leaves that they were no longer going to be in the business it’s just timing and it’s the decision to do it now and it’s the decision not to just roll with say hey largely untradeable but maybe we’ll roll with a expiring $35.5 million contract into the season and when other teams have injuries and have panic and have all of these things or maybe they a team all of a sudden sucks that they didn’t think they were going to suck and they want to like get out from under some money a $35 million expiring contract in February again if you’re willing to take back future money could have value you could get paid you know maybe uh you know a couple firsts to take on some truly horrendous money or you or at least get something of value for this big contract once teams like priorities or realities change like that would be the value in holding on to Aiden his like trade value is not going to go up like let’s let me be 100% clear deandre Aiden played two years in Portland arguably the two two worst seasons of his career and last year was maybe the worst year of his career i know that it ended on a really high note right like he got going in January and the end of January and into February and he played um during the Blazer stretch where they won 10 of 11 he had eight really good games during that stretch no doubt about it but if you look at his season on the whole it was it was arguably the worst season of his entire career um like that stuff ex like I think we the Blazers watchers are like we it’s easier for us because we watch the games very closely like we can get acutely fixated on these like small moments where like hey he was really trended up he was really rolling but that’s eight games that’s eight games out of a stretch over the course of eight games out of you know the full season that’s 10% of the year that’s just like not a big enough sample to say like yeah actually he was good no like on the whole he was not very good he played 95 games in two seasons like health and availability was a big deal he was pretty bad in year 1 he was pretty bad in year two he was worse by most statistical measurements in year two than in year one um he struggled in Portland they just they they he did um there were some moments he had some moments the end of his first season and and the right before he got hurt in his second season for sure he had some moments undeniable and maybe in like a different situation the Blazers could have brought him back at the very end of the year if they were chasing the playoffs but that as soon as he hurt his calf there was no chance he comes back and the Blazers have made the decisions behind him that like they’ve made the they got a lot of centers right like when they drafted Young and and and like made that decision to like this is our guy we’re going to go get him at 16 they end up with five centers with Aon and Klingan and Robert Williams and Dwreath and Hansen Yang Yong Yong Hansen like they they they they just got a lot of they got a lot they have a lot of players that basically play one a single position i know that some of you out there dream of like this guy could play power forward i was just like they can’t almost all of those dudes are like pure centers unless you have like the perfect right type of thing or if like um another version of Rob Williams in in a perfect like shooting setting but again he doesn’t have that complimentary role next to him necessarily to he doesn’t have the magic of Al Horford to play a double big lineup so like you kind of knew that the Blazers were going to move off of Aiden in fact in the show that I my my most recent show Friday’s episode I talked about like there could be some you know if they if they don’t find a trade suit of this summer there’s there’s like incentive to certainly trade uh DeAndre up against the up into the trade deadline in February of 2026 but some listeners and I talked about this on the show said like you know trading him and getting back like stuff you don’t want is not necessarily valuable maybe the best value for Aiden is just letting him walk in the summer of 2026 like literally just letting his money like expire off the books and not taking anything back for him and that’s what the Blazers chose to do again I think the timing and the decision like doing this on the eve of free agency doing this in June doing this like all of that is like um that is surprising the overall outcome that the Blazers are no longer in the DeAndre in business is not that surprising the the thing that rem remains to be seen and I’m recording this just after 900 p.m on Sunday evening and I will obviously update you in the future when when we get the details but how much money did DeAndre and give back because that’s how buyouts work typically guys give back somewhere between the pro-rated veteran minimum right cuz DA says “Well I’m owed $35.5 million and if I go out into the world I can get whatever contract I’m can get a minimum contract and I’ll still get the 35 million bucks you owe me or whatever it is the 30 million bucks you owe me and like then I’ll get my minimum on the other side.” So somewhere between they give back the their pro-rated veteran minimum which is based on how many years you’ve been in the league or on some occasion if if players are very motivated to get out of their contracts uh Kevin Love and Blake Griffin are examples of this of this players will give back more money they’ll give back significantly you know like I I think Blake Griffin gave back something like 13 or 14 million which at the time was a record it’s just like get me out of here i do not want to play for the Detroit Pistons but free Blake um then it was a it was a historic amount of money to just sort of give back $30 million is not a small amount of money even for someone who makes $30 million is you know 45% it’s a ton of money um so we will see what a what Aiden gives back but whatever he So you could conceivably stretch that con the cap hit over several seasons but that doesn’t make any sense the value of of of of eating Aiden’s money the value of of waving Aidan agreeing to a buyout with him is that when you get to the summer of 2026 there is no future money on the books you are done doing business with him um and that would so that’s like the most likely thing that that you know they won’t stretch it it’s just how much did he give back right now with eight on the contract the Blazers are about $8 million shy of the tax they would have access to the non-t taxpayer mid-level exception but that contract is a deal is a contract that starts at about $14.5 million and it can be for that’s the base salary in year one you can sign a four-year contract with escalating salaries from that you would assume that they got him to like somewhere around five or six million bucks to give that back so they could have access to the entire taxpayer mid-level exception um excuse me non-t taxpayer mid-level exception i would assume that’s that’s the amount of money he gave back but we we shall see the other thing this means um is it’s a real vote of confidence in Donovan Mllingan it’s a real vote of confidence in Yang Hansen and it’s a real Yang Hansen it’s a real vote of confidence in Rob’s health and like Dab Rereath’s uh you know availability here it also puts Jabari Walker situation in question because the Blazers did not extend a qualifying offer to Jabari Walker he was kind of their like small ball deacto sixth center um he enters unrestricted free agency now on the eve of free agency and the Blazers uh you know they they had too many centers and I don’t want to say like they went from way too many to not enough but I do think um losing the Walker small ball look and look in the same you know 24-hour period does change the calculation a little bit and it says like yeah’s going to play a lot in year one or at least like have the opportunity to play a lot in year one because even at his best you don’t think Klingan’s going to play 36 minutes and you don’t think Rob Williams is going to play 80 games so there’s some minutes to be had for a 20-year-old youngster from the CBA let’s talk about where the Blazers are at on the eve of free agency at least for what we know now join me in that second segment won’t you first though let’s talk FanDuel America’s number one sports book and we’ve got summer sports they’re in full swing the WNBA baseball um soccer here footy in America uh with with the NWS and the NWSL fanduel is the best way to make every game even more exciting so if you’re already following the action why not get in on FanDuel get a little skin in the game with FanDuel you can get in on every single game so while your friends are out there just sitting on the couch watching the game you could add a little juice to the action um FanDuel’s got daily promos that may offer fun ways to bet it’s also s easy to use the app’s super clean they got fast payout so you can if you want to get on the action and you do win you’re going to get your money quickly so whether you’re making putting together a same game parlay or you’re watching a bet ride through the ninth inning of a 2 and 1 half hour long baseball game FanDuel is going to make you feel like you’re part of the action plus if you’re new to FanDuel you can bet just $5 and get 150 bucks in bonus bets if that first $5 bet wins open the FanDuel app today or visit fanuel.com to get started [Music] all right so [Music] this was going to be a different show y’all uh I had recorded about 15 seconds of the program before I received a text message from a friend that said something to the effect of like “This might be an unprecedented buyout situation.” And I said “Oh no i I need to look into what that means.” And then I was able to uh confirm the the buyout etc etc and kind of uh pause a little bit before hitting record again so what the show was supposed to be about is is like a little bit of transactional news and we’ll get to we’re going to talk um Yang Hansen’s uh introductory press conference to close the show but um the Blaz like we’re heading into the eve of free agency it begins on June 30th at at 3 Eastern out here uh in in Portland 6 Eastern 3 Pacific time 6 Eastern um like the Blazers before waving Aiden would have had uh 14 roster spots that’s because June 29th on Sunday was the final day for the Blazers to extend a qualifying offer to Jabari Walker making him a restricted free agent um as I am recording this the Blazers have yet to announce that although based on my reporting that I have been able to do um the Blazers did they didn’t do it he’s a he’s an he enters unrestricted free agency there is a world in which they are able to bring the blaz uh Walker back but as speculated here on the program because his qualifying offer is more than a minimum salary and because the Blazers probably um are interested in making some trades although I think Aton was part of that calculation perhaps rolling into the summer with 14 roster spots was um palatable and they’re about 8 million shy of the tax threshold with Eightton on the roster now with Aidton gone 13 roster spots and more than 8 million off off you know he’s they’re not he’s not going to get every single dollar of his of his buyout you would presume again it’ll be at the minimum it’ll be like the pro-rated veterans minimum that’s that’s the most money that Aiden will give back everything else the Blazers will he will get paid the NBA is a good job you get guaranteed money so the Blazers um Jabari Walker enters free agency but the other bit of news over the weekend is the team announced that they picked up the uh third-year option on Ryan Rupair’s $2.2 million contract that’s no surprise um they drafted Rupair in the second round as a teenager there was no reason to cut bait on him you pay out the contract you see what he grows into if you’re ready to if if he does reach some sort of level of promise that you feel comfortable with moving forward with him you do it but you you know when you draft a teenager in the second round you kind of you you it’s built in that you kind of need to see it all the way through because young players take a while to get going second round picks take a while to get going and Rup didn’t play very much in year two and he probably doesn’t have a path to a bunch of playing time in year three but he’s on the roster so that’s what today’s show is going to be like oh Jabari Walker hits free agency and Ryan Rupair picks up his uh gets his team option picked up and now the Blazers are um you know here’s here’s where the Blazers are with 14 roster spots but I but like this is a big big change right because this allows the Blazers to um at least you know there’s not a lot of like juicy free agents that are going to change the game but this does allow the Blazers instead of having like being right up against it with about 7.9 million away from the tax uh from the tax line and that would like fill the Blazers roster this would allow the Blazers to be somewhat active in free agency if they find you know the right type of shooter the right because I think like to be clear the Drew Holiday deal is not finalized it’s still pending it’s likely going to be finalized at the end of this week uh and there could be additional trades that happen outside of that to address the team needs and the team needs in my eyes are shooting period shooting they could use like they could use like an awesome movement shooter like ideally they could use someone who like whips around screens at full speed and like scares teams because they come off screens hard and they’re great great catch and shoot shooters on the move like in a full sprint that’s not exactly like the easiest thing to find so anyone who could make a a make threes with some consistency at an above average clip that the Blazers could put on there and wouldn’t get absolutely killed on defense or in the very least would be like playable with other players so they’d still be able to put out like functional defensive lineups cuz to be clear the Blazers can put out some kick-ass defensive lineups like they can put out some groups that can really really defend they’re just so light on shooting and they could probably use another point guardish type person um you know you can disperse some of those point guard duties between you know between Scoot and Drew Holiday and and and Shane Sharp can do some initiator stuff and obviously Denny’s going to get a bunch of initiator opportunities but probably like one more guard who can dribble on the back half of the bench just when someone gets injured because Delano Banton has hit free agency uh Ryan Rupair does not have any ball handling skills to thus far um they could just use like one more one more ball handler type shooting and another probably another point guard or or they don’t have to be a point guard but they need to be able to handle and like that type of player usually usually comes in a point guard like sized package um so like two roster spots somewhere around you know 10 plus million below the the tax they’re not going to be a tax team this year when I think the other thing this puts into question is how much do the Blazers want to like the Drew Holiday move as mentioned in the top of the show was like it seemed like a move like hey we’re going to be competitive maybe not this wasn’t an all-in move to go like to be the sixth best team in the west right but I think there is some uh there’s a bunch of teams in the west that are like old like the LA teams are old the Golden State Warriors are old like there’s some there’s some teams that have like some pretty obvious like downside right hey What if 36-year-old or however old Steph Curry is and like Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy Butler like aren’t available for some games that team’s not very good like what if what if the Clippers are have have some injuries to uh Kawhi Leonard often injured right like you know what if uh James Harden who was drafted like in whatever 2009 like what if he also is also a little bit older in year 16 like it’s like there’s some downside right so maybe the Blazers said like “Well we can get in the mix and we feel like there’s a bunch of teams that are going to be in that you know 7 through 10 range that we’re just as good as right like we’re just not afraid of all these teams.” I think that was more what the Drew said the Drew Holiday trade said it’s like hey we maybe we don’t think we’re like a highle playoff team but certainly like we feel like this is the best player we can trade for in a Simons trade um we’re not worried about the money in the back half of of the contract right now but we think we can be competitive trading DA is a different thing because this says hey we actually think Don Vincan is ready to be an NBA starter or we think Rob Williams is ready to be an NBA starter for how much he’s available like you know and and play some real minutes and we think Yang Hansen like is going to play in year one and and and Chanty Bilips at at Young’s introductory press conference said said exactly that said that he’s good enough to play right now he also said that like year one could be a learning experience he said that he said both of those things right but at the time learning experience seemed reasonable given the rest of the roster if DeAndre’s on the roster he’s going to play 35 minutes but when you turn DeAndre to a buyout and so there’s nobody it does change things a little bit young has an opportunity to play in year one and the Blazers introduced him at the practice facility on Friday this was also going to be a big part of today’s show until some other news broke let’s talk about Young and what we learned about him in his introductory press conference join me in that third segment won’t you the Trailblazers on Friday introduced their draft pick 20-year-old Yang Hansen uh Chinese center making the transition to the NBA um the Blazers are high on them in the way that this time of year everyone is high on draft picks right but they also like this was their guy right they made they made a move that kind of stunned the sort of NBA intelligencia they they traded back and got some stuff for trading back but like they got like that’s an that is a separate part of like the person that they drafted they wanted Young this was the person they wanted this was the guy they pursued this was they got their dude they got their center of the future and then after this DA trade did they also get their center of the present in that introductory press conference uh the Blazers uh the Blazers said a couple different things well actually let’s start let’s start here um I thought Young who mostly spoke through a translator was a really entertaining personality um albeit with a language barrier not only is there a language barrier he’s just 20 years like he just turned 20 he turned he turned 20 on the day after the draft like he’s a he’s a very young man also making a big cultural transition also trying to speak a totally new language so like obviously there’s like some um expressing your thoughts deeply although I will say shout out to OPB they sent a reporter who speaks Mandar Chinese and was able to like talk with with with Yang in his um in his native tongue and that particular interview is like much is very enlightening because it’s just like someone able to express themselves in a way they’re comfortable expressing themselves with shout out to Oregon Public Broadcasting uh for the good work and also like having someone on staff who speaks Mandarin Chinese that’s pretty cool um that that’s useful here in the United States but I will say the moments that that Young did like um did try his hand at English were pretty endearing uh there was a question I believe it was Jason Quick for the Athletic who asked kind of like what do you you know what do what do you like off the court and he’s like oh my hobbies are like sleeping playing PS5 PlayStation 5 and like eating yeah I’m always eating like that’s that’s cool man like I I was not too dissimilar at your age sleeping eating and playing PS5 i just wasn’t like a soon-to-be millionaire who was 72 or whatever um yeah he’s he seems like an easy dude to root for um he just seems like a fun endearing personality uh certainly like a young person learning his way but a fun endearing personality um and then as I mentioned Chelsea Bilip said two things he said one that like the he could envision Young playing right away because he’s that talented and he didn’t and that’s like that seems like the type of like optimistic June postdraft press conference coach talk stuff and then he said also like this year would be a good learning year for him noting that it was like a crowded center room well they got the room got a lot less crowded so I think what we will get a good test of is um is whether Young can play bills also said in that same press conference that Young is not going to be capable of playing next to Don Mcllingan which anyone who has watched an NBA game over the last five seasons could have told you um although people always want to believe and there’s kind of this myth of like two center lineups coming back um I don’t think that’s actually true i don’t think that’s actually true unique very large teams can play two bigs together true two centers are not playing together with any regularity across the entire league um it’s just not happening and both teams in the like the NBA finals that are like the you know OKC eventually like downsized to be the best version of themselves and did not play two big lineups even though one of their bigs is very unique but but in in any case Yang’s a center DC’s a center these are their two centers of the future and now all of a sudden they have um created space for them to play i would say Young’s press conference wasn’t particularly newsy wasn’t particularly um like you didn’t get a lot of um like oh here’s here’s great insights into him but I do think you got a a look at his personality and he seems like just like between like the incredible passing highlights and kind of how just like fun of a young person he seems like dude’s like like I said very endearing very easy to root for um we we shall see here are the other two things I want to want you to keep an eye on because this was supposed to be a show looking to free agency so here’s the big things like we don’t know how much the Blazers have to spend and we do and it does seem like they’ve now committed Young and Klingan as as the center of the future which I like i’m into that um because I I’ve been I’ve been kind of screaming for them to kind of commit to the young core this is absolutely doing that um while this is like a very surprising move and how it went down I’m not gonna be too critical of it because like I guess it was like the outcome that I was kind of yelling about albe strange way to get to the outcome the other two things to look for as we enter free agency which begins on Monday June 30th is the Blazers have two players that are extension eligible that are that are very likely to at least have conversations about contracts the first is Shaden Sharp um he is extension eligible because his when you are drafted in entering the fourth year of your fourth season a after you are a first round draft pick you are eligible for a contract extension the first player of his draft class 2022 Jabari Smith sorry a 5-year $122 million contract that starts at about 21 million it’s about 12 a.5% of the cap with eight 8% annual raises that’s a good number to think about for Sharp that would be you know four for 100ish um that that’s like about about the range um a little bit less but like about the range uh Keith Smith when I had him on here guessed 4 for 115 for Shaden Sharp i think Jabari sets an interesting precedent um it’s an interesting thing to think about i I think like productivity wise they’re not too too dissimilar but like player profile and future role smith is like a shooter defender 3 and D guy and you’re saying okay paying like starterish money for that type of um profile seems a little bit safer bet like Sharp’s like ultimate like because of Sharp’s skills the thing that’s like going to make him playable is that he’s like an elite go-to scorer like like starle offensive stuff was a little bit different if I’m the Blazers I do not extend Shaden Sharp this summer I’d like let him walk into restricted free agency next summer and figure it out then um teams don’t always do that they’re not always comfortable with that i think NBA teams actually are more scared of restricted free agency than they should be certainly a lot of teams have may have cap space next summer at least they project to right now um so it could put Blazers in a little bit of danger but for me I don’t know that I would say like yeah just give them the Jabari Smith deal and move on although I don’t think that that’s a crazy money for what Sharp is but I do think it’s a it’s a it’s a big chunk of cash i just simply would say like “Hey we’d love to give you five for 125 go out and play this season and show you’re worth it and when you get to next summer you can get five for 130.” Like like you can just tell us that we were wrong and earn the money and if not like you know back at 4 for 90 and like and then you’re talking about the other name to know that the extension eligible is Tumani Kamar tummani because he’s on a minimum deal how it would work is the Blazers have a team option for the 26 27 season they would nyx that they would say “Okay we’re going to decline that team option for 20 26 27 we’re going to sign you to a contract extension.” Now um he wouldn’t be working off his current salary he’d be working off um like the average salaries of of I believe non-minimum NBA players um it’s a little bit it’s a little bit tricky exactly how it works but according to Keith Smith the number is about 4 for 89 um that would be about 21 million a year um starting at 21 million with 5% annual increases over four seasons i think that’s a pretty good number that again is about 12 and a half% of the cap uh with with slightly you know and and escalating in that about that range but 5% es 5% contract escalations in a cap environment where the cap is supposed to go up 10% every year is actually could be real value for Tumani um if I’m the Blazers Tumani is my number one priority trying to sign this summer get Tumani on the books for that four for about 90 million bucks and go on from there that is the 100% what you would do so those are the things to watch the Blazers will have some amount of money shy of the tax probably in the 12 to$15 million range we shall see uh they will have two extension eligible players in Tumani and Shaden Sharp and uh they’ll have two open roster spots because Jabari Walker and Dano Banton are both hitting unrestricted free agency and and DA got waved that DeAndre Aiden got waved they’re committing to the future yang clinging to the moon um free agency is going to start tomorrow it’s going to be hopefully there’ll be a lot of fireworks hopefully we’ll see some fun exciting player movement across the league and then uh late tomorrow night I will record a show and we will talk about everything we saw from night one day one of NBA free agency across the league um the Blazers are certain to do something absolutely stunning because that’s the last three things all of their decisions they’ve made over the last three roster sort of um the three roster moves they’ve made have been shockers all right that’s going to do it for today’s show come back for tomorrow’s show is what we do 5 days a week wherever you get podcast also on YouTube i appreciate you listening i’ll talk to you soon

Another day, another Trail Blazers stunner. This time a buy out of the final year of Deandre Ayton’s contract on the eve of NBA Free Agency! What’s next for Portland?

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42 Comments

  1. "Hi Jody, hey Bert" .. Hi Joe, how are today ? .. "I'm great, thanks for asking. Ummm, I need to kick DeAndre Ayton off the team. Can I have 35 million ??" ..oh, OK Joe, that sounds great, the checks in the mail. Have a nice day 🙂

  2. A top 5 pick in next year's draft is what is next. None of these moves says a team is trying to win next season

  3. I think Portland wants to finally get that pick yo chicago before the miluakee swaps. Win this year then figure out the future after the year.

  4. Wow, I hope DA finds a good place. He's a good dude. But the Blazers needed to do something. Not executive of the year choices. But at least we will be developing Centers. I have been tired of the years of not playing young players. I am still excited for the growth of this club. Also not sad to see Jabari move on. I just didn't see much there. I hope he proves me wrong.

  5. DA was the best center in the group – now Portland actually don't have a good enough big man – and I don't think DC is a starter in a team that wants to get to the playoffs
    what's the plan here? now we need a 5

  6. I’m a bit worried about not having 1 athletic center on the roster after just a year and a half ago Joe Cronin saying how important it was to have a fast and athletic team

  7. Wonder if DA was unhappy enough with the draft that he or his agent said something? Pure speculation on my part

  8. adam silver wanted the favor for celtics and then help lakers with their center issue, in return, can they get a promised top 3 pick for next years draft like what mavs did??

  9. So we buy him out, do we get anything when he signs elsewhere? No draft picks, no considerations or cash, no players no nothing?

  10. At the very least, this summer has shown Portland is FINALLY committing (and importantly, not over-committing) to a direction – getting rid of some of the roster clutter and adding complimentary pieces for the young guys. At the very least next year’s team should be a much more fun team to watch.

    Surely JG is next, right?

  11. This is pretty good news. Knew something was coming soon with Ayton after the draft. I gotta say Clingan, Yang, Duop and maybe Rob for about 10-15 games. Thats a deadly center lineup right there lol.

  12. Finally rid of the lazy player who Portland took a chance on in hopes he would show up in another town not called Phoenix. Portland just couldn't get him to contribute in any meaningful way. All of the NBA knew he was a problem when Phoenix traded him. Teams don't trade off a big like Ayton unless he is doing something questionable or not doing anything at all..

  13. Maybe just an opinion: but I think players develop best when on a winning team. DeAndre Ayton was Blazers best center and a vet. Getting rid of Ayton I think hurts the team, because Clingon cant physically play extended minutes and would foul out even if he could. A tall guy (Yuan Hanson) playing against short asians is gonna look like a stud, but wont mean jack in NBA. Player development works best in short stints on the floor, not throwing them into the fire and watching them struggle for full games. Losing Ayton was dumb. We are gonna lose more games now.. Bad for the youngsters..

  14. No more "having nothing left to prove" . "im just playing for my next contract", "didnt buy a mattress", "couldn't get out of my house on snow day", "I have dominayton tatted on my back"………….etc etc etc

  15. Wut a 'nasty person' yo are, why on hell yo arrange the update on hansen in the last part of your vlog, that wasted tons of my time to wait and consume some crap instead lol

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