The Portland Trail Blazers have an interesting situation on their hands at the trade deadline, and Maurice Harkless and Meyers Leonard could be at the center of it all.
With the trade deadline looming Thursday, every NBA team is looking to add to its roster, or find a way to move off some bad contracts to put themselves in better financial position. The Trail Blazers fall under the second category.
With so much money tied up in their books, the Trail Blazers appear to have made Harkess and Leonard available, per Chris Mannix of Yahoo Sports.
The Blazers have shopped their bad contracts — Maurice Harkless and Meyers Leonard are there for the taking.
Harkless and Leonard will make over $33 million combined next year alone. Read that again.
That mount of money for two role players is not what one would call good financial management. And with the team currently over the luxury tax threshold, Portland would love nothing more than to offload money to at least get under the tax.
The problem is teams usually want assets in return for bad contracts, and the Trail Blazers may not be willing to part with the ones other teams may want, per Mannix.
But would Portland break up its star backcourt? The Blazers have serious cap issues, and the underwhelming play of Jusuf Nurkic has made the magic the team discovered at the end of last season elusive. Damian Lillard isn’t going anywhere, and there doesn’t seem to be an offer for C.J. McCollum that makes sense — yet.
The Trail Blazers could make a move, but what it will look like remains to be seen.
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