Does this trade make sense for the Portland Blazers?
In this scenario, yes it makes sense for the Blazers to trade Robert Covington, but it is highly unlikely that they will get this kind of value in general from any team. Covington is a great secondary talent and can positively affect the game on both ends of the court, but he is not a game-changing talent.
He is a veteran role player and plays his role perfectly, but he is not worth investing young assets and draft picks in from other teams perspective. With that said, if the Trail Blazers look to trade him, they will likely not receive this kind of value like in this hypothetical trade package outlined above.
If the Trail Blazers are not able to get a ton of value for Covington, it does not make much sense to trade him unless they are trying to re-sign Norman Powell. If they want to keep Powell long-term, they will have to offer him upwards of $20M per season over the next three to four years, which is why they will need to move Covington.
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Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum will eat up about $70M in cap space next season and with Jusuf Nurkic being owed $12M in the final year of his contract, the Portland Trail Blazers do not have much room to try and re-sign key guys like Powell, Kanter and Collins.
They’ll be lucky to re-sign one of these guys at this point given their financial hardships, which is why trading Robert Covington could be on their agenda for some much needed salary relief. If this is the case, then they should not expect a big return for the veteran forward.
