DeAndre Jordan appears to be this year’s chosen star player that will be featured in trade rumors until a deal gets done or the Feb. 8 trade deadline comes and goes.
The Clippers’ center is the team’s most desirable asset and if they want to reset their roster around Blake Griffin, he’s their best chance to acquire pieces and assets this year. The problem for the Clippers in moving Jordan is twofold. One is that he plays a less than desirable style at a marquee position, in the sense that he’s a plodding center with strong defensive abilities but limited offensive upside. The second is that he makes $22 million this year with a $24 million player option for next season, making it quite the task to match salary to make a deal work.
That hasn’t stopped teams from calling and trying to make something happen, as the Cavaliers and Bucks have been previously reported as contenders for Jordan, but to this point little has happened in the way of serious discussions. Now, you can add one more team to the list as Marc Stein of the New York Times reports the Trail Blazers have entered the fray.
The Trail Blazers are among the teams that have tried to engage the Clippers in trade talks for DeAndre Jordan, according to league sources
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) January 22, 2018
But league sources say that the Clippers have yet to receive a proposal from Cleveland, Milwaukee, Portland or anyone else that they’ve found seriously tempting https://t.co/vszOca0qJ1
— Marc Stein (@TheSteinLine) January 22, 2018
The Blazers are capped out for the foreseeable future thanks to some questionable contract decisions over the past few years to lock up role players, and they’ve long been rumored to want to find a way to shake things up on a roster that’s grown stagnant. Jordan would certainly do that, but the question is what the Blazers can do to make the money work and also offer up a palatable deal to the Clippers.
Portland does have a wide array of large, medium and small contracts, so you can piece different combinations of those together to make things work. Evan Turner’s $17 million annual salary could be in play to help make things work, but L.A. wanting him on that deal, with three years left on it, seems unlikely. A combination of their mid-level deals with Al-Farouq Aminu, Maurice Harkless and Jusuf Nurkic would make the money work, but again that’s a lot of long-term incoming money for the Clippers to take on — Harkless having three years left on his deal and Aminu with two — without a ton of upside.
And thus, we get to the crux of the problem for most every Jordan trade scenario. We don’t know exactly what L.A. would want out of a Jordan trade, but considering reports have pointed to a deal with Cleveland hinging on the Brooklyn 2018 pick, one can assume younger assets are a priority. The teams with interest in Jordan to this point either don’t have a ton of young assets (Cleveland, pick aside, and Portland) or don’t seem willing to part ways with them (Milwaukee). As we near the deadline, this may change, but at this moment it seems like there will be a lot of smoke and very little fire regarding Jordan’s status on the trade block.
