Dame Time waits for no one

Portland makes what it either its first move to extend Damian Lillard's run or a hedge while riding the line.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

The Persistence of Memory, Salvador Dali, 1931

As has long been rumored, the Portland Trail Blazers traded for Jerami Grant, who has starred on a bad Detroit Pistons team for the last couple of years. The twist is that the Blazers didn’t have to give up their prized No. 7 pick in Thursday’s NBA Draft to do it. They ended up sending a top-4 protected 2025 Bucks pick to Detroit, plus moved down 10 spots in the second round this year.

The Blazers took Grant’s contract into a trade exception, allowing the Pistons to open up a prodigious amount of cap space, with which the expectation is that they will work to get Deandre Ayton to sign a max offer sheet in hopes the Suns won’t match. The name Jalen Brunson has been mentioned for Detroit as well. I like Brunson, but I hope Ayton’s the target for the Pistons’ sake. He would seem to be a smart match for Dwane Casey and (more importantly) Cade Cunningham and Saddiq Bey. The Pistons have the No. 5 pick in the Thursday’s draft, too.

The pick that Detroit got in this deal isn’t all that great a value — what are the odds the Bucks will stink in three years? — and perhaps the Pistons could have done better four months ago at the deadline. But remember that the Pistons just straight-up signed Grant as an unrestricted free agent a couple years ago. They turned cap space into a future first. That’s a pretty good hustle. If the Ayton gambit goes bust, they can probably turn all this cap space they have into another future first by helping out a tax team. Or they can be an attractive partner for any other team trying to unload a pricey center.

For the Blazers, Grant fits Damian Lillard, Anfernee Simons and theoretically unrestricted free agent Jusuf Nurkic well. For the record, I’m a little skeptical about whether Portland spends the money to bring Nurk back.