PORTLAND, Ore. — In his NBA newsletter published on Thursday, longtime NBA reporter Marc Stein, who now works for The New York Times, had a pretty interesting prediction about the Blazers.
According to Stein, the Blazers will trade CJ McCollum this year.
This was a prediction, not a report. But some of the predictions by Stein seemed to be based on things he’s hearing around the league, and there are few with more NBA connections than Stein.
KGW's Orlando Sanchez, Jared Cowley and Nate Hanson talked about Stein's prediction during this week's 3-on-3 Blazers podcast. Here’s a transcript of their conversation.
Orlando: Here’s what [Stein] said about the Blazers: “This is the year Portland will break up the potent backcourt of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum. The Blazers don’t want to trade either one, especially when they awoke Wednesday ranked seventh in the league in defensive efficiency despite the annual external skepticism about the pairing’s capabilities at that end of the floor. But the easiest path to balancing the roster is by parting with one of their two guards — most likely McCollum — for a package headlined by a frontcourt player on their level. No one’s suggesting it’ll happen before the Feb. 8 trade deadline, but Portland’s latest so-so season threatens to be the impetus that finally pushes the longtime Blazers owner Paul Allen in a new direction.” Guys, what’s up with that?
Nate: We don’t want to get too deep into this this week. We talked a lot about this potential scenario last week, and I’m sure we’ll talk about it as we get closer and closer to the trade deadline. It’s interesting that someone, like you said, with his type of connections believes this will be what ultimately happens with this pair. So I’ll just leave it at that and we’ll talk about it more later.
Jared: And it’s also, the key thing for me is he said, “No one is suggesting it will happen before the Feb. 8 trade deadline.” He didn’t say, “I’m not suggesting,” he said, “No one is suggesting,” and that makes me think that this kind of chatter is going around the league. Whether that chatter is coming from Portland or not, that’s the question. But, you also had the report from John Canzano less than a month ago that Paul Allen is putting some feelers out there about what the rest of the league thinks about the Blazers roster.
Nate: And he’s 100 percent right, that the easiest way to try to balance this roster is trading CJ McCollum.
Orlando: He’s a desirable piece.
Jared: And it doesn’t say it’s to blow up the team. It doesn’t say trade him for a great draft pick or anything. It says for a frontcourt player on [Damian Lillard or CJ McCollum’s] level. I don’t think the Blazers would go trade CJ McCollum for, say, the Nets pick from the Cavaliers. I think if they were going to trade CJ McCollum, it would be for a small forward or a power forward who is on the same level as McCollum, you know, a potential All-Star or an existing All-Star.
Nate: Let’s just leave it that.
Jared: It’s really fun.
Nate: We’re going to have so much more …
Jared: We have two more weeks until the trade deadline, so we’ll get back into it.
Nate: And we have the rest of the season.
Orlando: It’s just a bomb from someone with clout, to at least throw that out there.