The Trail Blazers still have one open roster spot, and even after the busiest stretch of the NBA offseason has passed, there’s room to make a useful addition. Portland should keep looking on the open market, and Lindy Waters III stands out as a sensible name to circle.
Waters would not arrive as a headline grabber. He just finished his fifth NBA season, spending 40 games with the San Antonio Spurs in 2025-26 and averaging 2.4 points in 7.1 minutes while shooting 34.2% from three. Over his career, mostly with the Oklahoma City Thunder, he has averaged 4.6 points and hit 36.3% of his threes.
Those numbers are modest, no question. But the appeal goes beyond the box score. Waters has lasted five years in a league that usually gives undrafted players very little runway, and the reason is simple: he can shoot.
His value comes from movement shooting, the kind that keeps defenses honest and gives coaches a reason to keep him on the floor. That skill helped Oklahoma City bring him up from the G League in 2022, keep him for three seasons, and eventually move him from a two-way contract to a standard deal. It also fueled a brief breakout with the Golden State Warriors in 2024, and it was part of why the Spurs showed interest in him in free agency last year.
That same skill set is why Portland should at least take a hard look.
The Blazers have already chipped away at their shooting need with the Branden Carlson and Micah Potter signings, but those moves don’t close the gap. And even then, there’s no such thing as too much shooting. Waters wouldn’t solve the problem by himself, but he would give the roster another useful option on the wing.
He’d also fit alongside Damian Lillard, Ja Morant, Scoot Henderson, and Donovan Clingan by providing spacing those players can use. Waters is more dynamic than Carlson and Potter, who are more dependent on open spot-ups, and that matters for a team trying to squeeze value out of its last roster spot.
No team is landing a home run at this stage of free agency, except maybe the one that ends up with LeBron James. But the margins still matter, and this is the kind of small move that can help a team get better.
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