The Portland Trail Blazers have one of the NBA’s best bargains sitting on the books in Deni Avdija, but that deal is also creating a problem they’ll have to solve soon.
Avdija is under contract for roughly $25 million over the next two years, a number that looks especially sharp for an All-Star. The catch is that Portland is unlikely to let him simply play out the rest of that contract.
If the Blazers want to keep him around long term, they’ll need to renegotiate his current deal and build an extension off that new number. That gets tricky fast, since they can only offer a 140 percent increase on the final-year figure.
That makes Avdija a clear offseason priority for Portland’s front office. The bigger picture here is financial flexibility, and the Blazers have long been in a spot where moving one of Jerami Grant or Jrue Holiday’s hefty contracts made sense.
They finally moved Grant to the Memphis Grizzlies, but the return brought back another negative asset in Morant. The deal gives Portland a former two-time All-Star with more upside, but it also comes with a higher price tag.
And while Grant is gone, the move wasn’t really a clean salary dump designed to make room for Avdija. If anything, Portland went the other direction with the roster, which leaves Holiday looking like the most obvious candidate to eventually be moved.
That said, the Blazers are not actively trying to shop Holiday right now. They’ve told teams they plan to keep him in the mix, and they believe his positional versatility can help make the current setup work.
Even so, that doesn’t mean Holiday is safe. Portland’s guard situation is crowded, with four quality point guards in the mix, and the Morant trade only gives the Blazers more flexibility to take calls on deals that are too good to pass up. That could apply to Holiday, or it could apply to another backcourt piece like Scoot Henderson or Shaedon Sharpe.
The Blazers could even carry all of those guards into the 2026-27 season and wait until February’s deadline to make a call. They have time, and in a situation like this, time matters.
Still, the most likely outcome is that Holiday becomes the odd man out at some point, whether that happens this summer or later. Portland didn’t fully solve its Avdija contract issue by swapping Grant’s money for Morant’s, so moving Holiday may be the path that eventually clears the way.
If that happens, the Blazers should be in decent shape. Holiday is the more valuable asset of the two, which means Portland could get another strong return and keep building its stash of future assets.
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Potter spent last season with the Pacers, appearing in 47 games and showing enough to stay on a teams radar, even if Indiana ultimately needed the roster spot for a different frontcourt move. For Portland, the appeal is straightforward: a low-risk addition with another year left on his contract who can help fill minutes while the Blazers keep building out the depth chart. [Read more 🡒]
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Portlands interest sharpened after a July 2025 Pro Day, when Kent got a chance to put himself in front of the Blazers and earn a look they had not given him before. The appeal was not hard to understand once they saw him in a different role, with more responsibility on the wing and with the ball in his hands, a usage that seemed to reveal more shooting and perimeter skill than the rest of the league had fully accounted for. From there, the door opened to a preseason mini-camp invite and, eventually, a spot on the NBA roster. [Read more 🡒]
Blazers Summer League Could Answer One Frustrating Question Early
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The two-way situation adds another layer, with Chris Youngblood and Jayson Kent both getting a real chance to show they can be more than camp bodies. Portland has also lined up a cluster of other Summer League players who could push for attention, including Jalen Bridges, Quincy Olivari, Andrew Carr, DJ Steward and Flynn Cameron, and the shooting need makes that group worth tracking closely. For a team still sorting out its edges, this month could offer an early answer to one of the more frustrating questions on the docket. [Read more 🡒]