The Portland Trail Blazers already showed their hand once by taking a swing on Ja Morant despite the fit questions that came with him. Now, with DeMar DeRozan suddenly on the market, the same temptation is staring them right in the face.
ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the Sacramento Kings recently bought out DeRozan, putting him among the top free agents available. And for Portland, that opens the door to another one of those talent-first decisions that can look bold in the moment and messy later.
That’s the part that makes a DeRozan pursuit tricky. The concern isn’t really about where he’d line up, because he spent 55 percent of his minutes at small forward and 39 percent at power forward last season with Sacramento.
The real issue is what he doesn’t bring: reliable spacing. DeRozan has hovered around 32-33 percent from three for four straight seasons, and that matters for a Portland team that already had major problems stretching the floor.
The Blazers finished 28th in the league in three-point efficiency, even though they attempted the third-most threes. That mismatch was supposed to be a problem the front office addressed after Joe Cronin pointed to too many possessions bogged down in the mud during the team’s first-round playoff exit to the San Antonio Spurs. Instead, Portland’s offseason has gone in the opposite direction, with the front office leaning into value over fit.
That appears to line up with new owner Tom Dundon’s thinking. It worked in Carolina, where the Hurricanes won the Stanley Cup, but Portland is not Carolina, and this roster is already looking like a collection of pieces that don’t naturally snap together.
The Blazers are drifting toward a team of misfit toys. That can help close the star-power gap against Western Conference heavyweights like San Antonio and Oklahoma City, but it doesn’t automatically add up to a winning formula.
New head coach Micah Nori is the one left sorting it all out, and he’s doing it with a roster heavy on point guards and centers in a league that values wings more than ever.
DeRozan does give Portland more forward flexibility than some might assume, but he still needs the right kind of support around him because of the way he plays. That’s where the fit gets uncomfortable for the Blazers, especially with Shaedon Sharpe’s own midrange-heavy game already part of the mix.
Whether Portland actually has interest in DeRozan remains to be seen. But if the Morant move was the blueprint, this could be another case where the Blazers choose talent over fit and deal with the consequences later.
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