The Toronto Raptors have traded guard Norman Powell to the Portland Trail Blazers for Gary Trent Jr. and Rodney Hood, sources told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.
What kind of boost will Powell provide in Portland, and what's next for Toronto?
Kevin Pelton hands out trade grades for both teams.
The deal
Blazers get: Norman Powell
Raptors get: Gary Trent Jr., Rodney Hood
Get more trade grades from Pelton here
Portland Trail Blazers: B
This is a fascinating trade because, in many ways, Powell is the player now that Trent Jr. hopes to become. They're both natural shooting guards (Powell a little undersized even for that spot at 6-foot-3) with the ability to slide down and defend small forwards thanks to their strength.
After a disappointing 2017-18 season saw Powell average a career-low 5.5 PPG and fall to the fringes of the Raptors' rotation, he steadily moved up the pecking order and earned more playing time. That culminated in Powell starting 31 of the team's 42 games this season and threatening 20 PPG. (He's averaging 22.8 points as a starter but 19.6 overall.)
Shooting is the key difference. An iffy shooter at UCLA (31% career on 3s) and during his first three seasons, Powell has now hit 41% of his attempts the last two-plus campaigns while ramping up his volume to a career-high 7.6 attempts per 36 minutes this season.
As a reserve in 2018-19 and a part-time starter (26 of his 52 games) in 2019-20, Powell was mostly a role player on offense. With Kyle Lowry in and out of the lineup and Pascal Siakam up and down, he's been asked to create far more offense for himself. Powell's usage rate has jumped from 21.5% of Toronto's plays to a career-high 24%, yet his efficiency (.642 true shooting percentage) is also better than ever.
The net result is a well-rounded scorer who can be effective both spotting up and with the ball in his hands. Splitting shots by touch time prior to shooting via NBA Advanced Stats, Powell is one of nine players in the league whose effective field goal percentage on both self-created shots and those set up by others is at least 10% better than NBA average. Five of the other eight were All-Stars.
The missing link in Powell's game is creating for others. He's one of just three players in the league averaging at least 19 PPG but fewer than 2 assists per game; both others (Kristaps Porzingis and Christian Wood) are centers.
Playing alongside at least one of Damian Lillard and CJ McCollum, Powell will probably shift back to more of a complementary role on offense. When he plays with both Lillard and McCollum, the most likely perimeter unit to close games for the Blazers, he'll function mostly as a spot-up shooter. In that role, Portland will surely hope Powell will be a defensive upgrade.
Although Trent has worked into becoming a capable one-on-one defender, he was overmatched by the perimeter stopper role into which he was often pushed by the Blazers. Powell is a more capable defender who has matched up with small forwards more often than any other position this season, according to my analysis of Second Spectrum matchup data.
There's little doubt Powell is an upgrade the rest of the season. The question is how much he's going to cost as an unrestricted free agent this summer. Given how much cap space is available and that Powell is in his prime (he'll turn 28 in May) at a position of need, it wouldn't be surprising if he came close to doubling the $11.6 million player option he's sure to decline.
Since Lillard will get a big raise as part of the supermax extension that kicks in next season, Portland would go deep into the luxury tax by re-signing Powell before considering re-signing restricted free agent Zach Collins.
The other aspect of this deal is that sending away Hood might not be the worst thing for the Blazers. While Hood has offered good moments in crunch time recently, he hasn't been the same player since returning from an Achilles rupture in December 2019. Hood is making just 30% of his 3-point attempts and 41% of his 2s. His minus-6.6 rating in ESPN's real plus-minus ranks last in the league, suggesting Portland will be better off giving his minutes to reserves Anfernee Simons and Nassir Little.
Toronto Raptors: B
It's remarkable how quickly we moved from thinking the Raptors might need to trade Powell to create max-level cap space in the summer of 2022 to Toronto instead dealing him because Powell is likely to do so much better on the market than his player option.
At first glance, it's surprising the Raptors moved Powell without getting any draft picks in return. However, they're uniquely positioned to benefit from replacing Powell's $16.3 million cap hit this summer with Trent's likely $5.7 million cap hit as a restricted free agent. (That assumes Trent continues playing enough minutes per game to achieve "starter criteria," which will increase his qualifying offer to $5.7 million.)
If Toronto waives Aron Baynes and Hood, whose 2021-22 salaries don't guarantee until shortly before the start of free agency, the team could create almost $20 million in cap space this summer before re-signing Trent. It's also likely the market for Trent, as a restricted free agent, won't get as frothy as for Powell.
On top of that, the Raptors have gotten nearly six years younger at shooting guard by swapping Powell for Trent. Because Trent played just one year at Duke, he's got three seasons of NBA experience at age 22. Trent has quickly developed into a strong 3-point shooter, having made 41% of his attempts the past two seasons over even higher volume than Powell (8.7 attempts per 36 minutes in 2020-21). Toronto can work to develop Trent into a more well-rounded scorer along the lines of what he was a prep prospect -- and what Powell became with the Raptors.