What does Friday's NBA trade tell us about the direction the LA Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers are headed? Just two spots apart in the Western Conference standings, the Clippers and Blazers are thinking differently about the rest of the regular season.
Although Clippers coach Tyronn Lue acknowledged after Thursday's 111-110 win over the rival Los Angeles Lakers that star Kawhi Leonard won't likely play this season, they still made an aggressive move to acquire Robert Covington and Norman Powell that adds to their luxury tax bill, as first reported by ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski. The Clippers surely will also hope to benefit from this trade in 2022-23, when Leonard and Paul George should be back from injuries in pursuit of a championship.
The goals have shifted in Portland after a stretch of five losses in six games dropped the Blazers 10 games below .500. With Damian Lillard still sidelined after abdominal surgery and forward Nassir Little (shoulder surgery) done for the season, the Blazers prioritized adding a recent first-round pick (Keon Johnson) and gaining flexibility to re-sign restricted free agent Anfernee Simons over the possibility of reaching the playoffs through the play-in tournament.
Let's break down the implications of Friday's deal.
The deal
Clippers get: Norman Powell, Robert Covington
Trail Blazers get: Eric Bledsoe, Justise Winslow, Keon Johnson, 2025 second-round pick (via Detroit)
LA Clippers: A-
Ordinarily, a team in eighth place with its stars potentially out for the season would be thinking about reducing a $94 million luxury tax bill. The Clippers, under CEO Steve Ballmer, are not an ordinary team. Instead, they added $19 million to their tax bill with this trade, per my ESPN colleague Bobby Marks.
Down the road, the Clippers could be spending even more money -- by design. Bledsoe's unusual contract incentivized the Clippers to trade him if they wanted to continue taking advantage of Ballmer's financial resources to outspend opponents. He's due $19.375 million in 2022-23, the final season of his contract, but just $3.9 million is guaranteed at this point. Bledsoe was too expensive in tax payments to keep at the number, but waiving him would have left the Clippers unable to roll his salary forward.
As a result, the Clippers converted Bledsoe's salary into one player (Powell) who's under contract for the next four seasons and another (Covington) they can opt to re-sign using full Bird rights this summer.
Powell was presumably the primary target for the Clippers. He fits into the group of interchangeable two-way wings they've put around George and Leonard. A stout 6-foot-3, Powell can hold up as part of a switch-heavy lineup, as he did with the Toronto Raptors before being dealt to Portland at last year's trade deadline. At 38% over his career and 41% the past two seasons, Powell is a better 3-point shooter than Terance Mann and gives the Clippers a bit more juice off the dribble than sharpshooting reserve Luke Kennard.
It will be interesting to see how well Covington fits with the Clippers. He's long been a polarizing player because his weaknesses (on-ball defense and ballhandling) are so glaring, his strengths (fearsome help defense) more subtle. The Blazers, lacking perimeter on-ball defense, needed Covington to be something he wasn't. That certainly won't be the case if Covington plays with George and Leonard, two of the NBA's best on-ball defenders.
Because he's not as reliable a 3-point shooter as Powell (36% career), Covington's offensive value has tended to fluctuate with his shot-making. He contributes little else at the offensive end besides 3s, having gone from low usage in his previous three stops to microscopic the past two seasons (11th lowest among players with at least 1,000 minutes of action this season).
It's possible the Clippers will decide Covington doesn't fit as well with their healthy core as they hope, in which case they could attempt to use his Bird rights to work a sign-and-trade this summer in hopes of landing someone else or creating a trade exception.
For now, adding Covington and Powell strengthens the Clippers' depth but does create a void at backup point guard behind Reggie Jackson. Nicolas Batum and Amir Coffey could be pressed into playing as point forwards unless the team can make another deal before Thursday's deadline, possibly using Serge Ibaka's $9.7 million expiring salary.
The Clippers do create a roster spot with this trade, which should allow them to convert Coffey from a two-way contract and make him eligible for the playoffs. That was a necessity with Coffey averaging nearly 30 minutes per game over the past month-plus. If they make that move quickly, the Clippers could sign a point guard with the open two-way spot.
With Covington and Powell, the Clippers are still long shots to win a playoff series this year unless one of their stars return. Nonetheless, their depth should solidify the Clippers as favorites to get out of the play-in tournament and set them up to better complement George and Leonard next season.
Portland: B-
For a brief stretch, it looked like the Blazers might play well enough to make bringing Lillard back for a playoff push reasonable. They won six out of nine games between Jan. 9 and Jan. 23, getting strong contributions from Simons, Covington and Little. Notably, that stretch didn't include Powell, who missed five of those games in the NBA's health and safety protocols and four because of personal reasons.
Powell's return coincided with Little's season-ending injury, putting him back in the lineup at small forward. As well as Portland played defensively last season after adding Powell to the starting five, that didn't carry over this season, when the lack of size with a trio of perimeter players 6-foot-3 and under was difficult to overcome. Without Little, the Blazers have struggled too badly to imagine even Lillard's return could lift them any further than a brief first-round exit.
As a result, trading Covington was a fairly easy call for Portland. With an expiring contract, he held value to contenders, albeit not nearly as much as when the Blazers gave up a pair of first-round picks to get him with two full seasons left on his contract in November 2020. The more interesting elements of this trade from Portland's perspective are moving on from Powell and getting a recent first-round pick (Johnson) rather than a future one.
In Powell's case, I think this is mostly a mulligan on the five-year deal the Blazers handed him last summer as an unrestricted free agent. With Simons possibly headed for a payday in restricted free agency and Lillard and CJ McCollum already on huge contracts, Portland was looking at potentially paying four perimeter players $15 million-plus per season -- untenable for a noncontender in a low-revenue market, even one backed with the financial resources of Paul Allen's estate.
This deal gets the Blazers safely below this season's luxury tax. It also saves at least $6 million next season, the difference between what Bledsoe, Johnson and Winslow are guaranteed and Powell's 2022-23 salary. Portland should be able to re-sign Simons and use the non-taxpayer midlevel exception while staying out of the tax next season.
For this trade to be a win for the Blazers, Johnson needs to develop into a contributor. A five-star recruit, Johnson was underwhelming in his one season at Tennessee, making 27% of his limited 3-point attempts and rarely managing to translate his physical skills into production. The Clippers still took him 21st overall, but Johnson has been surpassed in their rookie pecking order by second-round pick Brandon Boston Jr.
There's recent experience developing this kind of player in Portland, as a similar outline applies to Little's one season at North Carolina. The Blazers picked him based on tools and have quickly developed him into a key contributor. If they can do the same with Johnson, they'll come out ahead on this deal. If not, they might regret not landing a better draft pick than a second-rounder in 2025.