Miami gets: Jerami Grant
Portland gets: Bojan Bogdanovic, Dariq Whitehead, two second-round picks
Brooklyn gets: Tyler Herro
If the Heat and Trail Blazers can bury the hatchet after last year’s bitter trade talks for Damian Lillard, perhaps they could hammer out a deal that helps both teams.
Before trading Lillard last summer, the Trail Blazers signed Jerami Grant to a five-year, $160 million contract. That deal immediately aged poorly, with the 30-year-old Grant now toiling on a young, rebuilding roster. Portland, inexplicably, remains an expensive luxury tax team. Trading Grant could create some much-needed cap relief.
“They’re stubborn,” a league executive told Heavy.com of the Blazers. “Part of the job is to be stubborn, though. But part of the job is also seeing your mistakes and getting out of them. Grant was a mistake. Trading him now just to get out of that salary is the right thing to do, take whatever picks or young guys you can get.”
Grant makes more sense on the Heat, where he could play a supporting role next to Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo. Grant’s size, on-ball defense and 3-point shooting could help Miami avoid the play-in tournament for the third-straight year.
With Grant set to earn a $29.7 million next season, the only player who comes close to matching salary is Herro. The Blazers made it clear what they think of Herro last summer, so the Heat would need to get a third team involved.
Enter the Brooklyn Nets, the team that was reportedly involved in multi-team constructions for a Lillard trade last summer. If the Nets are still interested in Herro, they could swap Bojan Bogdanovic’s expiring $19 million contract and young Dariq Whiteside for Herro. (This trade couldn’t officially be completed until Sept. 4 because league rules prevent Bogdanovic from being aggregated in a trade within two months of being traded.)
A deal like this could give the Heat a starting lineup of Rozier, Robinson, Butler, Grant and Adebayo, with Nikola Jovic, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware, Kevin Love and Haywood Highsmith off the bench.