LA Clippers: One trade with every team – Portland Trail Blazers

We suggest one trade the LA Clippers could make with the Portland Trail Blazers.

While the LA Clippers prepare for the return of the NBA season and their chance at the championship, their partner in today’s suggested trade will be fighting for their playoff lives when play resumes.

The Portland Trail Blazers currently sit in ninth place in the Western Conference with a record of 29-37. They are currently three-and-a-half games behind the Memphis Grizzlies for the eighth and final playoff seed in the conference. With eight games to play, they need to finish within at least four games of the eighth seed (and not be passed by another team) to force a play-in tournament for their chance to make the playoffs.

The Blazers have suffered some injuries to various key players this year, leading to a somewhat disappointing season so far for a team that made the Western Conference Finals just a year ago. Jusuf Nurkic and Zac Collins, two of these key players, should return for play in Orlando, and if they can contribute quality minutes should make Portland more of a playoff threat than their current record may imply.

Any trade with the Blazers is tricky, as the Clippers wouldn’t want to do anything to help them be better right now and be an even more potentially dangerous playoff foe. Portland is also more than $6 million over the Luxury Tax line so playing around with money gets tricky. We also didn’t want to try to pry a big man away from the Blazers since Hassan Whiteside’s contract is so large, and a post-injury Nurkic isn’t exactly what the Clippers need going into their playoff run.

So, once again, we’re going to suggest something for pure novelty.

Why we suggest this trade for the LA Clippers:

Honestly, we don’t actually like this trade for the Clippers very much at all. It might slightly improve them for the remainder of this season (very slightly, like a tiny bit, and that’s arguable) but not enough to really, actually trade away a young player with the promise of  Landry Shamet.

This trade is less for the Clippers and more for Carmelo Anthony. It’s a selfless move on our part.

We’re suggesting this trade so the ten-time All-Star, six-time All-NBA player, and former scoring champ can get a ring before he retires.

Would the Blazers do it?

We threw Shamet in this completely hypothetical, not actually serious, probably wouldn’t actually do it trade suggestion to make it somewhat realistic for the Blazers to accept. We could have made this a Patrick Patterson for Carmelo Anthony swap because the money works and it’s fake anyway, but we wanted to show some kind of integrity and actually offer the Blazers something nice in return. Because even when we’re creating hypothetical trade situations we want to play by some sort of rules. You have to live by a code.

Read the rest of our “One Trade with every Team” series here:

Pacific Division: Lakers, Warriors, Kings, Suns
Northwest Division: Nuggets, Jazz, Thunder, Blazers, Timberwolves
Southwest Division: Rockets, Mavericks, Grizzlies, Pelicans, Spurs
Atlantic Division: Raptors, Celtics, 76ers, Nets, Knicks
Central Division: Bucks, Pacers, Bulls, Pistons, Cavaliers
Southeast Division: Heat, Magic, Wizards, Hornets, Hawks