Jeffrey Swinger-USA TODAY Sports
Less than 24 hours after trading for him, the Portland Trail Blazers are shipping off Nickeil Alexander-Walker to Utah as part of a three-team trade also involving the San Antonio Spurs.
Trade Details
Trail Blazers receive: Joe Ingles, Elijah Houston, 2022 second-round pick (MEM)
Jazz receive: Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Juancho Hernangomez
Spurs receive: Tomas Satoransky, 2027 second-round pick (UTA)
Portland Trail Blazers
Not wasting time between trades, the Portland Trail Blazers are once again making moves, trading the newly acquired Nickeil Alexander-Walker to the Trail Blazers for essentially a second-round pick in return, moving Tomas Satoransky to San Antonio to complete the trade.
A league-high third trade this season for the Trail Blazers, and they keep it consistent by taking another loss in that front. As the second best player taken in return to trade away CJ McCollum and Larry Nance Jr., one would think the Blazers would have more value for Alexander-Walker than just a weak second-rounder.
In addition to the bountiful entree that is the 2022 Memphis second-round pick, the Trail Blazers also took in veteran forward Joe Ingles. On the heels of the best season of the 34-year old point-forward’s career in 2021– where he was a finalist for Sixth Man of the Year– Ingles has certainly lost a step athletically leading to an embarrassing season on the defensive end.
Following a season ending ACL tear, the expiring $14 million contract of Ingles has outlived its use for the aspiring contender Utah Jazz. Ingles, who spent all of his NBA career in Salt Lake City, was bound to be moved for more of a “win-now” transaction, so he benefits Portland in the sense that they can take his contract in for the season to allow him to expire and create more cap space that Alexander-Walker’s $5 million contract would have taken up.
Ingles won’t even be around the Trail Blazers long enough to have his last name engraved into a jersey, and will be finding a new home this offseason (if he does not manage to get traded again before the deadline). Portland is set to have a big free agency in the summer of 2022, with Damian Lillard being the only rotation piece that’s on a fully guaranteed contract for next season.
Josh Hart, the main asset taken in for CJ McCollum, is partially guaranteed for the 2022-2023 season, but will surely be at the top of the Blazer’s checklist to be re-signed. Jusuf Nurkic and Anfernee Simons are impending free agents who will also need a sizable chunk of cap space to be brought back. With Simons, the Trail Blazers have the luxury of testing the waters in restricted free agency and maybe not be forced to overpay him to keep him around.
With recent speculation of the Trail Blazers making one last trade before the deadline to trade for Detroit’s emerging sub-all star Jerami Grant, the cap space would assist them in re-signing him to a long term contract, or venture off to sign another free agent to build around Damian Lillard if a short-term rebuild is what they truly seek.
Utah Jazz
After losing 8 of 9 games that Rudy Gobert missed, in a stretch where the Jazz’s defensive rating was worse than any other team’s in league history over the course of a season, the threat of the Jazz as contenders began falling at the seams.
Ingles being ruled out for the rest of the season was a blow for the team, as he was typically the first name called off the bench and played significant minutes as the pseudo-point guard in stretches where Mike Conley and Donovan Mitchell rested. Since he was on an expiring contract, it made a ton of sense for the Jazz to trade “Jingles” off in order to strengthen the team’s most glaring issue: perimeter defense.
Well, it’s quite unfortunate that they spent that trade on doing nothing of that sort. Nickeil Alexander-Walker, as high as some are of him, is far from a competent defender. With the length of a wing in the frame of a guard, it wouldn’t be outright crazy to expect him to be a positive defender around the perimeter, but a lack of keen awareness and commitment on that end of the court prevents him from being that. It also doesn’t help that he’s been even more inconsistent on offense, shooting an embarrassing 43.4% on 2’s, and 31.1% from beyond the arc.
Is getting Nickeil Alexander-Walker in exchange for an expiring contract of a player who won’t close out the season along with a bad second-round pick bad? No. Far from it actually. The issue is a player of Nickeil Alexander-Walker’s quality isn’t what the Jazz should have made a trade for before the deadline expires. Alexander-Walker is a project that is going to need time and guidance to develop, and it’s unlikely that timeline lines up to the Jazz’s aspirations in the coming months.
The Jazz also acquired Juancho Hernangomez from the Spurs, which means he will be sporting his fourth different jersey in the last 12 months. Hernangomez has been delegated to garbage time in his last two pit stops, and with the surplus of available wings on Utah’s roster, it’s doubtful he’ll make much of an impact now.
San Antonio Spurs
The Spurs are just happy to be invited to the party.
San Antonio’s side of the deal was inconsequential to the other sides, but entirely beneficial to themselves. Acquiring Tomas Satoransky before he got the chance to fly into Portland, the Spurs shipped off the aforementioned Juancho Hernangomez to the Jazz and got a second-round pick in return.
Satoransky makes about $4 million per year more than Hernangomez, so at the slight expense of ownership having to pay out more for payroll, the Spurs obtained a Utah-owned second-round pick that they are going to have to wait a few years to use. Neither Hernangomez, nor Satoransky were/will be a long-term piece on the roster, so the swap in personnel is harmless. Spurs fans have to be happy with this trade.
