Where does Portland stand as NBA Free Agency Begins?

The NBA draft was on Wednesday. The season starts in less than a month. It’s time for free agent madness and Twitter alerts from Shams Charnia and Adrian Wojnarowski.

NBA free agency is the most entertaining offseason event of all the major sports. Obviously, it can be less exciting for us in Portland because free agents usually seem apprehensive about coming to the Pacific Northwest.

However, trades have helped the Blazers convince players to stay in the past, Rodney Hood being the most recent example.

Yes, Hood just opted out of his contract with a player option, but I can’t blame him. He could get some serious dough with the lack of players available with his skill set. Personally, I hope Hood returns, but I won’t begrudge him if he leaves.

Eric Griffith, a contributor for Blazer’s Edge (SB Nation’s Trail Blazers page), broke down Portland’s cap situation heading into free agency (before the Blazers traded for Enes Kanter).

Free agency starts today! Let’s do a quick review of Trail Blazers current cap situation and options.

As of now Blazers have $105.5M in salary obligations. Let’s assume Hood signs a multi-year starting at roughly $6M, and Gabriel re-signs. Now up to $113Mish. 1/x pic.twitter.com/jqcc72w3PM

— Eric Griffith (@EricG_NBA) November 20, 2020

That puts Blazers $19.3M below tax line and $25.6M below apron (i.e. hard cap) with 4 open roster spots

They can use any/all of the following to fill those spots:
1) Full MLE ($9.3M)
2) Bi-Annual Exception ($3.6M)
3) Bazemore Trade Exception ($7.1M)
4) Whiteside Bird Rights
2/x

— Eric Griffith (@EricG_NBA) November 20, 2020

After the Kanter trade, the Blazers no longer have the full trade exception, but still have tons of roster spots to fill. Griffith put out another thread (five tweets in total) to explain it. Here’s the first one.

Breakdown of Kanter trade:

Blazers add $3.01M in salary. They are now $24.1M below the tax line, $30.4M below hard cap.

If we assume Hood re-signs at $6M and Gabriel comes back then ROUGHLY $22.5M below the apron. 1/x pic.twitter.com/ATAqh5lsjl

— Eric Griffith (@EricG_NBA) November 20, 2020

Following the trade, ESPN’s NBA Front Office insider Bobby Marks also explained where the Blazers stand.

Portland still with flexibility to use their $9.3M midlevel and $3.6M biannual exception.

Roughly $25M below the tax with 6 roster spots open.

— Bobby Marks (@BobbyMarks42) November 20, 2020

If you want to check out the full breakdown of Griffith’s 11-tweet thread, click here.