I think Blazers fans are probably right to be a bit upset about the deal they completed yesterday with the Clippers that saw them acquire Keon Johnson, Eric Bledsoe and Justise Winslow for Norman Powell and Robert Covington. A big part of that move, as our Jason Quick outlined smartly today, had to do with the financial ramifications. The Blazers moved Powell’s $75 million in guaranteed salary remaining over the next four years to acquire players with just over $10 million guaranteed following this season. Moving Powell clears the books for a team that still doesn’t exactly have a clean cap sheet moving forward, given the outlay that will likely have to go to Anfernee Simons this summer. Simons’ emergence also really paved the way for the team to move Powell. Still, I would have expected more value.
But I do just want to note that I would bet this Portland front office really values the acquisition of Keon Johnson. While I’m not particularly high on him following what we’ve seen the last two seasons at Tennessee and in the G League, he ticks a lot of the boxes that this front office looks for when selecting players in the draft. The team notoriously drafts young because, essentially, they don’t believe young guys will step in and contribute to winning teams immediately. Johnson, indeed, is nowhere near ready to contribute in a meaningful way. He’s 6-foot-5 and has all sorts of elite physical tools athletically. Genuinely, Johnson is in the top five percent of NBA athletes league-wide in terms of explosiveness — first step, leaping ability, whatever. But he is still really working through his overall feel for the game and skill level. He turns it over a lot right now, and isn’t a consistent shooter.
Having said that, he plays really hard, and fits right into the team’s past draft history. Look back, and you’ll see that in 2017, the team took Zach Collins and Caleb Swanigan, both of whom were teenagers in their previous collegiate seasons (and Collins was pretty raw with a lot of plus tools). In 2018, the team took Anfernee Simons and Gary Trent, both of whom were teenagers who had some real questions but also genuine physical gifts (elite athleticism in the case of Simons, shooting and a physical frame in Trent’s case). In 2019, the team selected Nassir Little, another teenager with a lot of physical tools who struggled in his lone collegiate season at North Carolina. In 2021, the team picked Greg Brown, another teenager with elite athleticism who struggled at Texas.
It’s hard to overemphasize how much Johnson fits in with this draft history. He’s the exact kind of player that the Blazers have valued previously. And while I generally don’t agree with this kind of strategy as an evaluator and draft strategist, it’s undeniable that the team has a type that it has gone for under this front office, the bones of which are still in place despite Neil Olshey’s departure.
I just say all of this to say: I wouldn’t sleep on the Johnson piece of this trade, if I was a Portland fan. I would bet the team saw a chance not only to cut money with this deal, but to also acquire a player that they probably rated very highly last year in the draft.