{"id":578952,"date":"2026-02-03T06:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T06:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/578952\/"},"modified":"2026-02-03T06:00:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T06:00:16","slug":"nba-insider-makes-the-blazers-stance-on-a-giannis-trade-crystal-clear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/578952\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA insider makes the Blazers stance on a Giannis trade crystal clear"},"content":{"rendered":"

NBA insider Jake Fischer recently named the Portland Trail Blazers as a surprise team<\/a> in on the Giannis Antetokounmpo sweepstakes. They’ve been viewed as a facilitator in any potential Giannis trade with the Bucks looking to regain control of their 2028-30 draft picks that the Blazers acquired in the Damian Lillard trade. But the Blazers don’t want to just be involved in the deal. They want Giannis. <\/p>\n

“The Blazers themselves are trying to get into the mix to bring Giannis Antetokounmpo to Portland to play alongside his former teammate Damian Lillard,” Fischer said on a Bleacher Report livestream. He also adds that Lillard has “been behind the scenes” trying to get the Greek Freak to PDX.<\/p>\n

Damian Lillard is helping Blazers’ pursuit of Giannis Antetokounmpo<\/p>\n

Thanks to the leverage they have with those valuable Bucks picks, the Blazers can put together an extremely competitive offer<\/a>. Milwaukee wants to rebuild if it were to trade Giannis, and the easiest way to achieve that would be to regain control of its own draft. <\/p>\n

Fischer mentions the pathway to acquiring Giannis would also be simple for Portland from a financial perspective. Giannis makes $54.1 million this season, which the Blazers could match with a combination of Jerami Grant’s $32 million and some mid-tier salaries. <\/p>\n

Scoot Henderson, Robert Williams III, and Matisse Thybulle are all in that $10-13 million range and would be easy to move. Milwaukee could want to take a flyer on Scoot reaching his upside as a former No. 3 overall pick, while Time Lord and Thybulle are both on expiring deals. <\/p>\n

But the Blazers are in a unique spot in the Giannis sweepstakes; their biggest hurdle isn’t the offer they can make; it’s that Giannis doesn’t want to come here<\/a>. Portland is the exact opposite landing spot he’s looking for: a small market, rainy weather, and, for what it’s worth, a long plane ride from Greece. <\/p>\n

Although landing Giannis still appears to be a pipe dream with just days to go until the Feb. 5 deadline, you can’t rule out the Blazers entirely. They should be considered a dark horse given their unique connections to Giannis and the Bucks, both in terms of the draft capital and former teammates. <\/p>\n

Hopefully, Dame can work his magic and convince Giannis they have unfinished business after the dynamic duo fell short in Milwaukee. But Giannis is also under contract next season with a player option in 2027-28. The Blazers seem to be trying to land him regardless of his level of interest. Even with no guarantees, that could be a worthwhile bet. They’d have an entire year to convince Giannis, a superstar with a loyal reputation, to stay and contend in Portland. <\/p>\n

They’ll eventually have to take a swing to elevate their ceiling to become genuine contenders, and this may be their only shot at landing a top-five player in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NBA insider Jake Fischer recently named the Portland Trail Blazers as a surprise team in on the Giannis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":578953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3775],"tags":[7,103,102,121,3871,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-578952","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-milwaukee-bucks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-bucks","10":"tag-milwaukee","11":"tag-milwaukee-bucks","12":"tag-milwaukeebucks","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116005176861166412","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578952","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=578952"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/578952\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/578953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=578952"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=578952"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=578952"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}