The Portland Trail Blazers finally found a star. Now they are on track to lose him over money they have not set aside.
Sam Quinn of CBS Sports laid it out this week on the “Third Apron Podcast.” The Blazers are not positioning themselves to have the cap space required to renegotiate and extend Deni Avdija. Without that space, Quinn sees a very good chance Avdija hits the open market in 2028.
This is a self-inflicted problem, and it deserves to be called that.
Avdija was the best story in Portland last season. The 25-year-old forward averaged 24.2 points, 6.9 rebounds and 6.7 assists per game, became one of the league’s most efficient off-the-dribble scorers, and made his first All-Star team. The Blazers won more than they lost and reached the playoffs for the first time since 2021.
He is also absurdly cheap. Avdija is due $13.1 million next season and $11.875 million in 2027-28, the tail end of a frontloaded deal he signed with the Washington Wizards back in 2023. That contract has aged into one of the best values in basketball.
The problem is the mechanism. A standard veteran extension caps Avdija’s first-year raise at 140 percent, which lands somewhere around $16.6 million. That is mid-level exception money for a player who just averaged 24 a night. No agent in the league signs off on that.
Which means Portland has one real path to keeping him at a fair number: clear cap space, renegotiate the existing deal upward, then extend. That takes planning, and it takes a willingness to spend.
Enter Tom Dundon. Since taking over as owner, Dundon has run Portland with a level of cost discipline that already triggered backlash around the league, including a mass layoff on the business side. Whatever you think of the approach, it does not scream “we will happily eat a renegotiation to pay our All-Star market value.”
So the math gets ugly. If Dundon will not create the room, Avdija plays out two more seasons at a discount and then walks into free agency in the summer of 2028 as one of the most attractive names available. Teams with cap space and a need for a 6-foot-8 creator will line up.
Portland’s alternative is a trade, and that is its own kind of failure. Moving Avdija would mean the Blazers developed a star, made the playoffs behind him, then flipped him because they would not restructure a contract. That is how franchises end up back in the lottery for another five years.
Here is the part that should scare Blazers fans most. There is no deadline forcing Portland to act. Avdija is under contract. Nothing breaks in 2026 or 2027. The damage happens quietly, in the form of cap sheets that never get cleaned up, until suddenly it is the summer of 2028 and the leverage is gone.
Avdija has done nothing wrong here. He outperformed his contract by an enormous margin and gave Portland exactly the kind of season a rebuilding team dreams about. He is 25, still improving, and playing the most valuable position archetype in the modern NBA.
Rewarding that should be the easiest decision in the building. Instead it is apparently a budget question.
My take is simple. Portland has roughly two offseasons to prove it takes winning seriously, and paying Avdija is the test. Get creative, shed salary, do whatever it takes to open the room. Because if the Blazers let this one get away, they will not be finding another Avdija on a $13 million deal any time soon.
A longtime sports reporter, Carlos Garcia has written about some of the biggest and most notable athletic events of the last 5 years. He has been credentialed to cover MLS, NBA and MLB games all over the United States. His work has been published on Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, AOL and the Washington Post.