The Memphis Grizzlies traded Ja Morant to the Portland Trail Blazers on June 29, and the deal became official the following day. Portland sent Jerami Grant, Kris Murray and about $1 million in cash considerations to Memphis. That was the whole package.
No first-round picks, and no pick swaps either. A two-time All-Star point guard changed teams for a veteran forward and a former No. 23 pick, and the league barely blinked at the price.
That price tells you everything about where Morant’s value sat this summer. He played just 20 games in 2025-26, averaging 19.5 points, 8.1 assists and 3.3 rebounds while shooting a career-low 41.0 percent from the floor and 23.5 percent from three. His season ended early with an elbow injury. Stack that on top of the suspensions and the public friction with the organization, and Memphis was negotiating from a position of almost no leverage.
So the Grizzlies took the cleanest exit available. Grant gives them a real NBA starter who averaged 18.6 points and 3.5 rebounds in Portland last season, and Murray is a cheap rotation piece who put up 5.8 points and 3.6 rebounds across 56 games. Neither one is a franchise cornerstone. Both are easier to plan around than a max-salary guard nobody can predict.
Memphis will get criticized for selling low, and that criticism misses the point. The Grizzlies had already decided this era was finished. Once you make that call, the goal stops being value maximization and starts being getting the contract off your books. Morant has two years and nearly $82 million left on his extension. Moving that to someone else’s cap sheet for a useful forward is a reasonable outcome for a team that had run out of patience.
Portland is the side worth arguing about. The Blazers took on the money and the risk with zero draft capital attached, which is exactly the kind of bet a team in their position should be making. If Morant gets healthy and plays like the guy who made two All-Star teams, Portland just acquired a top-20 player for free. If he does not, they gave up a good forward and some cap flexibility. The downside is survivable.
The complication is the backcourt. Portland already had Damian Lillard, Jrue Holiday and Scoot Henderson, and now Morant joins that pile. Somebody is losing minutes, and somebody is going to be unhappy about it. Deni Avdija is the one player on the roster whose role is completely safe, because he produces regardless of who is initiating the offense.
My read on how this plays out: Portland starts Morant alongside Lillard and Avdija, Holiday slides into a closing and defensive role, and Henderson becomes trade bait by February. That is a functional basketball team if Morant stays upright. It is also a reminder that Lillard and Morant are both guards who want the ball in the fourth quarter.
The 2026-27 Blazers are the most interesting non-contender in the West. They have an actual ceiling now, which they did not have in June. Memphis has a plan, which it also did not have in June. Both teams got something they needed out of a trade that looked lopsided on paper.
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.
