The Portland Trail Blazers are hoping to rebound after losing LaMarcus Aldridge, and they could steal Enes Kanter away from the Thunder.
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LaMarcus Aldridge is going to be heading to the San Antonio Spurs in an effort to win a title and possibly extend his career thanks to the way Gregg Popovich manages to do that for players. That leaves a crater in Portland that the Trail Blazers are trying to fill in any way they can — something they’re trying to do with Enes Kanter.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski from Yahoo! Sports, the Blazers have unsurprisingly made a move at signing Kanter to an offer sheet this week.
OKC's Enes Kanter is in Portland, preparing to sign an offer sheet with Blazers, league sources tell Yahoo Sports.
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 9, 2015
Kanter is an interesting player in that he knows how to be a big body down low and can be deadly but is also be a liability as well. He didn’t really turn the Utah Jazz around and quickly decided he wanted to play elsewhere. Signing with Portland would place Kanter on his third team in one year, after being traded from Utah to Oklahoma City in February.
Portland needs a big bodied center who can be an offensive threat — and that’s something Kanter can be. He was highly touted coming into the NBA Draft a few years ago, but he hasn’t yet landed in a place where he can flourish. Many thought that could be OKC, since he’d be in the same front court as Serge Ibaka, but moving to Portland to replace Robin Lopez and work himself into a duo with Damien Lillard isn’t a bad choice.
Kanter is a restricted free agent, which means the Thunder can match whatever offer sheet he signs with the Blazers — which might be advisable if they don’t want to take a further step back.
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