What could a Heat-Lillard deal look like? Blazers GM says to look at his trade history

LAS VEGAS — In a city known for buffets, the Miami Heat find themselves dealing with breadcrumbs when it comes to the potential parameters for a trade with the Portland Trail Blazers for All-Star guard Damian Lillard.

But in coming to the table in his media session at the NBA2K24 Summer League and acknowledging the wheels are turning in an effort to placate Lillard with a trade, Blazers General Manager Joe Cronin at least offered a roadmap.

“History has shown, we’ve done it with CJ McCollum and Josh Hart, where we worked together to find them their landing spots and getting a fair return for the Trail Blazers,” Cronin said. “So it’s possible. But there’s a lot of work involved and often it involves more than just one destination.”

The McCollum deal was the first part of the Portland teardown that now has entered Stage 2, with Lillard requesting a trade to the Heat.

When the Blazers dealt McCollum to the New Orleans Pelicans on Feb. 8, 2022, it ended the backcourt pairing of Lillard and McCollum, who was drafted by the Blazers at No. 10 in 2013, a year after Lillard was drafted by Portland at No. 6.

In the McCollum deal, the Blazers sent out McCollum, Larry Nance Jr. and Tony Snell to New Orleans in exchange for Josh Hart, Tomas Satoransky, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Didi Louzada, a protected 2022 first-round pick and two future second-round picks. McCollum was 30 at the time of that deal; Lillard turns 33 Saturday.

While Lillard is of higher pedigree than McCollum, a Heat offer of Tyler Herro (as the Hart equivalent in the McCollum deal), Duncan Robinson (the Tomas Satoransky match), perhaps Nikola Jovic (the Nickeil Alexander-Walker equivalent) and a pair of unprotected first-round picks seemingly would represent at minimum comparable to the McCollum swap and arguably even more, considering the Blazers also yielded Nance.

As for the Hart trade, it showed the Blazers’ ability to work in a multi-team scenario, with Hart sent to the New York Knicks in a four-team swap at this past season’s NBA trading deadline in February. In the deal, Portland netted a 2023 lottery-protected first-round draft pick, Cam Reddish, Svi Mykhailiuk and Ryan Arcidiacono. That deal also involved the Charlotte Hornets and Philadelphia 76ers.

Also, in the same timeframe as the McCollum deal, the Blazers sent Norman Powell and Robert Covington to the Los Angeles Clippers in a trade that delivered Eric Bledsoe, former Heat forward Justise Winslow, Keon Johnson and a 2025 second-round draft pick.

All three of those deals were engineered by Cronin, who was promoted in an interim role in December 2021 after the Blazers fired general manager Neil Olshey following an investigation into workplace conduct.

That has Cronin again thrust into the spotlight, while the Heat, as is the franchise’s approach, have not commented on potential permutations, even with general manager Andy Elisburg courtside at UNLV for the team’s summer-league games.

It has left Cronin as the face and voice of the process.

“Dame is obviously a very important person and player to us,” Cronin said. “What the rest of his career looks like matters to us and we care about that. At the same time, we have to do what’s best for us and we have to find the right deal and find the right makeup of the team that we’re going to build forward with.

“So you hope that you can find that perfect situation where that lines up and he goes to a place that he wants to and you get the best return possible. It’s complicated.”

In this case, it not only is complicated, it also is highly public. Even Kevin Durant’s trade desires last summer at this point never reached the point of an agent or a Brooklyn Nets executive publicly discussing specific desired trade parameters.

“It can complicate it, just because it is louder than your normal situation, especially the ones that we’ve dealt with recently,” Cronin said, the McCollum and Hart deals practically negotiated in a vacuum. “But, at the same time, you try to keep perspective and understand, ‘Let’s focus on what matters.’ All this external noise, the fact remains, we want to do what’s best for our team, and he wants to go to a spot that makes the most sense for him.

“So trying to keep our eye on the ball as much as we can, I would say, and avoid as many distractions and curveballs as possible.”

Cronin is in his 16th season with the Blazers, elevated to director of player personnel in 2014.

“We constantly have to stay nimble and have to adjust to changing circumstances,” he said. “I view it like that. I don’t know what the future holds. I don’t know what will end up happening here. Just know that I won’t be surprised if something different happens than we were originally expecting.”