Grade the Trade: Tectonic 3-team pitch has Raptors buying low on an All-Star

Laying out the 3-team trade

The New Orleans Pelicans are in a bit of a bind. They have no centers on the roster who were full-time rotation players last season, and at the same time have four guards and five forwards who all warrant minutes. That's a logjam that they may carry into the season before sorting out, but it also makes them ripe for a trade.

The most likely candidate to be moved is Brandon Ingram, as his replacement in Trey Murphy III looks ready to fly and he is asking for a large contract extension. Yet the Pelicans need a trade partner if they are going to swap Ingram for a center, and the same reasons they are ready to move on from Ingram are largely the same reasons his market is tepid.

It has been proposed before that the Raptors could send a package centered around Jakob Poeltl and Chris Boucher to the Pelicans for Brandon Ingram; you can quibble about the draft compensation but that's the basic structure. The reason that doens't work for Toronto is that their already thin center rotation would be completely decimated; who is playing center if Poeltl and Boucher are gone? The Raptors lived that horror story the last few weeks of this past season and it did not go well.

Pulling in a third team, however, opens up the possibility of Poeltl going to the Pelicans and the Raptors getting back both Ingram and a center. That was the theory behind this trade proposed by the popular trade account Fanspo, which brings the Portland Trail Blazers into the mix:

The Raptors get back not only Brandon Ingram but Portland center Robert Williams III, who is both battling to return from injury but on a bargain contract if healthy. The Trail Blazers get Jordan Hawkins and their own second alongside Bruce Brown to move on from Williams and Thybulle. The Pelicans get their center and some depth in the form of Thybulle and Boucher.

Who says yes, who says no, and is there any chance this works for the Raptors? Let's take a closer look.