NBA trade alert! Alert alert!

Not involving Ben Simmons though:

Uhhh…. okay. It looks like Portland is doing this to get under the luxury tax. It’s not even really a “we’re blowing it up” type of trade, though you wonder what Damian Lillard is thinking as he recovers from abdominal surgery. If we had to go out on a limb here, the thought of playing with Joel Embiid is more enticing than playing with Eric Bledsoe, Justise Winslow, and Keon Johnson.

LA getting Powell and RoCo for that package is a steal. Powell is a legit third guy behind a healthy Kawhi Leonard and Paul George. And Covington is still a 3 and D role player at age 31. It wasn’t long ago that the Process crowd had RoCo pegged as a Bruce Bowen + Shane Battier amalgam and future All-Star, so that was really goofy, but he’s always been a steady glue guy. Great off-ball defender. Just wish he could have hit some shots in the 2018 Boston series, instead of throwing up a pair of donuts, then telling the media that he wasn’t struggling. But it happens.