The Trail Blazers let three weeks of free agency pass without closing a deal for their best perimeter defender, and on Monday the bill came due. Matisse Thybulle agreed to a one-year, $3.3 million contract with the Lakers, Shams Charania of ESPN first reported — a signing this site covered Monday from the Los Angeles angle. The Portland side of the story is the one that stings.
This was not a player Portland had written off. New head coach Micah Nori spoke with Thybulle shortly after taking the job, per Jeremy Brener of Trail Blazers On SI, and ESPN reported the two sides discussed sign-and-trade scenarios that would have paid Thybulle more than he ultimately took from Los Angeles. None of it converted into a signed deal, and with free agency’s veteran market thinning by the day, the Lakers closed at a price — $3.3 million, one year — that Portland could have matched many times over.
The health caveat is real: Thybulle played just 45 games over the past two seasons. But the roster he leaves behind was already unbalanced, and his exit makes it worse. As Brener lays out, the Ja Morant trade left Portland with four guards under 6-foot-4, while the additions of Branden Carlson and Micah Potter pushed the count of players 6-foot-9 or taller to six. What sat between those two groups was, essentially, Thybulle — a two-time All-Defensive wing who could take the opponent’s best perimeter player. Portland now has 14 of 15 roster spots filled, and the free-agent wing shelf is close to bare; Brener floats veterans like Nicolas Batum and Amir Coffey as what remains.
For a franchise that spent the summer consolidating around Morant, Jrue Holiday and its young frontcourt, the sequencing is the concern. The front office moved quickly and decisively on trades; it moved slowly on its own free agent, and lost him for nothing. The 15th spot almost has to become a wing now, and the options for filling it get worse every day it stays open.
The fantasy read from the Portland side: Thybulle’s departure frees up real wing minutes, and Toumani Camara — already the Blazers’ most switchable defender — is the likeliest beneficiary of a larger, more permanent role. Camara is a late-round defensive-stats target in category leagues, and whoever Portland signs into that 15th spot is worth a waiver-wire note, though probably nothing more.
