Will the Giannis Antetokounmpo Trade Talks Actually Involve the Trail Blazers?

Tell me if this story sounds familiar.

A superstar who has spent over a decade with the small-market team that drafted him gets to the point of realization that the window to win with that team has closed.

Rumors that he's seeking a new destination have persisted for years even as he's gone out of his way to give interviews extolling the virtues of staying in one place and not chasing titles elsewhere. For most of this time, these rumors have been creations of an NBA media apparatus that has been thoroughly broken in the 15 years since The Decision and only knows how to cover the league through the prism of stars changing teams.

But this time, it finally seems real, even though he's going out of his way to not explicitly request a trade, to avoid being seen as the "bad guy" despite pretty much everyone understanding and sympathizing with the circumstances. That results in a bunch of passive-aggressive leaks with muddled language that accomplish the same message in a way that makes everybody much more annoyed than they would have been otherwise.

There is a small list of teams the superstar is believed to want to play for—maybe one, maybe two or three, but attempts are definitely being made by the player and his representation to limit the market. The Miami Heat are involved, obviously.

The superstar's team, after years of delaying the inevitable, finally seems to have accepted reality and opened bidding. The entire NBA ecosystem is consumed with this saga for weeks on end, with a resolution coming any minute—or not for several months.

The job of the GM is understood to be getting the best deal he can and put the organization first, however long it takes. This despite the chorus of bad-faith actors in the public discourse insisting he take a worse package just to "do right by" a franchise legend and send him where he wants to go.

All of this will be relitigated for weeks or months, and whenever it's over, in all likelihood nobody involved will be happy.

If you find yourself missing the summer of 2023, I have some good news for you: it's back.

Here's the part that isn't familiar: the Trail Blazers might be a factor in whatever deal goes down, and not as the team being forced to trade away a franchise icon. There's certainly been no shortage of noise around Portland as a team to watch in the bidding for Giannis Antetokounmpo, either as a team trading for him themselves or as a facilitating third team.

But how real is it? And is it even a good idea?