The Trail Blazers’ season started off on a sour note after head coach Chauncey Billups was arrested for his alleged involvement in rigged poker games. But Portland has performed well since Billups was put on leave, winning six of 10, led by a breakout star on one of the league’s most cost-effective deals.

Deni Avdija leads the Trail Blazers in scoring (26.1), good for 14th in the league, ahead of stars like Kevin Durant, James Harden, and Paolo Banchero, despite making just $14.3 million this year on the second year of a four-year, $55 million deal.

Among the NBA’s top 25 scorers, only Avdija and Lakers guard Austin Reaves are making less than $20 million this year. Reaves is expected to opt-out of his player option in the summer and enter unrestricted free agency, when he will be eligible to sign a five-year, $241 million deal with the Lakers or four-year, $178.5 million deal elsewhere, according to ESPN. 

Avdija, 24, will only be up for an extension by the 2027 offseason, but veteran extensions are limited to 120% of a player’s current salary. Based on Avdija’s performance, he will likely command a significantly larger raise, especially as he enters the prime of his career. 

He can wait until the summer of 2028, when he’s an unrestricted free agent, to sign a larger deal, giving the Trail Blazers three more years at a bargain rate. 

But there’s an additional wrinkle in Avdija’s contract that benefits Portland even more over the next three seasons. Avdija’s contract—which he signed as a member of the Wizards in October 2023 before being traded to Portland last year—is a descending deal, meaning he would get paid the most during the first year and it would steadily decline every year.

Avdija was $15.6 million last year. In the 2027–28 season, the final year of his deal, he will be paid just $11.9 million, which is less than the NBA’s average salary this season. According to Spotrac projections, Avdija is already making less than 10% of a team’s salary cap this year, and he’ll be just 6.4% of the cap in the final year of his contract.

That allows the Trail Blazers additional financial flexibility over the next three seasons, even though they already have multiple players under contract for the next few seasons, including young wings Shaedon Sharpe and Toumani Camara who they signed to eight-figure extensions this offseason. 

They are also expecting the return of franchise icon Damian Lillard next year, who they signed on a bargain deal after he was waived-and-stretched by the Bucks last summer.

The Wizards drafted Avdija out of Israel in 2020 and traded him to Portland in a deal for Malcolm Brogdon last year.

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