Portland Trail Blazers May Be Interested in Enes Kanter

It may not be the strongest tie, nor the most comfortable fit, but Jeff Zilgitt of USAToday tweets that the Portland Trail Blazers could be eyeing Oklahoma City Thunder center Enes Kanter.

Thunder restricted free agent C Enes Kanter will meet with OKC first as reported, but Blazers are monitoring, may want to talk w/Kanter.

— Jeff Zillgitt (@JeffZillgitt) July 1, 2015

Kanter is a restricted free agent, which gives Oklahoma City the right to match any offer Portland makes. The Blazers would also need enough salary cap space to legitimately make an offer, requiring them to clear cap holds off of their roster. In other words, they'd need to renounce one or more of their current players (or lose them to another team) to have Kanter and the Thunder consider the offer, without any guarantee that they'd end up with Kanter at the end of the process.

Kanter has played 4 seasons in the NBA, his first 3 with Utah and the last one split between the Jazz and OKC. He holds career averages of 10.2 points and 6.2 rebounds off 51% shooting in 21.4 minutes per game. His biggest assets to the Trail Blazers would be his youth (age 23) and his offensive rebounding ability (4.3 per 36 minutes for his career).