Seth Curry a Potential Bargain For The Trail Blazers

The Trail Blazers had a fairly quiet summer in free agency, but that doesn’t mean that they missed out on a potential steal. According to Sports Illustrated’s Rob Mahoney, former Mavericks guard Seth Curry could be a bargain for Portland.

Curry’s injury history is troubling, but his ability to operate inside pick-and-roll sets are far from worrisome. The former Duke guard averaged 12.8 points per game and shot 42.5 percent from beyond the arc in the 2016-17 season. Unfortunately, Curry missed the entire 2017-18 season while recovering from a stress fracture.

Mahoney explained that if Curry avoids injury issues, the 27-year-old guard could bring a ton of value to the Blazers’ backcourt.

To crystallize a theme with these first three bargain contracts, Curry lost his entire 2017-18 season to injury. Yet by comparison, Curry’s ailment—a stress reaction in his left leg—was less distressing. This wasn’t an athletic big man recovering from one of basketball’s most damaging injuries or a severely undersize guard suddenly slowed by a bad hip. It was a simple stress fracture, the kind which should heal fully if given time.

And supposing it does, Curry is exactly the kind of pick-and-roll scorer that should run for far more on the open market. Teams in need of secondary or second-unit creation could lean comfortably on Curry to generate offense. He has a great feel for the space of shot creation and the pull-up jumper to make it all viable. At bare minimum, he would make for a wonderful floor spacer. If empowered to do more, he can do for Portland what he did for Dallas and Sacramento: get buckets in ways that other role players can’t.

Curry signed a two-year, $5.6 million deal with Portland last month. The final year of his contract is a player option.

Mahoney also included former Blazers big man Ed Davis in his list of bargains.

Davis’ reliable presence off the bench garnered praise from Mahoney.

Davis was a steadying influence in Portland last season behind one of the most inconsistent starting centers in the league. The Blazers never knew whether they would get the dominant Jusuf Nurkic or the foul-prone, ineffective alternative. They could, however, trust in Davis—a cagey rebounder and defender who always finds ways to be effective. Davis might be a touch too limited offensively to work as a full-time starter, but he’s clearly something more than your standard reserve. The free agent value of those sorts of players is so deeply contextual that they sometimes wind up signing to team-friendly terms, as Davis did here with Brooklyn.

Davis agreed to a one-year, $4.5 million deal with the Nets at the outset of free agency.

You can read Mahoney’s full list of bargains by visiting SI’s The Crossover.