Lowe is good, but the Trail Blazers who are betting on Klingen + Yang Hansen should trade him as soon as possible to cash out his contract year.

Translator's Note: This article was originally published by FanSided and the author is ReeseKunz. The data in the article are as of the time of publication of the original article (November 2, local time). The opinions in the article have nothing to do with the translator and the platform.

Robert Williams is back, healthy and impactful. But that's exactly why the Portland Trail Blazers have to trade him.

In the Trail Blazers' victory over the Denver Nuggets, he played 11 minutes and showed a shadow of the old Williams. He injected energy into the team as a substitute and effectively shared the pressure for Donovan Klingen. While Williams' value as a two-way impact player is an encouraging sign for the Blazers, they can't lose sight of the bigger picture.

The Trail Blazers must cut their losses in time and part ways with Robert Williams.

Unfortunately, Williams' career has been severely plagued by injuries. He was supposed to be a key bargaining chip for the Trail Blazers in exchange for Holiday, but he has only played in 26 games in the past two seasons.

In addition, the Trail Blazers have made clear their focus on the center position in their recent draft layout. In the past two NBA drafts, the Trail Blazers have selected potential centers Donovan Klingen and Yang Hansen in the first round. The team has focused on these two young players in the future interior construction. With Williams returning from injury, the competition for playing time at the team's center position instantly became extremely fierce. The young Yang Hansen was DNP in the game against the Nuggets. The core reason was that the team was unable to allocate enough playing time to three pure centers with similar styles. More importantly, in today's NBA, which focuses on transitions between offense and defense and emphasizes space expansion, the three centers in the Trail Blazers' lineup are all traditional insiders. They lack outside shooting ability and flexible movement speed, and are simply unable to fulfill the spatial attributes required by the power forward position. This further aggravates the contradiction in the team's internal staffing.

Finally, Williams' contract will expire at the end of this season. While he fits the identity the team is trying to create in terms of defensive traits, it no longer makes sense for Portland to continue investing in Williams. The career trajectories of Klingen and Yang Hansen will only be upwards from now on, making Williams' position on the team increasingly replaceable. Considering that his physique has been plagued by injuries all year round, there is no sufficient practical reason to retain such a "luxurious and unstable" player in the Trail Blazers' lineup.

Looking back on last season, the Trail Blazers had actually seized the opportunity and successfully increased Williams' value in the trading market by allowing Williams to show efficient performance in limited healthy playing time before February of that year. However, the team management hesitated when the trade deadline came and finally chose to keep him in the team. Regrettably, just not long after, Williams suffered another injury, causing the team to miss the best opportunity to trade. Now, the Trail Blazers must learn from their last decision-making mistakes and be more proactive in selling Williams in the trade market this season when he is healthy and in good condition, especially considering his expiring contract. This is the team's last chance to recoup some of their investment.

Objectively speaking, Williams’ current trading prospects are indeed not optimistic. Teams around the league are well aware of his injury history - as he is recognized as one of the most injury-prone big men in the league, his health has always been the biggest concern when teams bring him in. Coupled with the fact that he holds an expiring contract, potential buyers often hesitate to whether it is worth paying a considerable amount of chips for such a "short-term asset." Ideally, the Trail Blazers would most like to trade Williams for a reliable backup shooter with stable outside shooting. Such a player can effectively open up space on the court and create more offensive opportunities for the team's young core, thereby better balancing the team's lineup configuration. But even if the final trade reward is just a future second-round pick, plus some fringe players for salary matching, the Trail Blazers must act decisively to at least get some actual value from this potential transaction. They must not repeat the same mistake and watch Williams become a free agent after the expiration of his contract and leave the team for nothing in return; they must also avoid the bad situation that after renewing his contract, he will fall into an injury cycle again, causing the team's salary space to be occupied for a long time.

It is undeniable that keeping Williams in the team seems to be a very tempting option given his current good condition and outstanding performance on the court - after all, a healthy Williams can indeed improve the team's interior defensive strength in the short term. But for the Trail Blazers management and coaching staff, they are all too familiar with Williams' "health-performance-injury" cycle story. The experience of the past few seasons has made them deeply realize that relying on such a player with great injury risks simply cannot help the team achieve long-term development. Therefore, the Trail Blazers must show enough determination and courage, decisively choose to stop losses in time, set their sights firmly on the future, and steadily advance the team's reconstruction plan with the young and potential center combination of Donovan Klingen and Yang Hansen as the core. This is the right choice that is in the long-term interests of the team.