Report: Zach Collins Signs With Spurs on Big-Money Deal

Zach Collins signed a three-year, $22 million deal with the Spurs in free agency, according to ESPN.

The good news? Zach Collins is getting paid. The bad news? It seems there was never a chance he could return to the Trail Blazers.

Collins signed a three-year, $22 million contract with the San Antonio Spurs in the opening hours of free agency, according to ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski.

Free agent Zach Collins has agreed to a three-year, $22M deal with the Spurs, his agent Mark Bartelstein of @PrioritySports tells ESPN.

— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) August 2, 2021

San Antonio was mentioned over the weekend as a team with interest in the Blazers' 2017 lottery pick. It's not surprising Collins would sign with the Spurs.

What shocks is the price it took for R.C. Buford, Gregg Popovich and company to get him. There was also reporting on Monday that the Oklahoma City Thunder were in the bidding for Collins, perhaps driving up his value.

But the assumption here was that Collins would receive about half the roughly $7 million annual salary he got from the Spurs, possibly allowing Portland to retain him—at least if Jody Allen were willing to stomach a slightly steeper luxury tax bill. Instead, Collins' payday was so big that the Blazers matching it wouldn't have just likely vaulted their tax rate into an even higher bracket, but doing so might have been the wrong asset play, too.

Collins is undoubtedly worth what the Spurs afforded him when healthy, even if he's the exact same player he was when he last took for the floor for Portland. The problem is that was on August 13, 2020, and he'd missed almost the entire season before then. Collins didn't play at all in 2020-21, of course, and recently had another surgery on his troublesome left foot after reports from spring suggested he'd be fully healthy by the playoffs.

San Antonio, flush with cap space at the time of Collins' agreement and a long way from contention, is able to bear the type of risk-reward this signing presents. Portland can't.

Here's hoping Collins makes good on the Spurs' gamble with better injury luck going forward.

READ MORE: How the Luxury Tax Could Prevent Zach Collins From Returning to Portland