NBA trade rumors: 7 potential Kemba Walker trades
3. Indiana Pacers
At 25-22, the Indiana Pacers are much better than expected, but not quite good enough to make any real noise in the Eastern Conference playoffs. Victor Oladipo and Domantas Sabonis may have accelerated this franchise’s rebuild plans, and that’s with Myles Turner failing to have the breakout season he was expected to put forth.
Darren Collison has done an excellent job at the point, but he’s really just a placeholder at the 1 until a long-term solution presents itself. Enter Kemba Walker, who might be swayed to re-sign in 2019 after a couple of playoff runs with a young squad on the rise.
This first option costs Collison, a promising rookie in T.J. Leaf and Indiana’s 2018 first round pick, but a starting lineup of Walker, Oladipo, Bojan Bogdanovic, Thaddeus Young and Myles Turner with Domantas Sabonis and Lance Stephenson coming off the bench is a pretty damn good team.
Leaf hasn’t gotten much run in a crowded Pacers frontcourt, but he’s been extremely efficient on limited looks and would be a nice addition to Charlotte’s fledgling rebuild. Collison’s $10 million contract for 2018-19 in non-guaranteed, and though the first-rounder would probably be in the late teens or early 20s, that’s still a first round pick with decent value.
If that weren’t enough, perhaps more salary cap relief would sway Charlotte into making a move:
In this deal, the Pacers can look forward to getting rid of the non-guaranteed salaries of Collison ($10 million), Bojan Bogdanovic ($10.5 million) and Al Jefferson ($10 million) off the books. They’d nab Indiana’s first-rounder, get Dwight Howard’s deal off the books and could even try for T.J. Leaf too.
Howard can still help a playoff team with his rebounding, Lance could fill in on the wing with Bogdanovic on the way out and Jefferson is rarely used in a crowded frontcourt unless Turner is hurt anyway.
The biggest problem is Charlotte may not bite on offers built around T.J. Leaf, a mid-to-late first round pick and salary cap relief.