Indiana Pacers: Why a Kemba Walker trade makes sense

We’re still weeks away from the 2018 NBA trade deadline and we’ve already had our first bomb drop: The Charlotte Hornets are putting Kemba Walker on the market. Here’s why the Indiana Pacers should get involved.

It was surprising…but it wasn’t that surprising. Since the beginning of the season, the Charlotte Hornets have been fighting it out with the Memphis Grizzlies all year for lawn space in the NBA’s no-man’s land. They were built to win now and were doing no such thing.

As a result, the Hornets have made star point guard Kemba Walker available in a trade, according to ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski, though team owner Michael Jordan told the Charlotte Observer‘s Rick Bonnell that he’d only look to trade the All-Star guard in a deal involving another star.

By way of assets, Walker is pretty clearly Charlotte’s best. Although his 3-point shooting is down to 34.4 percent from last season’s career high of 39.9 percent, the rest of his numbers are in line with what he usually puts up. He also sports some of the most staggering on/off stats in the league, with Charlotte performing like a top-five team with Kemba on court and the worst team in the league with him off it.

There should be no shortage of organizations who want to get involved in the sweepstakes, but one team in particular that no one is thinking of may actually be the perfect landing spot.

Where things stand

If you look up “feel-good season” in the dictionary, you’ll see a picture of the 2017-18 Indiana Pacers.

(What? They don’t have pictures in the dictionary? No wonder nobody uses them anymore.)

The Pacers are humming along, seemingly content with being way ahead of schedule. They’re rebuilding the core of a franchise that was shook when Paul George asked out, and construction has gone quicker than expected.

Indiana has had a lot to be happy about, not the least of which is the play from their starting point guard, Darren Collison. It’s not like they’re dying to replace him, but from an asset standpoint, they may actually be the perfect match for the Hornets.

According to Woj’s report, the Charlotte front office has three boxes they want checked in any deal: unload some bad long-term money, replace it with expiring contracts and at least one promising young player, and acquire a draft pick. Indiana could potentially deliver on all three.

Dollars and sense

As it stands, the Pacers have the fourth-most cap room in the league with combined salaries of just over $93 million. They also have Al Jefferson’s contract, which is on the books for $10 million next season but only $4 million of which is guaranteed. Backup point guard Cory Joseph has a player option for just under $8 million that he’s a decent bet to opt out of.

If Indiana sends out Jefferson and Joseph, they’d be able to take back Marvin Williams in addition to Walker.

Among the salaries the Hornets would like to dump, Williams — who has two years and just over $29 million remaining after this season — is probably just ahead of Dwight Howard (one year left at $23 million) and well behind Nicolas Batum, who has three years and a whopping $76 million still owed to him. The last season is a player option, but the way Batum has looked this year, any team would have to plan on him opting in.

This figures to be a situation where the Hornets will treat each asset they receive in any Walker deal on a sliding scale. For instance, if someone is willing to take on Batum, Charlotte will accept more stringent protections on a draft pick or take back a lesser young player instead of a potential stud.

A unique opportunity

This is what makes the Pacers such an intriguing trade partner. If they wanted to include forwards Thaddeus Young ($13.7 million player option for next season that he’s at least a 50/50 bet to opt out off) and Bojan Bogdanovic (one year, $10.5 million remaining), Indiana could take back Walker, Williams and Batum.

This would be a major shakeup for a franchise loath to make such a move. Young and Bogdanovic are starters, and although neither are in the same age bracket as the Victor Oladipo/Myles Turner/Domantas Sabonis core, they’re solid veterans that the organization values. They’re also good at basketball.

In return, the Pacers would be getting a mixed bag. Injured for the first three weeks of the season, Batum has shown a drop-off in his play since returning. He’s shooting 28.5 percent from deep and only 41.2 percent overall. He did have his best game of the season on Saturday with 26 points, six assists and three steals on 8-of-12 shooting, but also committed a key turnover late that contributed to the Hornets losing a game they led by five with 35 seconds remaining.

Marvin Williams, on the other hand, hasn’t been bad. He hasn’t been good either. He’s just kind of…meh. He’s doing his stretch-4 thing, hitting 45.2 percent from deep but scoring under 10 points a game. Put it this way: He’s not jumping off the screen on most nights for the Hornets.

Not a perfect fit

For what he provides, Williams is overpaid but overall his contract isn’t terrible. Batum’s deal, on the other hand, is quickly becoming one of the more onerous in the league. Even with what he provides as a secondary ball-handler and creator on offense, he’s essentially a league-average wing on both ends at this point.

If the Pacers made themselves available for a salary dump, they’d have to rely on Batum as their starting small forward for the foreseeable future. On the whole, that wouldn’t be too much of a drop-off from Bogdanovic, who’s a better shooter but doesn’t do nearly as much as Batum on offense. Thad Young and Marvin Williams would probably be a wash, with Williams being the superior shooter but not as versatile defensively.

The benefit, of course, would be that for all the additional money they’d be taking on, they’d have a borderline All-Star point guard to pair with their soon-to-be first-time All-Star shooting guard. That combo, along with Turner and Sabonis, might be enough to make some noise in the East over the next few seasons.

How loud that noise is – and how noisy the Pacers think they can get if they just stay the course, make smart draft picks and wait for cap space to open up in the coming years – ultimately is what would decide whether they’d make such a move.

Why it works

On the bright side, because they’d be taking back so much salary, the Pacers would likely be able to put greater protections on the first-rounder they’d inevitably have to send as part of the deal.

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This would be key for Indiana, who has a track record of hitting on late lottery picks (see Turner, Myles and George, Paul as examples A and B). They’d surely want to protect themselves in case they slipped to the bottom of the playoff field or out of it altogether this season.

The other nice thing about taking on the salaries of Batum and Williams is that the Hornets would accept a lesser young player in return. Step up and take a bow, T.J. Leaf! The 18th overall pick in last summer’s draft hasn’t done anything to distinguish himself thus far and seems duplicitous with Sabonis stepping up. Unfortunately, he’s also similar to two players who will remain on Charlotte’s roster, Frank Kaminsky and Cody Zeller.

Overall, both teams would be hesitant to pull the trigger. The Hornets would essentially be getting the benefit of hitting the reset button, ridding themselves of almost all salary past the 2018-19 season. They’d also be losing their franchise cornerstone without getting a blue chip asset in return.

They may have to decide which is the priority. For as great as Kemba is, it’s going to be difficult to find a team willing to take on Batum’s deal and give up a juicy pick or stud young player.

Tough to pass up

For Indiana, given where they figure to be drafting this year and beyond, the risk of such a move would be minimal. The biggest sacrifice would be that the possibility of opening max cap space in a season or two would go out the window.

They could look at this one of two ways. On one hand, Walker is better (and certainly cheaper) than anyone who’s likely to sign with them as a free agent this summer. Once he’s in Indiana, if he buys into what the team is building, it could be easier to re-sign him in the summer of 2019 than it would be to nab a free agent they’d be wooing from the outside.

On the other hand, the Pacers would be locking themselves into “good but not great” status for the next several years.

Still, Indiana would be wise to pull the trigger. Turner and Sabonis both look like borderline future All-Stars, but may overlap each other’s skills too much to be able to play together effectively. The Pacers could still have one more move left in them down the line by exchanging one of the two young bigs for a more established veteran presence.

Next: NBA trade rumors: 7 potential Kemba Walker trades

That would be something to worry about later. If they can get Kemba Walker, it wouldn’t put them over the top, but it would make the next few Pacers’ seasons a whole lot more interesting.

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