Indiana Pacers: 3 trades team should make before deadline

2. CJ McCollum

Currently, the Portland Trail Blazers’ collective team player salaries stand at $129.5 million. After this deal, that number would fall to $122.5 million for this season – just a smidge under the harshly punitive $123.7 million luxury tax threshold.

Ahead of the 2019 NBA Playoffs, this swap would surround Portland’s lone All-Star, Damian Lillard, with a bunch of versatile role players and firmly establish Rip City as Lillard’s team. Bojan Bogdanovic is shooting 42.9 percent from long range, while Tyreke Evans is at 36 percent and Cory Joseph is at 35.1 percent. Bogdanovic, Evans and Domantas Sabonis can convincingly suit up across multiple positions, a crucial attribute in the playoffs.

Longer-term, accounting for two non-lottery first round rookie contracts (which we can estimate at $4 million next year), the Blazers’ cap will stand at a clean $68.7 million, more than $40 million below the projected $109 million salary cap.

This equips Portland with enough room to add either one maximum contract and a little depth or a boatload of role player depth in the summer of 2019 behind Lillard — free of the bloated Meyers Leonard contract (Leonard plays just 14.4 minutes a night) and the extravagant Evan Turner deal. Turner, though a decent piece, is significantly overpaid. He will be a useful addition to the Pacers’ roster of valuable bench guards.

The basketball fit for Indiana and for McCollum feels ideal. The 27-year-old McCollum is a 6’3″ combo guard who will never command lead ball-handling duties for the Blazers, but would seem perfectly comfortable splitting that commitment alongside Oladipo. McCollum would start as the nominal point guard next to No. 4 and be entrusted with significantly more control of the offense than in Portland.

McCollum boasts a near-All Star stat line of 21.0 points, 3.9 boards and 2.7 assists per game. He’s shooting 46.3 percent from the field and 35.9 percent (on 6.0 attempts per contest) from beyond the arc, to go along with an efficient 82.8 percent shooting from the free throw line.

McCollum on the Pacers would be the very definition of an Eastern Conference All-Star, even though he won’t sniff such a distinction out West this year. Though the Blazers are presently seeded fourth in the Western Conference with a robust 32-20 record, the current squad has no chance of getting out of the conference’s semifinals, where they will be destroyed by the length and positional fluidity of the Golden State Warriors, Denver Nuggets or Oklahoma City Thunder.

The problems inherent to entrusting the team to two undersized guards were exposed in Portland’s embarrassing first round four-game sweep at the hands of the New Orleans Pelicans last spring. With McCollum moving to the more size-appropriate point guard slot, his defensive weakness at the 2-spot will be mitigated against smaller charges, and he will be able to utilize his strength to overpower his counterparts on offense. Taking on the combined $28.9 million in salaries incurred by Turner and Leonard may sting a bit for Indiana next season, but it’s worth the risk for a prime McCollum.