Three teams that should be selling at the NBA Trade Deadline

As the February 10^th trade deadline approaches, speculation is rife in the NBA world over who the League’s leading teams could acquire to push them towards postseason success and an NBA title. However, there are several teams stuck in basketball purgatory, holding rosters with several talented veterans, but without the star power needed to propel them to a playoff seeding, let alone the heights of title contention. Three teams in particular fit this billing, namely the Sacramento Kings, Indiana Pacers, and the Portland Trailblazers. Therefore, this trade deadline should be the start of some significant roster retooling for these franchises to secure a brighter long-term future. 

Sacramento Kings

Currently, the Kings hold the longest playoff drought in the league of 15 years, and with them currently in the 13^thseed in the West, this is poised to continue. Their best player, De’Aaron Fox, is simply not living up to the expectations of his maximum contract extension, shooting a woeful 25% from 3 this season while also posting his lowest assist-per-game average since his rookie season. Although he is still only 24 years old, Sacramento has already shown its ceiling with Fox as their best player. hould an offer of multiple first round picks from a point-guard-needy team (such as the Knicks or Clippers) come in, the Kings should consider it, especially as they already have the hyper-talented 21-year-old Tyrese Haliburton ready to take over ball-handling duties. 

Furthermore, in Buddy Hield and Harrison Barnes, the Kings have 2 veterans costing them a combined $44 million which title contenders would be lining up to take off their hands. Hield is a historically great 3-point shooter (most 3-pointers made ever through the first 400 games of a player’s career), while Barnes shoots an efficient 38% from 3 for his career and is a versatile, switchable defender; Hield and Barnes are therefore the prototypical role-players which competitive teams need to complement their stars. There is little point in Sacramento holding onto these players in a season of mediocrity when they could return valuable assets for the future and build around Haliburton.

Indiana Pacers

The Pacers have even more talent on their roster than the Kings, therefore their 13^th place seeding in the East is even more underwhelming. The double-big-man experiment of pairing Myles Turner with two-time All-Star Domantas Sabonis does not make sense in a league moving towards increasingly smaller line-ups. Meanwhile, Indiana has a slew of established NBA players: T.J. Warren, Caris LeVert, Torrey Craig, Jeremy Lamb, T.J. McConnell, and Malcolm Brogdon, who have not meshed well enough together due to a mixture of persistent injuries or ill-fitting playstyles. 

With Shams Charania reporting in December that the franchise is moving towards a rebuild, it seems inevitable that this will begin in the next week. All of these aforementioned players could at least be rotational pieces on a playoff team, so it is now up to Indiana to decide whether to move as many of them as possible and go into full rebuild mode, or to more carefully retool the roster around a selection of these players. Domantas Sabonis is an accomplished scorer and rebounder and is only 25 years old, while their rookie Chris Duarte has shown flashes of high-level scoring potential. I expect Indiana to hold onto these two, but everyone else on the roster should be available for trade.

Portland Trail Blazers

Portland’s superstar Damian Lillard endured a poor individual start to the season, which was mirrored by the team’s performance, struggling to adapt to new head coach Chauncey Billups’ system. The Blazers’ misery was then compounded when it was announced on January 12^th that Damian would be out indefinitely after undergoing abdominal surgery. This made the season as good as a write-off for the Blazers, which even Lillard admitted when telling the media he was in ‘no rush’ to return to the court. 

For Portland’s front office, now is the time to start restructuring the team to make sure that they can maximise Lillard’s prime, starting next season. With Robert Covington and Jusuf Nurkic both due to hit unrestricted free agency in the summer, it might be best for Portland to cash in on them now, especially as contract extensions will be costly for these 31 and 27-year-old players, respectively, who are unlikely to improve. Perhaps the most important deal for Portland is what they can get out of C.J. McCollum. His talented scoring does not equate to a substantial post-season success when paired with Lillard, as the duo has only got out of the second round of the playoffs once in 8 seasons -mostly due to the defensive limitations of having 2 sub-6’3” guards on the floor at the same time. If a 2-way player more complementary to Damian’s game, or several-first round picks, or a mixture of both, can be obtained for C.J., he should be up for sale. 

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