Victor Oladipo
The Los Angeles Lakers trade: Danny Green, Kyle Kuzma, Talen Horton Tucker and two future 1st round picks.
The Indiana Pacers trade: Victor Oladipo.
The Indiana Pacers are in an unusual position.
They have significant money tied up to Myles Turner, Malcolm Brogdon and Domantas Sabonis. They are also currently paying Victor Oladipo $21m per year.
If this was the 2017-2018 season, the Pacers would not even consider an offer for Oladipo. After being traded from OKC, Oladipo looked to be a superstar in the making for the Pacers. He showed his fantastic athleticism and an elite ability to score the ball.
Fast forward to now and coming off ruptured quad tendon in his knee, it doesn’t seem as if his future with the Pacers is guaranteed.
With Oladipo becoming a free agent in 2021, the Pacers have to decide whether they want to keep him or not. The Pacers seemingly low balled Oladipo before the season started offering him a 4-year $80m deal. This was automatically rejected by Oladipo’s camp as Oladipo would be taking a $4m pay-cut to come back.
This off-season would be the perfect time to strike for the Los Angeles Lakers and land the ideal 3rd superstar.
With LeBron James, Anthony Davis and Victor Oladipo, scoring would never be a problem. If you double team of these guys, you will have two dominant scorers capable of getting a bucket anytime they want.
Oladipo, while not a play-maker by trade, is still capable of dishing the ball at an above-average rate. He would sufficiently fill in the secondary play-maker role for the Lakers.
In Danny Green, Kyle Kuzma, Talen Horton Tucker and two 1st round picks, the Pacers would get a good return for a player they are not sure is going to fully bounce back to the player he was two seasons ago. They can get out of Danny Green’s contract at the end of next season and they can use Kuzma and Horton-Tuckers team-friendly contracts as well as the picks to bring in a larger piece if they so choose.
It would be a big gamble for both teams, If Oladipo is never the same player he was before, then the Pacers will have emptied the Lakers pockets and make them look foolish. If Oladipo comes back and is every bit the superstar he was previously then the purple and gold will have set themselves up for a long term championship run with 3 bonafide superstars on the roster.