The Indiana Pacers could trade with the Portland Trail Blazers for CJ McCollum
The Indiana Pacers are in a situation similar to what the Orlando Magic have experienced the past few seasons. Their team is loaded with valuable players that other teams could use, but their roster construction just isn’t good enough to truly contend in this league.
The Magic began their rebuild this season when they traded Aaron Gordon to the Denver Nuggets and Nikola Vucevic to the Chicago Bulls. This season would be the perfect opportunity for the Pacers to follow suit.
They’ve already began their new era by firing Nate Bjorkgren after a vastly disappointing season that saw them missing the playoffs and replacing him with former Mavericks Head Coach Rick Carlisle.
Now the Indiana brass may want to see what Carlisle can do with the roster as currently constructed, but something tells me that the Pacers are far from done making moves.
Indiana is a team reminiscent of the old Eastern Conference—a group filled with blue-collar professionals that make the right plays but are just lacking the pizzazz or star power necessary to truly compete for a title.
CJ McCollum isn’t in the upper echelon of NBA stars, but his pure scoring ability is up there with the best of them and that strength of his is exactly what the Pacers are lacking.
Indiana has two bigs that have proved incapable of sharing the floor at a high-level, two borderline All-Star guards, and a surplus of medium level contracts that they can use to swing a deal. It wouldn’t be a surprise to see them rumored to CJ McCollum at some point to address their offensive needs.