Rodney Stuckey’s Unfortunate Fall with the Indiana Pacers
By Josh Padmore
Rodney Stuckey balled out during his first season with the Indiana Pacers, making the veterans minimum. Since then, it’s been an unfortunate struggle.
Rodney Stuckey averaged 12.6 points per game during his first season with the Indiana Pacers. That was the 2014-2015 season, the year in which Paul George played in only 6 games. Stuckey even shot a career-high 39% from three-point land.
Since then, Stuckey got paid and has fallen off significantly.
After making just $1.3 million during the 2014-2015 season, Stuckey, rightfully so, earned a nice raise. He signed a three-year $21 million dollar deal with the Pacers. Unfortunately for Indiana, Stuckey’s production dropped since then. He played in just 58 games last season, and this year has played in 38 games. We’re 72 games in, so that’s almost half of the season.
When he’s healthy and active, Stuckey just hasn’t delivered. He’s shooting a career-low 38.1% from the field, and averaging a career-low 7.3 points per game. He does a good job of getting to the foul line, but sometimes he gets out of control and focuses too much on trying to get free-throws.
It doesn’t look like Stuckey has a future with the Pacers anymore at all. He has a $7 million dollar player option that he can opt into or out of this summer. It’s unclear what he will do with that option.
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Will he be able to make that kind of money from a new team? Probably not. Stuckey has made it very clear in the past, though, that he wants to win. Maybe he’d be willing to take a pay cut and sign with a championship contending team, David West style.
Zach Lowe recently reported that the Pacers tried to trade Stuckey at the trade deadline. John Henson of the Milwaukee Bucks was a guy they were targeting. Henson has a long-term contract, but he definitely fit the profile of what Indiana wanted: a backup rim protector. If Stuck opts in, maybe they’ll re-engage in trade talks.
Another wrinkle here is the Pacers could cut Stuckey before the playoff and not have his contract on the books next season. However, with Glenn Robinson’s recent injury, that may not be so simple, even if Indiana wanted to do it in the first place.
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At the end of the day, the Pacers have a log jam of guards that don’t fit together. Stuckey and Aaron Brooks appears to be the odd man out of the trio of himself, Brooks and Monta Ellis. It will definitely be interesting to see what the Pacers do with Rodney Stuckey moving forward.