Potential Pacers trade candidates: Otto Porter Jr.

The Indiana Pacers have tons of team-building options this summer. An option that they should look into is trading for Otto Porter Jr.

In his postseason presser, Pacers President of Basketball Operations Kevin Pritchard hit fans with one of the most compelling sentences possible. “I personally think the trade market could be better than ever. It’s because there’s not as many teams with cap space this summer and when that happens, normally teams get aggressive in trades to change their team. How aggressive we’ll be? I don’t know yet. I haven’t calculated where the market will be.”

There’s so much to gather from that. Will the Pacers trade? If so, for who? Looking at some of the options can be fun, even if it is just speculation. Let’s take a look at a player who makes a ton of sense for Indiana: Otto Porter Jr.

Porter has spent his whole five-year career with the Washington Wizards, but he didn’t come to fruition as a great player until about halfway through his third season. But when he figured it out, he became a behemoth and an underrated monster.

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And while doing that, he became as close to a perfect fit with the Pacers as he can. Porter has canned 286 of his last 654 three-pointers, a 43.7 percent clip. That is a higher clip than three-point percentage leader Darren Collison over that same span of attempts.

Bojan Bogdanovic can shoot, but not even he is that efficient. And Porter strengths go far beyond that. His defense is great — he had the best defensive rating on Washington with a rating of 104.5. The Pacers struggled with wing defense this season and Porter could really help the team in that aspect of the game.

Porter just makes a ton of positive plays that help a team win basketball games. He never turns the ball over — in 2016-17 he led the league with the smallest turnover percentage at 4.9 percent. This past season, he only turned it over on 7.4 percent of his possessions, a mark that would have led the Pacers rotation by over 2.5 percent.

Porter is also a monster on the defensive glass for someone of his size and with his skillset. He pulled down 18.8 percent of opponent misses this past season, the same rate that Pacers motor man Trevor Booker grabbed when he played for the blue and gold.

He is also unbelievable as a spot-up shooter. Otto finished in the 85th percentile as a spot up guy, a blistering mark, and he did that while making 45.6 percent of his corner threes, a shot the Pacers love to seek out.

His offensive fit is seamless, and he would immediately become the best wing defender on the team. And his impact is extremely underrated. The exceptionally smart Kevin Broom wrote an incredible piece about Otto Porter at Bullets Forever with some amazing stats about Porter’s impact:

"“The critique that Porter was efficient primarily because he was low usage and because he played with John Wall should be cremated and sprinkled into the Potomac alongside Andrew Nicholson’s contract. Last season, Porter’s usage rate was 18 percent, just below the league average of 20 percent, while his efficiency was a robust 12 points per 100 possessions better than league average.”"

Clearly, Porter can be a go-to guy on offense and serviceable at worst on defense. So what is the holdup? Why aren’t the Pacers going after this guy?

Otto Porter’s contract isn’t cheap and has a trade kicker

Well, the obvious first reason is that with a guy this good the Wizards would be reluctant to give him up. The only reason he would be available is that Washington is a cap-strapped team and they could be looking for ways to shed salary and acquire assets.

The other hurdle for the Pacers is that Otto Porter is expensive. He is due to make $26 million in the coming season, and he has a 15% trade kicker so his cap hit would be even higher. I think he is worth it, but I can see why others don’t think so.

Anecdotally, having your teams highest paid player be anyone besides your best player can cause problems. It may be part of the problems in Washington this season. But Victor Oladipo doesn’t seem like the type of guy who would care about something like that. Porter’s salary is big, but worth it for his talents and overwhelmingly positive impact.

The other hurdle with Porter’s salary is making a trade legal for the Pacers. The need to send out the appropriate amount of salary in the deal, so two of Bojan Bogdanovic, Darren Collison, Al Jefferson, or Thaddeus Young would have to likely be included. In terms of assets, TJ Leaf, Domantas Sabonis, or the 23rd pick would likely have to be included with the two players. Many fans would hate to see Sabonis go, but that might be what it takes. Is cap relief, the 23rd pick, Bojan, and DC enough to pry Porter away and keep Sabonis?

Next: 2017-18 Pacers Player Reviews: Joe Young

That is for Washington Wizards General Manager Ernie Grunfeld to decide. But if giving up Domas Sabonis is what it takes to get Otto Porter, it might be worth it. He is pricey, but he is an awesome basketball player. And most importantly, he fits great with the Indiana Pacers.