Should the Pacers make a trade offer for Markelle Fultz?
By Tony East
The case against the Pacers trading for Markelle Fultz
The risk is too high.
The reward could potentially be there. Fultz could become a great player someday like he was in college. But he would have to develop to get there. Development takes time. And the chance the greatness actually happens is becoming more and more minuscule by the day.
The Pacers don’t have time, and they don’t have assets to waste on Fultz.
In the case of time, developing players takes a lot of it, especially for point guards. Fultz is effectively in his first season right now, and it usually takes young point guards a long time to figure it out anyway. In the meantime, he would almost certainly have a sizeable negative impact on the team.
That means the team would be worse during the prime years of Victor Oladipo. Lowering the ceiling of the team during a promising era is not interesting to me, especially when it could never work out at all. Fultz shoulder could never heal, or he could never get over the yips. The development could be fruitless.
Additionally, Fultz would cost assets. The Pacers would probably have to give up a quality veteran and a pick to get him. The veteran hurts the team this year. Does a worse version of the current Indiana Pacers team win a playoff series?
Who knows. But winning a playoff series will be important in luring 2019 free agents who are interested in competing for a title. If the Pacers acquire Fultz and flame out in the first round of the playoffs, it will make it harder to pull some guys who are on the fence about joining the team.
The asset(s) sent for Fultz would be gone. They could no longer be traded for anything else. Is it worth dropping an asset on a project that may or may not pan out when you could instead save that asset for the big move that nets you a star? I say it is not. The Sixers themselves kept their assets home for a long time and they were eventually able to trade for Jimmy Butler.
The final thing to consider: Fultz’s 2019 team option has already been picked up, meaning he is on the books for $9,745,200 in 2019-20. That would eat a fair amount into the Pacers cap space, which would impact their summer spending. Is it worth having Fultz, who has yet to show he can be an impactful basketball player, on the ledger as the teams third-highest player? I think not.
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The Indiana Pacers could view the reward as higher than the risk. Should they make the move? Who knows, it has some serious pros and cons. Reports suggest that Fultz will be off of the Sixers by the trade deadline, so we may find out in the next few months.