Indiana Pacers: Evaluating a speculative Myles Turner/Celtics trade

A Celtics site proposed a trade involving the Indiana Pacers

We’ve talked a lot about Indiana Pacers trades lately that won’t even be legally able to happen until this fall. Such is life when the NBA season is suspended for several months unexpectedly.

Previously, we evaluated a trade with the New York Knicks centered on Victor Oladipo. For reasons we’ve detailed again and again, Oladipo should not be moved this summer. If anything, the Pacers should be doing everything they can to come to an agreeable contract extension with their star.

Could the Pacers trade with the Boston Celtics?

This trade is with the Boston Celtics, centered on Myles Turner and proposed by Andrew Hughes at Hardwood Houdini. Let’s take a look at the proposed deal.

Here is some of the reasoning for this deal from Hughes:

"“Myles Turner’s presence would make Daniel Theis one hell of a substitute center, and the two could possibly share the floor in a way not too departed from Indiana’s pairing of Turner and Domantas Sabonis together–and no, we’re not making the equivalency of Theis to All-Star Sabonis but instead talking about pairing the outside shooting Turner with an interior force.Hayward, once again the big fish in the deal, would join a lineup that already includes two All-Stars in Victor Oladipo and Sabonis. Plus he’d be going home. If the C’s have to trade anywhere, the Pacers offer the best for Hayward as a player and the Celtics as a team.”"

The salaries here work out properly. It also assumes Gordon Hayward opts into the final year of his contract, as he has a player option this offseason.

Many people will get off-board with Enes Kanter here, however, I don’t hate the idea of bringing him to Indianapolis (at least, I don’t hate the idea in a vacuum).

For some reason, Kanter has a reputation as a poor, undersized defender, something that I feel is unfair and uninformed. The 28-year old center is no rim protector, but he’s fairly mobile and has put up the best defensive box plus/minus of his career. If a team responsibly deploys him, he can be very useful.

He’d have to come off the bench to Sabonis, I would think, but it could help clear the logjam in the frontcourt, potentially.

Hayward is another story. After a gruesome injury that greatly dampened the trajectory of his career, Hayward has undoubtedly lost his step on a team that is crowded in terms of offensive weapons. Though he’s gotten back up to 17.3 points per game, he’s below the 21.9 points per game he averaged in his final year in Utah that got him this contract in the first place.

Furthermore, Hayward will have just one year remaining on his contract whereas Warren and Lamb are both with the Pacers through 2022, giving the Pacers further confidence in the roster they’ll be rolling out moving forward.

I’d also argue that the ceiling on Warren’s game over the next two years is higher than Hayward’s, especially alongside Victor Oladipo full-time. Warren just put up his most complete offensive year yet and has shown flashes of becoming a great defender. The Pacers want to see that through, certainly.

Nevermind, too, the fact that this removes a ton of depth for the Pacers, something they just can’t do going into Oladipo’s final year of his contract.

A good trade example of why it’s going to be hard to trade Myles Turner

There’s really just not enough here to get a deal done for the Pacers. You can’t confidently say yes to this one given the short turnaround on the contracts of Kanter and Hayward. You get them as a one-year rental and that’s it. For a small-market team, that’s not ideal.

This, though, is a good example of why it will be hard to trade Turner if that’s a priority for the Pacers. Teams are skeptical following his down year statistically, despite how good of a rim protector he is. His affordable contract, too, makes it impossible to nab a big name in the trade market without tossing in players like Warren and Lamb.

The grass is always greener, and the frontcourt situation hasn’t exactly been ideal. That said, there’s reason to believe Domantas Sabonis and Myles Turner can continue to gel and turn things around a bit.

We’re a no to this trade.