The NBA Trade Deadline is on the horizon, do the Pacers ship out Jeremy Lamb?
After a hot start when he returned to the court for the Indiana Pacers, Jeremy Lamb has fallen back down to earth. If you look at his stats he looks like he is having a great season, which you can give him offensively, but basketball is a two-way game.
Jeremy tends to be a liability on the defensive end of the ball and that happens to be where the Pacers have struggled a lot this year. Along with the stats, the eye test is a big thing for him. It just doesn’t seem like he fits into the team anymore especially with some of the PF minutes he has been getting as of late. We don’t need that.
There are a few scenarios that could happen with Jeremy: selling to a contender for a pick, trading him to a team with a need of a shooting guard, or ultimately keeping him. The latter is probably the most likely, knowing how the Pacers like to roll, but that won’t stop us from strolling through fantasy land.
With the current state of the Pacers, they may be in a selling stage but I’m specifically going to talk about how that relates to Jeremy Lamb. Jeremy Lamb isn’t a bad player by any stretch of the imagination and he would be an amazing addition to a contender, which is definitely not the Pacers at this point in the season.
The trade deadline is a time where teams show how far they think their current roster can go by trading away players or adding the last few pieces. There are a few teams that would love Lamb’s services and probably wouldn’t be that against shedding a pick to bolster their already good team.
A few teams that I think would be good spots for Lamb include Philly, Phoenix, both LA teams, then maybe Miami and Boston if you want to stretch out the options a bit. It would be ideal for the Pacers to get a first-round pick out of any deal of this sort but you never know, other teams may only be willing to shell out two seconds which would add to our current surplus of seconds that we could use to make a bigger deal.
Another thing to add to this scenario is that the Pacers would be getting money off the books and an open roster spot, meaning they could go after a player that is sought after by many Pacer fans; Rondae Hollis-Jefferson.
It’s hard to gauge Jeremy Lamb’s value because I’m not in the front office listening to them talk about him, but I can do my best to look at some trade targets for him. There is going to be a common theme with all the players I talk about, SF/PF combo wings that fit the exact mold of what the Pacers need off the bench.
A few players that fit those criteria:
- Al-Farouq Aminu
- Rudy Gay
- Harrison Barnes
- Otto Porter Jr
- Thad Young
- Moe Harkless
- Danuel House
Like I said I don’t know the value of Lamb around the league so many of these players may not even be in the realm of possibilities especially when you factor in salary. If I were to give a top-three of most realistic targets in my opinion I’d have to say it would be Aminu, Harkless, and House.
Two are on bad teams and the other doesn’t get minutes on a good playoff team. The one on the list that I personally would want the most is Thad Young for obvious reasons, great play mixed with him already playing here and the city having so much love for him.
Hopefully, the Pacers can get a player like the ones on the list or anyone on the list, they are in dire need of someone that can serve as a big wing because many of the Pacers’ losses can point back to the lack of that.