The Indiana Pacers and the Phoenix Suns are two teams that have been quite busy this offseason. The Suns had added Bradley Beal and traded essentially the entirety of their depth in the process. The Pacers have added some badly needed power forwards to the rotation, helping to build a team around young superstar Tyrese Haliburton more fully.
But it sounds like the Pacers have something that the Suns want badly, and that would be depth. Currently, Phoenix has all of its cap space tied up into 4 players, leaving them needing to add fairly good role pieces around those four players if they want to have any chance of making a run at a title. Luckily for them, the Pacers may have some options for the right price.
NBA Insider Marc Stein of the SteinLine is reporting that the Suns are eyeing and interested in trading for TJ McConnell. However, there appear to be some roadblocks that would get in the way of a potential deal getting done.
The first, is that the Suns are going to struggle to get anything put together in a return package for the Pacers. The Suns have traded away most of their assets in forming their current super team and it is not clear what they could offer the Pacers that would really move the needle now that Cam Payne has been moved to San Antonio.
The Suns are still interested in trading for TJ McConnell but Phoenix doesn’t currently have assets and the point guard hopes to remain in Indiana according to @TheSteinLine. pic.twitter.com/5jwIAm1uS3
— PHNX Suns (@PHNX_Suns) July 24, 2023
Additionally, all reporting seems to indicate that McConnell wants to stay in Indiana in his current situation. The problem the Pacers have is that they continue to be too guard heavy and there won’t be a real rotation role for McConnell if he is here, so it may be in the best interest of the team to get assets for him while they can.
While nearly everyone, including myself, love TJ on the Pacers, it could be the best and only time to move on from him.
Of course this depends on so many things we don’t have line of sight to. Perhaps there are many intangibles he brings to helping with the development of Tyrese. Only the coaching staff and his teammates know everything that he brings to the team.
But in terms of the rotation and playing time? Now might be the best time to take action.
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