The Indiana Pacers have been a good basketball team these days. Led by Tyrese Haliburton and Pascal Siakam, they reached the Eastern Conference Finals last season, and right now they’re firmly in fourth place in the East after delivering a convincing 119-103 win over Anthony Edwards and the Minnesota Timberwolves on Monday.
However, no one outside of the Hoosier State believes the Pacers can win the NBA championship as presently constituted. As good as Haliburton is — and he’s a very good and dynamic player — the team lacks a true superstar, and its defense and rebounding are suspect.
It will take at least one bold trade this summer to put Indiana in the same class as the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics and New York Knicks. It will almost certainly have to give up a couple of its young and promising players in order to land a player or two who will take it to that next level.
Dan Favale of Bleacher Report listed the three players each NBA team is most likely to trade this summer, and for the Pacers, forward Opi Toppin topped the list.
“Excluding Toppin is tempting,” Favale wrote. “He’s most often viewed as the Indiana Pacers’ most probable salary-matching contract, but the three years and $45 million left on his deal is net-neutral at best. He won’t add to the compensation behind any package.
“Pivoting to [T.J.] McConnell and the two fully guaranteed years left on his contract is fair game. Toppin’s salary is just higher and more impactful when matching inbound money.”
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Toppin is an exciting, high-flying player, and he’s always a candidate in every game to end up on a SportsCenter highlight. But he hasn’t developed into much more than a complementary player in his fifth pro season.
He’s averaging 10.4 points a game on 53.4% field-goal shooting and 36.4% from 3-point range this season. Even if he isn’t viewed as a semi-attractive asset across the NBA, the realities of needing to match incoming salaries in a trade make him possible trade bait.