Indiana Pacers Rumors: Who Could Move At The Deadline?

Which Indiana Pacers players could be traded prior to the NBA’s February 19th trading deadline?

The Indiana Pacers are suffering through a nightmare season after making it to two straight Eastern Conference Finals. Paul George has missed the entire season so far with a broken leg that he suffered while playing for Team USA, and they lost Lance Stephenson in free agency as well.

Larry Bird has been known to be aggressive at the trading deadline, and that time is coming up quickly on February 19th.

He is going to have plenty of decisions to make, especially with the Pacers sitting at 16-31 on the season. They simply don’t have much of a chance to get into the playoffs, and nearly no chance of competing in the playoffs if they do get there. The worst thing that they could do is win meaningless games and get a bad draft pick and be eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

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Trading away some of their veteran pieces might be in the Pacers’ best interests looking ahead to next year. George will be coming back from his leg injury, and a top pick might be exactly what the Pacers need to get things going once again.

Not only could they find a very talented prospect to draft themselves, they could use a top-10 pick to be a very valuable trade asset if they chose to go that route. Bird knows that the Pacers will still have a talented team if he trades away a couple of his veterans, and there are plenty of ways to save cap room to make a run at free agents as well.

So that being said, which players could the Pacers trade prior to the deadline?

Perhaps the most obvious name is David West, who simply doesn’t have a bright future looking ahead for the future. He talked about retiring this past offseason when he saw George go down with his broken leg, and isn’t going to be a shell of his former self next year. Age is beginning to take its toll, but he is still a capable above average role player for a contender.

Chris Copeland is another player who could hear his name brought up in trade talks. Frank Vogel appears to be sold on rookie Damjan Rudez to fill their perimeter shooting role, which makes Copeland expendable. There would be quite a few teams out there with interest in Copeland as a shooter off of the bench.

Three other potential trade candidate are Luis Scola, Rodney Stuckey, and C.J. Watson. Those three guys all have plenty of talent that could be used on contenders off of the bench.

It is going to be a very intriguing trade deadline to watch the Pacers and see what Bird decides to do. They have plenty of talent to trade away if they decide to go that route. Saving money and stockpiling young talent and draft picks around George is the way to go moving forward.