On Wednesday, Woj and Shams dropped the bomb on us that was the James Harden trade. I’ve made a couple of posts about how I feel about certain aspects of that trade, but today I want to focus on Caris LeVert, and what the Indiana Pacers can do after trading Victor Oladipo to the Houston Rockets.
I am a big fan of LeVert’s game. I think he is a very talented scorer and an underrated play-maker. I had LeVert as one of my front runners to win the 6th Man of the Year award, but obviously that is now out of the picture, unless the Pacers are incredibly dumb.
After starting all of last year with Kevin Durant recovering from injury, Caris LeVert really came into his own, especially after Kyrie Irving went out with an injury later in the year. When a healthy Kevin Durant comes back to the lineup, it is only normal to take a bench role. From the outside looking in, that seems easy to do. However, when you demonstrate how well you can score the ball at only 26 years old, with your prime still ahead of you, I can very easily see a world where LeVert demands a trade because he wants to prove how good he can be as a starter. He, to his credit, put his head down, and accepted a leading bench role with Spender Dinwiddie, and he has put on a show.
Yes, some of the games he’s had so far have not been anything to write about. 10 points here, 8 points there, 6 points over there. If you exclude those games, LeVert is averaging 25 points per game, and he has demonstrated the ability to score in droves, like he did earlier this year with 43 points against the Grizzlies. He has always demonstrated a skill in getting assists, but with this season, not only has he increased his assists per game numbers to 6, but the eye tests shows that he’s learned to get others even more involved, even if he isn’t the one that gets the assists.
I think that the Pacers made the right call. There had been rumors that Victor Oladipo was not happy in Indiana, and with him being an unrestricted free agent at the end of this season, it is better to get something rather than nothing. I expected an Oladipo trade at some point this season, but I expected it to be for picks in the draft. What I didn’t think was possible was for Indiana to get a young stud for their wing positions. With the LeVert acquisition, the Pacers now have a weird, but fun starting five. Malcolm Brogdan has played extremely well this season, even being in some people’s MVP race with 22.5 points and 7.5 assists per game. LeVert will most likely play the shooting guard spot, while being a secondary, or even tertiary ball handler. Justin Holiday has become a serviceable small forward in his career, while Myles Turner is remarkably consistent with 12 points and 6 rebounds a game, not to mention that he is averaging 4.1(!!!!!!) blocks per game. The biggest, and most promising, part for Indiana in this deal, is that they are now pairing Caris LeVert with an absolute beast in Domantas Sabonis.
It is no secret for the people who pay attention to small market teams, that Sabonis is really having a coming out party for himself. On the year he is averaging 21.8 points, 12.5 rebounds, and 5.8 assists per game, while shooting 55.6% from the field, and 37.5% from deep. Sabonis has taken a huge leap this year that not many people expected, myself included. He is very much in the Most Improved Player conversation, if not the MVP race.
Indiana, on paper, has seemed to come out better in this trade. You got a proven scorer and distributor, while letting go of a player that was going to leave at the end of the season anyway. The Pacers are 7-4 at the time of writing this piece, and I can only imagine that they will get better with the LeVert addition. There are some things they need to deal with, however. Namely TJ Warren being out without having a timetable for return, what they’ll do when he comes back. Maybe they take Justin Holiday out of the starting lineup, or maybe they make Warren the 6th Man. All of these things will be answered in due time, but I think that Indiana has really made some improvements with this trade.
Round The Game 
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