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INDIANAPOLIS – The NBA doesn’t waste any time getting into the fireworks of their offseason.
While the NFL has a month long break from Super Bowl to free agency, and then another month and a half until the draft, the NBA packs it much closer together.
June saw the Warriors sweep the Cavaliers to win the NBA finals, and the Pacers added UCLA G-Aaron Holiday and Missouri State F-Alize Johnson in the draft.
And earlier this week, we saw the Pacers’ first offseason domino fall when the team elected to decline the player option on Lance Stephenson for next season.
On paper, Stephenson is quite affordable, but it looks like Kevin Pritchard has his sights set on a slightly bigger prize (or prizes) with free agency beginning in less than a week.
Pritchard made sure the Pacers would be in the rarefied air of having cap space in 2018 after resisting the urge to make a trade during last week’s draft, and then saying no thanks to Stephenson’s small team option.
“One of the things (the draft) presented us was the fact that we could have taken on some contracts, (but) eliminated up to $20 million in cap space,” Pritchard said of trading in the draft. “We just kept saying, ‘Let’s be disciplined.’ We’ve been so disciplined not taking a bad contract so now the real games begin for us. The draft is a good place to look at the future, maybe you get a guy who gets into the rotation next year…(but) where we really get better is July 1. That’s where this is set up for when we traded Paul (George) and brought in Domas (Sabonis) and Victor (Oladipo), part of that whole equation was being set up for $20 million in cap space July 1. I’m not saying we will sign a guy. There could be uneven trades. There could be a lot of things that happen with that. We preserved that. Why stay so disciplined until (the draft) and then just lose your cap space immediately.”
It goes back to why Pritchard elected not to make a trade during February’s trade deadline either.
“Everything is so fluid but at the end of the day, our top 6, 7 guys we wanted to have back. Then make additions,” Pritchard said.
“We wanted the flexibility to see what this team could do. They wildly overly achieved and they deserve to see if they can build on that. It’s my job to add a few more pieces that can help them get past the first round, or at least get to the playoffs. I wanted to have some flexibility to add a real player July 1st.”
In regards to that core, both Darren Collison and Bojan Bogdanovic have partially guaranteed contracts for 2018-19. The Pacers have said though that they expect both guys to be back for another season in Indiana.
Outside of potentially moving on from Lance, here are a couple of other decisions coming before free agency starts on July 1:
- Thaddeus Young Player Option ($13.7 million): Young wants to return to Indiana, but he also really wants a multi-year deal. That could be the breaking point between the Pacers and Young, who turned 30 years old last week. You totally understand why Young wants a little more long-term security rather than just opting into a one-year deal after a nice season in 2017-18. And you also get why the Pacers might be hesitant to commit multiple years on the books to a player north of the age of 30. Right now, this seems to be trending towards Young testing the free agent market and with the Pacers definitely exploring their options at the power forward position.
- Joe Young Team Option ($1.6 million): It looks like the Joe Young era has ended in Indiana. The selection of Aaron Holiday, with the returns of Darren Collison and Cory Joseph means the Pacers really don’t need another year to see if Young’s development is there to be a rotational player in this league. Remember, the Pacers still have Edmund Sumner (a 2017 second-round pick) who is entering his first healthy offseason in the NBA.
