NBA Trade Rumors: Should the Indiana Pacers be buyers at the deadline?

NBA Trade Rumors: Entering the season you wouldn’t have expected it, but there is a case to be made that the Indiana Pacers should be buyers at the deadline.

Entering this season, the belief was that the Indiana Pacers would end up being one of the worst teams in the Eastern Conference. Maybe not in the bottom three but I don’t think anyone expected them to be just three games out of the fourth seed at the midway point of the season.

Less than a month away from the NBA Trade Deadline, it appears that the Pacers will have an interesting decision on their hands. One that perhaps the front office didn’t believe they would have to make before the season. Should the Pacers be buyers or sellers at the deadline?

And you can really make the case that this is a team that should be buyers next month. Even more so if they’re not going to trade Myles Turner and/or Buddy Hield, which is beginning to look more and more like the likely outcome.

The Pacers may be sitting as the seventh seed in the East right now but this is a team that could be a trade deadline move away from jumping into the second tier of teams in the conference.

How the math has changed for the Indiana Pacers this season

And a big reason why for the change of narrative for this team has been the continued emergence of their young players coming into their own. Tyrese Haliburton has taken another step forward and is enjoying the most productive season of his career thus far. Hopefully, his recent injury doesn’t hold him out too long.

Rookie Bennedict Mathurin has also been a welcomed addition this season and has been better than perhaps many expected. He’s averaging 17 points and four rebounds on 42 percent shooting from the field. He should get consideration for Rookie of the Year honors and is still getting better as a player.

The veteran presence of Hield and Turner has also done wonders for this team. It has just all clicked for this team. And that’s probably the biggest reason why the Pacers are trying to re-sign Turner ahead of the deadline.

Add one more piece to this core that is gelling together and who knows what this team could evolve into during the second half of the season. If the Pacers can get Turner back on board (though that may be a bit more difficult than many realize), there is reason to have hope that this team could be dangerous by the time the playoffs roll around.

But before that, this front office needs to decide – will we be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline? With the way the Pacers have played recently, it won’t be an easy decision to make.