In the first part I traded Booker and Nurkic to Houston and Memphis. In this part KD and Grayson Allen are sent to New Orleans. I felt like there isn’t many teams who could make a good and realistic offer for KD. New Orleans could put up a good offer that actually makes sense for them. Most teams have no beneficial way to trade for Durant because of his huge contract.
The New Orleans Pelicans have been looking to trade Ingram for some time now but nobody seems interested in him. He is an expiring contract that the Phoenix Suns would obviously not extend if they were to make this trade and enter a rebuild.
This trade sends Brandon Ingram, CJ McCollum and Matt Ryan to Phoenix in exchange for Kevin Durant, Grayson Allen and Nassir Little. Little and Ryan are there purely for the financial aspect to make this trade work. So are Ingram and McCollum as well because Suns are not getting these players to make them a better team, they take these players to be able to take the picks with them. They are getting 4 unprotected first round picks as well as the swap rights of Milwaukee’s 2026 1st round pick. 2 of these picks are Pelicans’ own picks and the other 2 are from the Bucks and the Lakers. Pelicans are also sending a 2nd round pick to Phoenix. This is a decent return for an aging KD and Grayson Allen who was the best 3pt shooter in the league last season.
The reason why the Pelicans are making this trade, WIN NOW. They already acquired Dejounte Murray in a very good trade for them, but is that enough? Most likely not, that’s why they make this trade. Their roster improves drastically if they do this trade. They are trading a poor man’s Durant for Durant himself and they get Grayson Allen who fits much better than CJ McCollum next to Zion, Murray and Durant because of his 3&D abilities. And the best part about this trade for the Pelicans is that even though they’re giving away many picks, they still got a good amount of them left so this trade doesn’t set back the franchise by multiple years unlike the trades that Phoenix has made. This new Pelicans team would be a SERIOUS title contender, unlike their current roster. However, they are still missing a good center which I doubt Missi will be in his first season. They still got a lot of picks left that they could spend on Walker Kessler for example.