របៀបដែល Indiana Pacers អាចចុះហត្ថលេខានិងធ្វើពាណិជ្ជកម្ម Ricky Rubio នៅក្នុងទីភ្នាក់ងារឥតគិតថ្លៃរបស់ NBA

The Indiana Pacers needed to open a roster spot late in their 2021-22 season to sign Terry Taylor and Duane Washington Jr. They could have waived guard Ricky Rubio, who was out for the season with a knee injury and on an expiring contract, to open that spot. But they didn’t.

Instead, Pacers decision makers opted to move on from Keifer Sykes and kept Rubio on the roster despite him providing zero on-court value to the team. This choice has potential to play a vital role in Indiana’s upcoming offseason.

Rubio is set to become a free agent later in the summer — the three-year contract he signed with the Phoenix Suns in 2019 will expire at the end of this month. The Pacers have his Bird rights, meaning that as long as they keep his free agent cap hold on their salary ledger, they can offer him any legal contract even if they are over the salary cap. If Indiana wants Rubio for 2022-23 and beyond, they can make a competitive offer.

But with Tyrese Haliburton, Malcolm Brogdon, T.J. McConnell, Washington, and other guards with ball-handling skills on the roster already, Rubio wouldn’t have much of a role on the blue and gold going forward without several trades taking place. Indiana decision makers would be better off allocating their money elsewhere in free agency — an older point guard isn’t needed on a younger team with backcourt depth.

So while the Pacers have the means to keep the Spanish guard, it is likely that they kept his contract on the books for another reason this offseason: sign-and-trade possibilities.

Because the Pacers have Rubio’s full Bird rights and can sign him to any deal, they could opt to sign him to a deal worth roughly his market value and then instanlty trade him to a different roster that does not have the means to acquire the 11-year pro. Under-the-cap teams could simply sign the guard without going through the Pacers, but any squad that sits over the salary cap and wants to add Rubio without using their Mid-Level Exception, for example, would be a natural fit in a sign-and-trade situation.

The Pacers would have to bring back matching salary in a deal unless the team bringing in Rubio has an adequately-sized trade exception to make the deal work. But sending the veteran guard to an over-the-cap team that needs point guard depth could help Indiana acquire an asset, perhaps a second-round pick, in a deal — something they could not have done had they cut him during the season.

Such a trade would be intricate. Rubio tore the ACL in his left knee in late December and hasn’t played in a game since that date. He may not be ready for the start of the 2022-23 season, and even if he is, his level of impact at age 31 is difficult to predict.

“For now, to my knowledge, he’s rehabbing over there [Spain], doing well,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said of Rubio during the season. “I don’t know his timetable, but it will be months. I don’t expect to see him.”

The injury may mean that Rubio’s league wide value has fallen. The Non-Taxpayer Mid-Level Exception (MLE), worth roughly $10.3 million for teams next season, could be enough to acquire the guard this summer. But if an over-the-cap team were to use their MLE on Rubio, they couldn’t use it on anything else, whereas if Rubio was added to a team via a sign-and-trade, said team would still have access to their entire MLE. So there is value for rival squads in adding Rubio via a sign-and-trade, but the fact that the MLE may be enough to bring in the veteran guard will remove some leverage from the Pacers.

An additional way that a team could bring in Rubio in a sign-and-trade is by using a traded player exception (TPE). Said exceptions effectively count as matching salary during a trade, so if a team used one to acquire Rubio, Indiana wouldn’t have to bring back a player, and salary, in a deal. Six teams currently possess a TPE worth more than $7 million, so they could be natural fits for a Rubio sign-and-trade using their TPE: Boston, Brooklyn, Dallas, Los Angeles (Clippers), Portland, and Utah.

Outside of TPEs, any team that wants to acquire Rubio from the Pacers via a sign-and-trade would have to send back matching salary in the form of a player. That may not be ideal for the blue and gold, but if said player could be valuable to the franchise, or a treasured asset is sent along with the player, then it may be worth it for Indiana. Without knowing Rubio’s league wide worth, it is challenging to predict what a deal of this nature would look like.

Either way, between TPEs and Rubio-for-player sign-and-trades, there are ways for the Pacers to acquire capital in exchange for Rubio. That’s why they held onto the guard at the end of the 2021-22 season. Even if Rubio agrees to a deal with a team that has the salary cap space required to ink him to a contract, the Pacers could still execute a sign-and-trade to generate their own TPE — they made that exact move with Doug McDermott in the 2021 offseason.

Outside of sign-and-trades, any team looking to acquire Rubio would have to sign him outright using an exception or salary cap space. The Pacers would get nothing in return from such an exchange, so the Indiana front office will be canvasing the league for potential moves in the coming weeks.

Complicating matters is that Rubio could be sign-and-traded in combintaion with other Pacers player in a larger, more dramatic move. There’s many combinations that are plausible, so the Pacers can be creative. If they are successful in finding a deal, they can acquire an asset in exchange for Rubio, which would be a nice prize for the Pacers to obtain in return for a player that never donned a Pacers uniform.