Trade & FA 2023-24: Stein-Ingram Trade Inevitable| LAL Want Lebron Back On Any Terms

[DanSchwartzgan]

From the article:

Other note: Contending teams like Boston, Oklahoma City and Dallas have shown great interest in Isaiah Stewart, league sources tell The Athletic.

https://theathletic.com/5142623/2023/12/...scenarios/

The article goes through many of the same names that get thrown around here (PJ Washington, Collins and J. Grant).  They are fan proposed deals, so they don't send nearly enough value out (Grant and Thybulle for expirings and 3 seconds?).  Detroit, unlike Dallas has cap room in the summer, so OG and Tobias are also on the radar (sound familiar?).

I like the idea of Stewart as he could back up Lively and GWill (and possibly compete to start at PF).  All of these PF candidates have warts and he isn't perfect either.  You definitely have to project what he would be here.  But, he's 22, plays with force and is getting better from deep (on a team with no spacing).  He's shown signs in past years that he might be an average NBA player.  A PER of 15 and a WS/49 of .100 are in his past and he's been above average in EPM each of his four years (and actually good at D-EPM three of the four years).  

He's Poison Pill and there isn't a direct one for one trade on the Mav's that works.  Maxi misses by a couple hundred grand.  So, it would need to involve more players (Holmes or Maxi plus a minor contract works).  The other thing that has to be pointed out is that almost all the names that get mentioned for Detroit are an effort to replace Stewart's minutes at PF.  They have their Lively in Duran and consider him and Cunningham and Thompson and Ivey as their "core four".  Stewart is not in that "core".  The other thing to bear in mind when designing trades is Detroit has their version of Hardy in Ivey.  So, Hardy may not hold as much value to Detroit as he would to others (though, I think they really have a core 3...Duran, Cunningham and Thompson, but it is too early to bail on Ivey at this point with his value so diminished).