Trade no. 2
In this trade idea, the Miami Heat trade Hassan Whiteside, Wayne Ellington and a 2019 unprotected first round pick for the New Orleans Pelicans’ Jrue Holiday.
Holiday, at 27-years-old, has become one of the better well-rounded combo guards in the league with the Pelicans. The Heat would be getting an All-Defensive stud that is a gritty and grind-it-out guard who can lead a team by his performance on the court. And in this move, getting Holiday to add to the youth of Josh Richardson, Justise Winslow, and Bam Adebayo would be huge.
In fact, the best part of this deal would surprisingly be keeping All-Star Goran Dragic, as Dragic has played off-the-ball with Eric Bledsoe with the Phoenix Suns and you can definitely see the potential of one of the better Eastern backcourts with Dragic and Holiday by playoff time.
As for the starting lineup with this team, the hope would be that the Heat would commit to the small-ball lineup with Dragic, Holiday, Richardson, Winslow, and Adebayo.
In trading Whiteside to New Orleans to help Jahil Okafor’s attempt to replace Anthony Davis, this does open up a bench spot for a new backup center behind Adebayo. You could expect Kelly Olynyk to take over that position, possibly bringing up Yante Maten from the G-League to play as a small five.
More so than anything in this deal for the Pelicans, they only pull the trigger if they feel enamored by the idea of getting a solid center back for a year or two and getting a 2019 first round pick, somewhere between no.’s 15-20 in the next draft.
The fact of the matter is that with the Lowe news on the possible Holiday move to the trade block, there could be some entertaining trade ideas coming to Dell Demps front office table that could surpass this one, so we have some more favorable moves for the Pelicans in the next few ideas.