The difficulties of the Pelicans trading with the Kings

The New Orleans Pelicans are expected to be buyers at the trade deadline and the Kings are a team that have a few guys who would look great in New Orleans.

The Pels need a bench upgrade if they are going to make a run at the play-in, and a guy like Buddy Hield and his plus three-point shooting would look pretty good as a 6th man.

If New Orleans really wanted to make a splashy move, then they could inquire about De’Aaron Fox, who would be a franchise-changing talent who is locked up for four more seasons after this one.

If the Kings aren’t as optimistic about their chances at the play-in as the Pelicans are (or don’t really care about getting there) then I could see them moving either one or both of those players in an effort to start over.

While both the Kings’ guards would be nice upgrades for the New Orleans Pelicans, there are some real-world difficulties in making it happen.

Pelicans: The difficulties of trading for Buddy Hield or De’Aaron Fox

Let’s start with Hield, who is making $22 million this season, $20 million next season and $18.5 million the season after that in one of the few de-escalating contracts in the NBA.

To make the salaries work, the Pels would have to send Tomas Satoransky, Jaxson Hayes and presumably at least one pick to the Kings for Hield. That’s not an overwhelming offer for the Kings and some other team could come along and beat it.

Also, those two salaries aren’t enough, leaving the Pelicans $2.1 million short. Usually salaries this small don’t stop trades, but who exactly are the Pels going to send? None of their deep bench players make enough, so it would have to be Nickeil Alexander-Walker , Willie Hernangomez, Trey Murphy III, Kira Lewis Jr., Garrett Temple or one of the starters.

I am sure the Pelicans would send Temple or Hernangomez packing in a trade for Hield, but would the Kings be happy with that return? They’d probably like Alexander-Walker or Trey Murphy.

Giving them NAW, Hayes and Sato takes two players out of the Pelicans’ already-thin rotation. Hield would take NAW’s spot off the bench, but is that enough of an upgrade to even move the needle?

The Kings might not want three players back for Hield and the Pels might not want to give up on NAW this early for 2.5 years of Buddy Hield.

When it comes to De’Aaron Fox, it is even more difficult, as the Kings would almost certainly want Brandon Ingram to be included in the deal, which is a non-starter for the Pelicans.

The New Orleans Pelicans would probably love to have one of these two in a vacuum but it would be tough to make it work without a third team involved.