Lance Stephenson did not want to leave the Indiana Pacers.
But it seems they gave him no choice.
Shams Charania penned a nice piece over at RealGM, wherein he provides insight into how Stephenson eventually left the Pacers for the Charlotte Hornets. We’ll start with this:
Ewing, Jordan, Walker and a stable coaching staff formed a major draw and ideas for a new future for Stephenson, but over and over, he mostly kept coming back to what failed to happen with his old franchise.
Before Stephenson had committed to Charlotte, his representatives had recognized his successful growth with the Indiana Pacers and a desire to stay. Move a salary off the books, move a player here or there and keep your homegrown talent, Stephenson’s management team urged the Pacers’ front office. With the ability to shed part or all of Luis Scola’s and Donald Sloan’s contracts, people involved in negotiations brought up scenarios to remove those deals to create an increased Year 1 and Year 2 salary for Stephenson in a deal with Indiana. Suggestions went unanswered, without execution.
The short-term deal always seemed to be the sticking point. Stephenson will make a little over $1.3 million more in 2014-15 with the Hornets than he would have with the Pacers, but he’s also able to hit free agency sooner. That’s the key.
It remains unclear whether the Pacers were more turned off by the (slightly) higher annual salary or the shorter deal and the prospect of having to court him all over again. Maybe it was both. Yet whatever it was that did the Pacers in, they made a mistake.
Parting with other players to make room enough for one can be difficult. Especially when it’s Stephenson. And especially when the Pacers weren’t thrilled with how he behaved at different points last season.
At the same time, he was their second best player, paramount to their already-fading offense’s survival. And they let him go, just like that, as if he were, in fact, Luis Scola or something.
Charlotte does seem like a good fit for Stephenson, but Indiana’s quirky approach to his free agency looms large. It’s even more vexing in hindsight considering where the Pacers lie now.
Paul George is likely done for the year, David West is aging and the stench of last season still lingers around Roy Hibbert’s gym socks. If the Pacers had any hope of avoiding a lottery-lost campaign without George, it would have started and ended with Stephenson, and his scoring, and his playmaking, and his defense, and his energy. Instead, they’re left depending on an amalgam of age, confusing talent (Hibbert) and scorers like Chris Copeland and Rodney Stuckey who don’t exactly instill fear in the opposition.
Things could have been different with Stephenson. The Pacers would have still faced an uphill climb, and the prospect of him reaching free agency sooner wouldn’t have gone anywhere, but their immediate ceiling—which is closer to that of a basement now—would have been much, much higher.
Dan Favale is a firm believer in the three-pointer as well as the notion that defense doesn’t always win championships. His musings can be found at Bleacherreport.com in addition to TheHoopDoctors.com.
