Indiana has a chance to turn Zach LaVine’s story around without taking on much risk, and that alone makes the idea worth a hard look.
LaVine’s fall has been steep. A few years ago, he was one of the most exciting young shooting guards in the league, the kind of player who could explode for points and light up a building.
He had gone from dunk contest champ to a walking flamethrower on offense after coming back from a torn ACL. At one point, he was the best player on an up-and-coming team and looked like the kind of talent worth a massive $40 million-a-year deal.
That version of LaVine feels a long way off now. The Chicago Bulls, after moving on from Jimmy Butler in a deal that brought back LaVine and the seventh overall pick that became Lauri Markkanen, tried to rebuild with sign-and-trades for Lonzo Ball and DeMar DeRozan and a bold swing for Nikola Vučević. It was a real effort, but the team never got back to the level it reached in those early months before Lonzo Ball’s knee gave out.
Since then, no one’s stock has taken a bigger hit than LaVine’s. The Sacramento Kings are keeping him home after the Bulls sent him there as part of the larger De’Aaron Fox trade.
And at this point, there’s no pretending the contract matches the production. He may also be one of the worst defensive players in the NBA, even with all his athleticism and the obvious drive to stay in the league.
Still, there’s a reason teams keep circling back to him. Somewhere beneath the injuries and the questions about effort, there may still be a useful player waiting to be uncovered. That’s where Indiana comes in.
The Pacers could potentially land him for the low, low price of a minimum contract after a buyout from Sacramento.
The appeal is pretty simple: LaVine has historically been at his best next to another playmaker. Lonzo Ball brought that out of him, especially as a transition finisher and movement shooter. When LaVine was off the ball, he showed more of the player he could be, even if he spent plenty of time piling up numbers with the ball in his hands.
That matters for Indiana because Tyrese Haliburton fits the same general mold as Ball, only at a much higher level. And unlike the teams LaVine has played on before, the Pacers already have a clearer identity.
That’s a big part of why this could make sense. LaVine has not handled being the centerpiece well; he has failed spectacularly to make a team win at an average level or defend at all when asked to carry the whole thing.
But in a setting where those boxes are already checked, he might be able to add something real.
There’s almost no downside for Indiana. The team wouldn’t be harmed by signing him beyond using its final roster spot. And if it works, the Pacers would be adding a scoring specialist who could fill the kind of role they lost when they traded Bennedict Mathurin.
For a team that needs creators, that’s not a bad gamble at all.
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The expectations are not small. RotoWire projects Zubac for 14.5 points, 11 rebounds, 2.2 assists and a block per game, numbers that would give the Pacers a dependable interior presence on both ends. For a team trying to take a step forward, the bigger question is whether Zubac can turn that projection into consistent production once the games start to count. [Read more 🡒]