One trade every NBA team needs to make

New Orleans Pelicans

Ryan Anderson isn’t the kind of player that any team wants to trade. A 6’10” power forward who’s averaging 19.5 points per 36 minutes while shooting 38.6 percent from three is so valuable in today’s NBA. Most teams have fallen in love with floor spacing and Anderson is a talented piece to throw into any frontcourt rotation.

So, of course, the Pelicans don’t just want to give him up for nothing. With his contract expiring, though, and the high chance of him receiving big offers from other teams around the league in free agency, the Pelicans may need to trade him to avoid total loss.

As Steve Kyler of Basketball Insiders has reported, this still appears to be the likely scenario for them:

"Pelicans sources admitted that moving Anderson was likely to happen just because of the business of the situation, but cautioned that New Orleans wouldn’t do a bad deal just to make a trade and that unless an offer was meaningful to them, they may stay the course, finish out the season and see what happens in free agency… While Anderson seems like a chip the Pelicans can and likely will cash, their stance is that it’ll take the right deal for them to move him."

In order to correct this problem, they can either go with the original Wizards trade suggested here (Anderson for Kris Humphries and Kelly Oubre Jr.) or they could try to push a bargain for Jared Dudley instead of Humphries. Dudley is a much better offensive option and floor spacer than Humphries, but along with Oubre, he may be too much for the Wizards to give up. It just depends how valuable they deem Anderson to be.

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