NBA Draft 2016: 5 best destinations for Denzel Valentine

The Indiana Pacers are almost certainly going to make the Eastern Conference Playoffs after narrowly missing out on them in 2015. Indiana in the final weeks of the 2015-16 NBA season feels like either a No. 7 or No. 8 seed destined to lose in the first round in five games to either the Cleveland Cavaliers or the Toronto Raptors.

Indiana is a basketball crazy state and won’t try to not make the playoffs after last year’s failure following the Paul George injury. However, is Indiana stuck in the awful middle of the NBA hierarchy as they have transitioned into the small ball era of the NBA?

While the Pacers already have a go-to scorer at the two in veteran Monta Ellis, he’s never really shown that he can succeed to elevate his teammates into playing winning basketball. Valentine helped Michigan State as an upperclassmen reach the Final Four in 2015 and earn a No. 2 seed in the 2016 NCAA Tournament.

Not that Valentine is going to inevitably replace Ellis, but the Pacers did appear to strike gold with 2015’s lottery pick in big man Myles Turner. Could the Pacers extract a great deal of value in Valentine with say the 19th overall selection in the 2016 NBA Draft?

He grades out as a well-rounded scorer that won’t bust at the NBA level. Valentine’s ceiling is daunting, but his floor as a professional makes him at worst a solid rotational player for the next several seasons. Indiana could use a player like that to bolster their depth going forward. Choosing Valentine in the late teens would be a wise decision for Larry Bird to make for his Pacers.

Next: 3. Boston Celtics (from Dallas Mavericks)