2 Positive, 1 negative ripple effects of Spurs' minor trade with Pacers

The 2024 NBA trade deadline has finally passed, and just as we suspected, the San Antonio Spurs were not deadline buyers. This was the expected outcome given San Antonio's current situation being far away from a playoff or even play-in spot. They will stay patient and look to build for the future.

Doing that will require small but intentional moves, and they did accomplish one move of that nature before the 2:00 PM CT deadline hit. The Spurs sent Doug McDermott to the Indiana Pacers in exchange for Marcus Morris, a second-round draft pick and cash.

While this was far from the biggest NBA news of the day, it still carries the potential for lasting effects on the Spurs going forward. Here are two positive and one negative effects we could see from this move.

Positive - Another draft pick

This one is short and to the point. San Antonio will be able to add another draft pick from Indiana to their massive collection of draft capital. Second-round picks seem to be a dime a dozen these days, but adding another to the vault is never a bad thing.

A second-round pick is basically the ultimate wild card in the NBA these days. That pick will likely become a low-end role player at best, but there is always the chance it could either become a solid rotational player or even be packaged and used to acquire something even better. Either way, getting this pick was a good move for the Spurs.

Negative - Spurs lose even more three-point shooting

This one is the elephant in the room. Already ranking dead last in the NBA in three-point field goal percentage, San Antonio dealt away their most pure three-point shooter. Their league-worst team percentage of 34.1% in the current season is almost certain to decrease even more after losing McDermott.

One big positive to take from this is the fact that the Spurs are not in the neighborhood of pursuing a play-in spot this year. If they were perhaps on the cusp of the ten seed and could potentially get there with an increase in shooting, this would have been a questionable decision. But with them clearly thinking long-term, I think this is a fine move.

The team will want to continue having shooters around Victor Wembanyama, but McDermott was about as much of a three-point "specialist" as you can get. His game was extremely one-dimensional, and the Spurs can now focus on signing players that can shoot at a similar clip to McDermott while having more developed games overall.

McDermott was also realistically taking shots away from other players that will now get a chance to improve their percentages just by taking more threes in-game. Becoming a worse three-point shooting team now could mean becoming an overall better one later.

Positive - Frees up roster spot

Perhaps the best aspect of this seemingly minor move from the Spurs is that a roster spot appears to be open with the team reportedly aiming to pursue a buyout for Marcus Morris. (As a side note, Morris joining the Spurs twice in his career without ever playing a game for them is objectively funny).

There will be a few candidates for this open full-time roster spot, but the prime candidate to land it has to be Dominick Barlow. After going undrafted in the 2022 NBA Draft, Barlow joined San Antonio for Summer League before signing two-way contracts with the team in July 2022 and July 2023.

As most two-way players do, he has split time between the G League and the NBA team for the past season and a half. It is safe to say Barlow has been waiting for an opportunity to arise where he might find his way onto the full-time roster, and this could be it.

For his career, Barlow has averaged 25.1 points and 7.8 rebounds in 20 games with the Austin Spurs. Much like Jonathon Simmons nearly a decade ago, Barlow could be the next shining example of a player who put in the work to eventually stake his claim with the big league club.