NBA Trade Rumors: Pacers Would Moronic to Swap Danny Granger for Eric Gordon

The Indiana Pacers would have to be out of their mind to dump Danny Granger for the Hornets' Eric Gordon. 

For their sake, I hope they are aware of this. There have been rumors of their interest in Gordon floating around for a while, and this has led to rampant speculation of that they would swap him for Danny Granger—like this from Bob Finnan, the Cavs beat writer for the News-Herald:

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Don't rule out a possible sign-and-trade, however, with Gordon going to the Pacers and forward Danny Granger going to New Orleans.

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If the Pacers are that set on adding Gordon, they need to try and land him via free agency and not by trading away Granger. 

Gordon is a restricted free agent, and he turned down the Hornets offer to extend earlier this year. 

The Hornets will still be in a position to match any offer that Gordon accepts, but there certainly is a good chance that the Pacers could offer Gordon a contract they would not be willing to match. 

The Pacers are going to have plenty of cap space this offseason, so why trade a productive player like Granger to land Gordon? 

Part of the thinking has to be that this would allow Indiana to slide Paul George to his more natural small forward position and give them a talented shooting guard in Gordon. 

But here is where we go back to why not just try to land Gordon in free agency? If they were still intent on dealing Granger they could then deal him and an extra piece that won't be available to them in free agency. 

The only benefit of adding Gordon via trade would be they would have more room to add free agents, but Indiana is not exactly the first choice of free agents when looking for a new home.

Gordon is from Indiana, and that is going to be a more attractive destination to him than most of the free agents on the market.