Timberwolves trade Budinger to Pacers

The Minnesota Timberwolves have agreed to trade forward Chase Budinger to the Indiana Pacers, according to Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski. If he can stay healthy, Indiana would be very lucky to have a player of that caliber coming off of their bench.

The franchise struggled with their shooting last season and Rudez may help the Timberwolves on that area next season. He is a good threat from three-point range, with a career mark of 36 percent from behind the line. With the Timberwolves last season Chase showed near the end of the season that he could be a consistent scorer for a team by improving his scoring average of 5 points a game from October-February to 12.5 points a game from March-April.

Rudez also most naturally plays a position – a “stretch” power forward, although he can play small forward, too – at which the Wolves already have Garnett, Adreian Payne, Anthony Bennett all under contract and Euroleague MVP Nemaja Bjelica expected to sign this week.

Rudez is from Croatia and just finished his first year in the National Basteball Association after playing professionally in Europe for several years, according to Yahoo Sports. In the final six weeks of the season, he averaged 12.3 points and shot 39 percent from three, playing 29 minutes a night. The price of acquiring Budinger was 29-year old Damjan Rudez.

Budinger can shoot the ball, but he has lost some of his trademark athleticism after years of injuries, which limited him to 67 games last season.