The 2022-23 season was clearly going to be a big deal for the New Orleans Pelicans, as it felt like the year where they finally would be able to take the next step forward in the Western Conference. And sure enough, the Pelicans have been one of the best teams in the West so far this year.

Even though they have dealt with injuries to two key players in Zion Williamson and Brandon Ingram, the Pelicans are 26-22, which is good for fourth place in the West. They have fallen pretty far behind the Denver Nuggets and Memphis Grizzlies, but if New Orleans can get truly healthy, they will be a very dangerous team once the playoffs roll around.

You can't acquire health at the trade deadline, but there are some other issues that the Pelicans can shore up at the deadline in an effort to put themselves on track to make a deep playoff run this season. There's one big move in particular that would be very beneficial for the Pelicans, though, so let's take a look at that move and see why it would result in their dream scenario at the deadline.

Pelicans dream scenario for the trade deadline

When they are fully healthy, the Pelicans are one of the deeper teams in the NBA. They have a really strong star trio of Williamson, Ingram, and CJ McCollum, and while a big piece of their season is going to revolve around whether or not they can stay healthy or not, the trade deadline offers New Orleans an opportunity to protect themselves in case they don't ever get healthy.

Right now, the Pelicans are right in the middle of the league when it comes to three-point percentage as a team, and the trade deadline will offer them an opportunity to make some upgrades to their shooting. With a player like Williamson, who gets pretty much all his production in the paint, you need to have shooters to space the floor and open things up for them.

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It's not necessarily that New Orleans doesn't have shooters, but adding a guy like Bojan Bogdanovic would clearly allow this team's ceiling to increase rather drastically. Bogdanovic has been a target of the Pelicans' all season long, and if they can manage to land him, it feels like New Orleans could do some real damage throughout the remainder of the season.

Bogdanovic has been putting together maybe the best season of his career as the focal point of the Detroit Pistons offense with Cade Cunningham being forced to miss the rest of the season. Bogdanovic's numbers (21.5 PPG, 3.6 RPG, 2.7 APG, 49.1 FG%, 42.3 3P%) are really good, and he might be the guy the Pelicans need to make a serious playoff run this season.

For New Orleans, Bogdanovic is the guy who can solve a couple of big issues in just one move. For starters, his three-point shooting is excellent. Bogdanovic has always been a sharpshooter by trade, and playing in an offense that has other big name scorers would surely help him continue to play at a high-level.

Bogdanovic also would give the Pelicans another versatile wing defender who can allow them to be even more flexible on defense than they already are. He's not the greatest defender ever, but he can hold his own, and two-way wings are hard to come by in the NBA nowadays, which makes this an even more beneficial trade for New Orleans.

When you boil it all down, though, Bogdanovic gives the Pelicans protection in the event that they cannot get truly healthy. Right now, McCollum is having to carry a pretty big burden on his own without Williamson and Ingram. Both guys haven't proven to be the most durable players ever, so there's a chance they never get fully healthy.

As a 20-point scorer, Bogdanovic could come in and immediately give the Pelicans another source of consistent offense. He's not a playmaker by any stretch of the imagination, but Bogdanovic has proven this season that he can still get buckets on his own. It's part of the reason why his value is so high.

New Orleans has amassed quite a collection of draft picks and future assets to use to their advantage, and now that they have shown the potential to make a deep playoff run, it makes sense to start turning those assets into NBA caliber players. Bogdanovic would be an expensive pickup, but if the Pelicans could land him, while preventing their competitors from getting him, that would result in their dream trade deadline scenario coming true.