Let's be honest. We knew this day was coming. It has been nothing but a ticking time bomb, especially with the type of season the New Orleans Pelicans have been having. Pair that with the Pelicans not giving Demarcus (Boogie) Cousins the type of money he wanted, who can blame them though giving a dude coming off of a major achilles injury major money. Anthony Davis (AD) was notably upset about this non-move. Those two factors combined with the Pelicans only able to make the playoffs two out of seven years (let's be honest they are not making it this year) of AD being on the Pelicans has finally trigged a reaction. News broke this morning about AD's immediate future plans. Another Woj bomb was dropped this morning. According to Adrian Wojinarowski, "Agent Rich Paul has notified the New Orleans Pelicans that All-NBA forward Anthony Davis has no intention of signing a contract extension if and when presented and that he has requested a trade, Paul told ESPN on Monday" (Wojinarowski, Adrian). AD is not a free agent till 2020 but can sign a massive 5-year, $240M extension this upcoming summer. Which makes even more sense on why he wants a trade. The dude does not want to give up his full "Bird rights" in 2020 to sign with a different team for far less money. For those that do not know the full "Bird rights" "allow teams to exceed the salary cap to re-sign their own free agents, at an amount up to the maximum salary" (NBA salary cap). This also means that if a player is traded with full "Bird rights" these rights are also traded with them. This is why AD is now requesting a trade, he wants those full "Bird rights". In my honest opinion, I believe he will get traded. This year for the Pelicans is already a wash and next year is not looking good for the Pelicans with their inability to sign top free agents and their current financial situation. The haul on Anthony Davis could be record setting. He is already in the top 3 to 5 players in the NBA and is still improving. At his age of 25 he hasn’t even hit his prime yet. The Pelicans absolutely have to trade him even though they clearly do not want to. A team cannot hold on to a player that has already told them they have no intention of resigning or coming back. There are two teams that have already been linked to AD's services and have the resources and good young talent to make the trade. These two big market teams should come as no surprise to anyone. The Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers are the two teams we should most look out for. To me, the Lakers already have an advantage one is because the Celtics can't trade for AD until July 1st unless the Celtics decided to trade all-star point guard Kyrie Irving before then. Also, another factor in motivating the Lakers to get this deal done is Paul George. Everybody remembers how Paul famously said he wanted to play for the Lakers while a member of the Indiana Pacers. The Pacers then traded Paul to the Oklahoma City Thunder and the rest is history where Paul didn't even give the Lakers a meeting last year in free agency and decided to stay with the Thunder. As a result of this situation, I believe the Lakers pony up and do whatever it takes to land Anthony Davis as soon as possible. It will definitely be interesting to see what ends up happening. Also, can you imagine Anthony Davis paired up with Lebron James? Only time will tell.
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- post by Eric
References
NBA salary cap. (2019, January 23). Retrieved January 28, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NBA_salary_cap
Wojinarowski, Adrian. (2019, Janurary 27). @wojespn {twitter moment}. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/wojespn?lang=en
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