SMonths after making a request to the New Orleans Pelicans management to trade him, preferably to the Los Angeles Lakers, Anthony Davis finally got his wish on Sunday morning, Manila time. According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, The Pelicans have agreed on principle to send the superstar forward to his preferred team the Lakers in exchange for Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and three first round picks, including the 4th pick in next week’s Draft. Several other NBA insiders have confirmed the trade.
This is welcome news for the Lakers after weeks of dysfunction that started with the abrupt resignation of President of Basketball Operations Earvin “Magic” Johnson back in April.
My thoughts:
HOLY CRAP IT FINALLY HAPPENED, ANTHONY DAVIS IS GOING TO BE A LAKER.
First of all, I am sad that Lonzo, Ingram and JHart are all gone. I personally think that the Lakers gave up too much to get for AD, and that they should have kept at least one of Ingram or Lonzo. But it’s the price of getting a superstar that’s on a lot of people’s top 10 best current players list. Any day you have an opportunity to trade for an established superstar, you take it and take it fast and worry about everything else later.
I will still root for Lonzo, Ingram, and JHart in New Orleans or wherever they might end up.
Second, those three first round picks feel like a lot but Tania Ganguli of the LA Times clarified how the Lakers would be sending those picks:
https://twitter.com/taniaganguli/status/1140123632103903233?s=21
2019 – the Lakers will select the 4th pick in next week’s Draft, then send the pick to New Orleans (more on that later)
2021 – New Orleans gets this pick if it falls within 1-8 in the Draft of that year; the Lakers keep it if the picks falls between 9-30. The Lakers will instead send out their 2022 pick if the 2021 pick falls between 9-30.
2023 – rights to a pick swap. New Orleans will get the better pick between their own and the Lakers’.
2024 – unprotected pick, but the Pelicans can decide to receive the Lakers’ 2025 pick instead if they find the 2024 pick’s Draft position undesirable.
I’m okay with this after putting some thought. It’s almost a guarantee that the Lakers keep the 2021 pick since the they’re expected to be championship contenders and not lottery participants. The unprotected 2022 pick that they’ll have to send will also likely be a late first rounder (due again to the nature of their being contenders). The 2023 pick swap will also be moot as the Lakers will most likely have a better record than the Pelicans, which makes Los Angeles’ pick less desirable than New Orleans’. And 2024/2025 is still too far into the future to worry about but they’re going to be late first rounders again if all works out the Lakers’ way with free agents in July this year.
Which leads us to our next point. The Anthony Davis trade will not go unnoticed by this year’s free agent class, which is the deepest one in a while. The Lakers are able to sign a third max contract guy (through machinations that we’ll talk about later). That could bolster the chances of a championship for everyone involved.
Now as it currently stands with the trade, the Lakers would be a few million dollars short of the amount for a max contract for veterans with 7-9 years of experience ($32.5M). They can work around this by signing 4th pick in the Draft by July 1st, wait 30 days (the NBA has a 30-day restriction from trading recently-signed players), then make the AD trade official. That way, they’d have enough to sign a max guy (Kawhi Leonard? Kyrie Irving?? D’Angelo Russell???).
(They can’t immediately trade the pick for cap reasons – an unsigned draft pick is valued at $0; by including that in a trade with Lonzo, Ingram and JHart, the Lakers would send out less money compared to what they’re receiving with AD’s salary, eating a portion of their cap space)
So to summarize, the Lakers receive Anthony Davis but at a high cost, Kyle Kuzma is the only member of the Lakers’ beloved young core left, but we got Anthony Freaking Davis and an opportunity to sign a third superstar in a couple of weeks.
For the Pelicans, they got three very, very good young players and a cache of first round picks.
Honestly, everyone came out a winner here.
EXCEPT FOR THE BOSTON CELTICS LMAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
patrickkennan.com 