With Anthony Davis likely being dealt by the New Orleans Pelicans soon, what can other recent blockbuster trades with disgruntled stars show us?
The NBA is a league that seems to be constantly filled with drama. It’s a big part of what keeps all of us so engaged and interested as we wait from the next bombshell of a rumor to be dropped by Adrian Wojnarowski, or for a star to do something crazy in the media. In 2019, nothing has been more enthralling than Anthony Davis’ trade request he made to the New Orleans Pelicans.
As soon as the request was made, speculation ran rampant about where he wanted to go, what teams would be interested, when the deal would be made, and so on. The trade deadline came and went without any sort of significant traction being made on a transaction, so we all entered a holding pattern to wait and see what happened next this summer.
In the wake of all of this, the Pelicans fired Dell Demps, their General Manager that would have been in charge of trading Davis. Since then, David Griffin has stepped into a front office position in New Orleans and will now take over the massive responsibility of getting AD a new home and setting the Pelicans up for the future.
It’s widely assumed that Anthony Davis wants to join LeBron James in Los Angeles, but Griffin and the Pelicans have no obligation to send him there if the deal isn’t right. It is, however, urgent that AD gets moved before the situation gets even more toxic than it’s already been, escalated most recently by Davis’ “That’s All, Folks” t-shirt he wore in the season finale.
In the last couple of seasons, a few other teams have had to ship away their disgruntled superstars at the drop of a trade demand. Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and Jimmy Butler are all Top 15-caliber players in the league that have pulled similar stunts to what Anthony Davis has done most recently. So what can we learn from how the Spurs, Pacers, and Wolves all handled their respective situations? Let’s take a look and see what could be in store for the Pelicans.