Pelicans Rumors: Top 5 Boston Celtics assets in a hypothetical Anthony Davis trade
By Nolan Jensen
The front office of the New Orleans Pelicans is faced with the task of trading away their franchise cornerstone, Anthony Davis. Of the multiple organizations in the running to acquire his services, let’s look and rank the assets of the Boston Celtics.
We discussed in a previous article what the makeup of a Boston Celtics and New Orleans Pelicans trade for Anthony Davis might look like, which you can view here. For today’s purposes, let’s dive a little deeper into each asset individually, and rank them from lowest to highest.
Just like the Pelicans, the Celtics enter this offseason with more questions than answers. Their primary concern is where their superstar point guard, Kyrie Irving, is going to ultimately land this free agency. For a team had aspirations of winning a title before the season began, their end result is all the more crushing. In last year’s postseason, they battled all the way to the Eastern Conference Finals, falling short in Game 7 against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
They were one quarter away from the NBA Finals, and that was without their two proven stars, Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward. Their youth stepped up, and the brand of basketball that was displayed by the Celtics in last year’s playoffs was oriented around a high level of teamwork. With such a showing, they entered this season with high hopes, and deservingly so.
Those hopes fell short. The team underwhelmed. And now with a second-round exit to the Milwaukee Bucks, the dynamic of the team is likely to change. Will they move on without Kyrie Irving and rely back on the youth that overachieved? Or will they convince him to re-sign by adding in an additional megastar in Anthony Davis?
The Celtics might believe they are just another star away from figuring this thing out. And with interest shown in the Anthony Davis sweepstakes when the demand was made public in January—it’s conceivable that they re-enter the fray. If that is the case, they present appealing options for the Pelicans. Let’s rank their assets in a hypothetical trade.