Anthony Davis made a public debacle of his trade request as a member of the New Orleans Pelicans and they don’t really owe him anything for his behavior.
When the New Orleans Pelicans take the floor against the Los Angeles Lakers tomorrow night at the Smoothie King Center, there’s a lot more than a basketball game happening on that hardwood, a whole lot more for the Big Easy’s coaches, fans and players.
Even without playoff, lottery, or traditional in-season rivalry status, the return of Anthony Davis is enough to add some edge to the air.
However, it’s important that the basketball game itself doesn’t get lost in the middle.
Are there going to be emotions? Sure.
Are there going to be people on Lakers Twitter cherry-picking the timelines of the Pelicans’ faithful? You’d have to bet on it.
Should New Orleans Pelicans fans boo Anthony Davis so hard that the Super Dome gets ideas for the playoffs? Ding, ding ding!
Sorry haters.
If you ask me, there’s simply not a whole lot of good reasons to celebrate the time of Anthony Davis in New Orleans.
Tomorrow night should be about basketball, as one of those infamous tribute videos, the kind that went well for Kemba Walker with the Charlotte Hornets and poorly for Kyrie Irving with the Cleveland Cavaliers, will certainly take something away from the game.
Davis left this team on bad terms, leaving behind what Alvin Gentry could only describe as the most toxic situation he’s seen over the course of his long-spanning NBA tenure.
Leaving Jrue Holiday behind was a dirty move, as the two spent many years as running mates and one of the best one-two punches in the league, especially on the defensive end.
In part, a lot of Davis’s time in New Orleans was spent losing, or longing for a roster of less losing players. After just two playoff appearances and really only one good run in the postseason, what’s there to celebrate about Davis’s contribution to the team?
While we’ll celebrate the incredible sweep of the Portland Trail Blazers and impressive fight against the Golden State Warriors in the 2017 NBA Playoffs, Davis’s time with this franchise will best be remembered for the way it ended.
To drive a wedge between two locker rooms, as both the Pelicans and Lakers players had to feel the fallout from the toxic mess concocted by Jeanie Busse, LeBron James, Rich Paul, and Anthony Davis, that’s not how real heroes behave for their loving franchises.
The New Orleans Pelicans have a great night to prove they’ve changed their focus.
It’s really a shame that Zion Williamson isn’t healthy for this game, as it would’ve been a great night for the New Orleans Pelicans to really move on from their ghosts.
Just like the Lakers, the Pelicans spent the offseason changing the face of both their roster and organization as a whole, with the Pelicans stopping short of hiring a new coach.
Key for both organizations moving forward are the pieces of the Anthony Davis, in which the Pelicans greatly ratio the Lakers in terms of total assets.
As far as I’m concerned, Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, and Josh Hart are New Orleans Pelicans fans should stand by their men as the Los Angeles Lakers roll into town, Davis is one of thier guys.
The Pelicans youngsters are starting to round into their own as Davis gets going for the Lakers.
In particular, Ingram looks like a gigantic piece of this team’s future, as he ascends into the top-20 range among his peers.
Controlling both their own picks and all Lakers’ draft selections from 2021-2026 at the latest, the New Orleans Pelicans are just continuing to find building blocks for the future.
As for the Lakers they’ve shoe-horned their team into a win-now present with limited room to build and grow for the next decade. They’ll have a hard time coming up with the money or assets required to grab a higher-level player due to their current cap sheet and trade choices.
Let’s be thankful for the present and future of the New Orleans Pelicans, save ghosts of seasons past where they belong.
David Griffin cleared the air in the Pelicans locker room in his first offseason as the team’s Executive President of Basketball Operations, making changes to the player personnel, front office training staff, and even working with Alvin Gentry to get a new stable of assistant coaches.
Griffin is also not the person in New Orleans who made the trade get so ugly on the Pelicans end, as he and his new front office team replaced the since-ousted Dell Demps. This is a different team with a brand new future.
On the New Orleans Pelicans active roster, Anthony Davis has played with only four of the team’s active players, but only Jrue Holiday and E’Twaun Moore for two or more seasons.
As the team turned over their roster, with 12 of the 18 players brought into camp being first-year New Orleans Pelicans, the team changed a lot of its profile from the Davis era.
The New Orleans Pelicans have the most talent on their roster of any time during the franchise’s history and will continue to add to the stockpile of weapons thanks to the Lakers.
It’s a great night to be thankful for Jrue Holiday, the current lifeblood of the New Orleans Pelicans organization.
Maybe it would be mildly funny for the New Orleans Pelicans to decide to celebrate the continued, heroic stay in the Big Easy for Jrue Holiday.
Averaging 18.7 points, 7 assists, 5.1 rebounds, and 2.1 steals, Jrue is rounding into a total two-way machine and making an All-NBA case after a slow start hampered by an early-season injury.
Lending a hand in the community throughout his time in New Orleans, Jrue spent time earlier this month handing out a ton of free food to families who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to put together a nice Thanksgiving dinner. He didn’t have to give his time, but over and over again Jrue has shown dedication to the community.
Jrue represents this city with grace and gratitude.
Davis is a tower of melancholy, on the other hand, treating the city who embarrassed him as a franchise savior with all the grace of waving goodbye to the hotel bartender.
It’s not like Davis left any huge token of gratitude for the Big Easy. Most of the offseason, he talked about how much better it’s going to be to play for the Lakers than it was for the New Orleans Pelicans, seeming mostly to be a dig at the city and a sideswipe to the franchise.
Even as he was leaving the city and trying to get the situation somewhat corrected, Davis made himself sound like kind of a jerk.
Pelicans fans, breathe easy. Anthony Davis will leave something special just for you as he exits: "I will always have love for the city of NO. When that time comes I am going to definitely have a heartwarming message for them and put it out on Instagram like everybody else does."
— Sean Deveney (@SeanDeveney) February 16, 2019
Jrue would never do us dirty like Davis, that’s just not in his soul.
There’s a spirt to this city that Anthony Davis may have never been willing to embrace, which is okay even if it stings a little. The vibrant culture, great food, and amazing people in the Big Easy weren’t good enough for the brow.
While Holiday does reside and spends his summers in his hometown of Los Angeles, California, he takes the normal NBA route and is comfortable spending his season making millions of dollars to play basketball in a different city.
The New Orleans Pelicans have a formidable opponent in the Los Angeles Lakers, but perhaps the stakes of the game will help them rise to the challenge. However, an Anthony Davis tribute video does nothing but help bring up past ghosts and won’t help this Pels team gain an edge.