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The Los Angeles Lakers are presented with an opportunity to add a legitimately transcendent talent at a position of great need heading into his prime. Not a single player on the roster, nor pick in the future should stop them from acquiring him. Anthony Davis is that good.
This week’s “The Lake Show” features an emergency conversation between myself and Harrison addressing all the madness that kicked off early Monday morning, when most decent human beings were sleeping.
To start the conversation, we both lay out exactly why it is the Lakers should not mess around and get a deal done as soon as they can. We start by stating the obvious: Davis is really good and is likely more valuable right now than any of the players who would be heading back to New Orleans. Not just individually, but likely as a collective group.
It’s also worth noting how things have gone with players who demanded a trade and mentioned a specific team or list of teams as their preferred destination.
Paul George, Kyrie Irving, Jimmy Butler and Kawhi Leonard all wound up in different cities than they originally wanted.
There are a few factors at work there, but each of those teams that sent away superstars were especially reluctant to work with the Lakers.
To a certain extent, that’s beyond this organization’s control, but if there is anything the Lakers can do to avoid a similar outcome they saw with the aforementioned players, they need to focus on doing that. Even if this means potentially slightly “overpaying,” the Lakers should really consider it.
To be clear though, and to get to the overriding point, there is no such thing as overpaying for Anthony Davis — no matter how crazy New Orleans’ trade request might seem. There just isn’t, and that’s before you consider what competing packages might look like.
Harrison and I then discuss in which order we see members of the young core in terms of how difficult it would be to include them in a trade.
Is Lonzo Ball more difficult to trade than Brandon Ingram? How about Ingram compared to Kyle Kuzma? And so on, and so forth. We pretty much agree on the order, with at least one surprise.
It’s also (and always) worth spending some time laughing at the Boston Celtics, who, because of Danny Ainge’s sense of humor, might lose out on both Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis.
