The Anthony Davis Trade Rumors Are Getting Weird…

The Anthony Davis Trade Rumors Are Getting Weird…

From the moment that Nico Harrison was fired in Dallas, me and a lot of other people just assumed that Anthony Davis was going to be traded. More than likely before the trade deadline this season, they just wanted a clean break from the entire Luca Anthony Davis saga. Now that Nico Harrison, the architect of the trade, was no longer there. It made sense to try and trade Anthony Davis and build around Cooper Flag. And recently, we’ve gotten some information around what Anthony Davis’s trade market looks like. And we all know what the potential issues are with trading for Anthony Davis or getting some kind of value if you’re Dallas in exchange for Anthony Davis. The guy’s hurt all of the time, including this season. If you’re trading away anything significant for him and then he doesn’t play, that significantly hurts your chances of getting any value out of him. He makes way too much money. He makes like 50 plus million. And those two things combined make it not only difficult to find value for him, but specifically for the contract part of it, makes it difficult to actually put together trades. And so we’ve gotten rumors that the market isn’t particularly strong for Anthony Davis. And also, the Mavs might not be as motivated to actually trade him as we initially anticipated for two reasons. One, they want to still have a decent season. They came into the year thinking that they might be able to be a 50 to 55 win team even in a tough Western Conference if Anthony Davis was healthy. If Cooper Flag was really good, they’ve got all these wings that can guard and in theory shoot. They’ve got Kyrie potentially coming back later in the year. So, it would make sense that they wouldn’t want to just give up on that immediately just because Davis has been hurt. The other reason they would want to keep him is because they want a good environment around Cooper Flag and they want to build around him, but they don’t just want to all of a sudden be a tanking team around him. And if you were to trade Davis, then he’s got to start looking at are we tearing down the entire roster? What’s the future of Kyrie look like? What’s the future of PJ Washington and other guys look like? And it just becomes a much more layered decision than just, well, we don’t want Anthony Davis anymore cuz Nico Harrison’s not here. But I think more than anything, there is still something lingering here with the Mavs where they’re hanging on to the Luca and Anthony Davis trade. And if they were to trade away Anthony Davis, it’s been reported they they do not just want to trade him to trade him. They don’t just want to move him to get rid of the contract. They want to get value out of him. They want to get something out of him because of what they traded away in order to get him. They still can’t just cut themselves away from they still can’t separate themselves from the disaster that was the Luca trade and would frankly just be embarrassed to trade away Anthony Davis for some contracts and a late first so soon after trading away Luca Donett to get him. And so all of those things together indicate that maybe it’s not as likely as Z and a lot of other people anticipated that Davis would actually get moved from Dallas at the trade deadline this year. However, there are a couple of teams, two teams specifically that have surfaced as potential contenders at the top of the quote unquote Anthony Davis sweep stakes should the Mavs actually want to move him. The first is the Atlanta Hawks who seem to always be involved right now in all of these different star superstar trades. They’ve been floated as a Giannis destination, as a Lowry Morgan destination, and Anthony Davis obviously fits in that equation as well. The Hawks have had an interesting up and down season where Trey Young plays, he doesn’t play. He’s been out for a while. Sometimes they’re better without him. Sometimes the offense kind of stalls without him. Jaylen Johnson, I think, has clearly established himself as the franchise cornerstone moving forward. And they’ve got a bunch of interesting pieces to possibly trade, like former number one overall pick Zachary Rishet, like this potential Pelicans top five pick. Neither of which I would anticipate being in an Anthony Davis trade, but speaks to their involvement generally in trying to potentially upgrade because it depending on what the team looks like when Trey Young returns and assuming Trey Young doesn’t get traded. I don’t think it’s out of the question for Atlanta to convince themselves that if they upgrade in the way that an Anthony Davis trade potentially would upgrade their team, they could maybe be more of a contender at the top of this Eastern Conference than it seems like they would be now. So, of course, naturally, it makes sense that they are rumored to maybe be kicking around the idea of an Anthony Davis trade. Now, the problem for them is a problem that a lot of other teams are going to face, and that is trying to figure out a way to match the 50 plus million salary of Anthony Davis without gutting your entire team and or giving up real important pieces of your team. Not just giving away rotation players, but guys that actually really matter. And when you look at Atlanta’s roster, Chris Porzingis would would have to be in the deal. You’d just be literally upgrading that spot. you’d be taking away KP, trading him away. Dallas for them, that just represents an expiring contract because as of this recording, KP’s dealing with like the mystery illness thing again, so he’s just not really playing. So, that would really not provide any value to Dallas with the exception of of the contract existing there. And then you could piece together some of these rotation guys, maybe a first round pick. I I really don’t understand what exactly Atlanta would be willing to offer in exchange for Anthony Davis that the Mavs would actually want. Really, the only argument here is the lack of playing time. The the the Anthony Davis missing games thing just isn’t as important to Atlanta theoretically because KP’s already not playing. So, if if there’s any team around the league that would be willing to take a risk on Anthony Davis potentially being healthy, it would potentially be the Hawks because the guy they’d be trading away also really isn’t playing. So trying to figure out an actual trade here that Atlanta would do and that Dallas would think about is difficult again because of that disconnect between Dallas thinking that Anthony Davis still has somewhat of of a high level of value and other teams around the league obviously disagreeing. And the other team that I frankly find way more interesting in the possible Anthony Davis trade market is the Toronto Raptors because they clearly have a chance to do something this year if they can upgrade at certain spots on their roster. They have this core of guys that sometimes plays well together, other times doesn’t. It’s Scotty Barnes, it’s Brandon Ingram, it’s R.J. Barrett, it’s Manuel Quickley, and it’s Yakob Purle. And I think if there was one spot amongst those five guys that they would really, really like to upgrade, it would be Raptors legend Yakob Purle. And so in theory, they could trade him in exchange for Anthony Davis and you just upgrade that Purle spot and all of a sudden that could potentially, if Davis is healthy, vault you up a little bit higher in the East. The problem with that concept is you can’t just trade Yakob Purle because again Anthony Davis makes 50 plus million dollars. You have to put in some other number to get there which means one of the other four guys is going to have to get moved. And to me the name that makes sense for both sides here would be Emanuel Quickley and they would have to figure out what that means for their back court rotation. Obviously that relies makes them rely even more on someone like RJ Barrett. And just like with all these Anthony Davis trade scenarios we’ve talked about, it would rely on Anthony Davis being healthy cuz you’re giving up two members of your starting five in exchange for a guy that might not actually be healthy. But in a theoretical universe in which that means that they play Jamal Shed and other guys more in the back court and then you upgrade the five spot into Anthony Davis, I think that’s something the Raptors would at least consider because I’m sure they like Emanuel Quickley, but it is a pretty big contract in someone that maybe they’re not super thrilled about in their core long term. And if it if it gives them a better chance to possibly contend at the top of the East this year, maybe it’s something they think about and no matter what, if they’re in on Anthony Davis stuff, they have to consider they have to be considering trading multiple of those core guys cuz they just don’t really have salaries to make it work. Otherwise, on the other side of that for Dallas, I’m not sure that they would do this trade in exchange for Anthony Davis. One, because that just gives them another big like Derrick Lively is out for the year, but or presumably out for the year. He’s had this foot issue thing for a long time. Then you got Daniel Gaffford who they might try and move but like over 30 years old. Yakob Purle doesn’t really do that much for Dallas in exchange for Anthony Davis and quickly although I think there’s some upside there. He’s still young. He can maybe grow alongside Cooper Flag. They certainly need back court help. I don’t know that he’s the kind of guard that they would want. And then once Kyrie comes back presumably if he doesn’t get traded. Those two guys together in the back court is an interesting fit. But if you’re looking at teams that have been rumored and actual trade constructions that would work, this is something that could theoretically happen for Toronto. And given all of these rumors, the Hawks and Raptors being involved, a bunch of other teams really not being involved, the overall market not being very strong for all the reasons that we’ve talked about, does it actually make sense for Anthony Davis to get traded at the deadline? Do I actually think it’s going to happen? Frankly, yes, I do. I would still be surprised if Anthony Davis is on the Dallas Mavericks past the trade deadline. And it would require some other teams getting involved here. The Warriors potentially sniffing around. A team like the Suns, the Pistons, a variety of teams would have to get at least semi involved to kind of drum up more of a market for Davis. So that maybe some of these other teams, Hawks, Raptors, and others would have to raise their offer because right now, if there isn’t that much of a market and you’re the Hawks or you’re the Raptors, there’s really no motivation to increase your offer. And at that point, like we said earlier, Dallas doesn’t just want to trade him just to get rid of them. and they want to get some level of value back in exchange for Anthony Davis. And so to me, I think that would be my guess of what’s going to happen is as we get closer to the trade deadline, I would anticipate the Mavs are going to continue to lose and they’re going to realize, you know what, we we got to just move on. We got to separate ourselves from the sky and then that way there’s there’s less of a distraction, right? We just build around Cooper flag. We can find someone uh in the front court that’s more reliable, that’s going to play more, and then we’ll go with that. And as we get closer to the deadline, as maybe the Giannis thing gets figured out one way or another, either he gets traded or it’s clear that he’s going to stay in Milwaukee, the Lowry Market and stuff calms down, whatever the case may be, all of a sudden Anthony Davis becomes the trade deadline guy. And then some of these other teams, I think specifically the Warriors are a team that’s very interesting, start to get a little bit more desperate in possibly chasing Anthony Davis and then he gets moved to the deadline. That’s what I’m thinking is happening right now, just connecting the dots from all these rumors. But it’s definitely a very interesting trade situation right now around Anthony Davis.

We have all assumed there will be an Anthony Davis trade this season from the Dallas Mavericks, and some new information has come out that makes the situation the much more interesting.

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