The Golden State Warriors claim they were never interested in trading for Dallas Mavericks big man Anthony Davis, in a deal that would have sent Jonathan Kuminga and possibly Draymond Green to Texas. Now it looks like no one will be trading for The Brow until this summer.<\/p>\n
Davis is waiting for a second opinion to determine whether he needs surgery on his left hand, which was injured in Thursday\u2019s loss to the Utah Jazz. We don\u2019t want to jump to conclusions, but when it comes to estimating how many games Anthony Davis will miss with an injury, it\u2019s safer to take the under.<\/p>\n
That likely concludes a Warriors trade pursuit that may or may not have ever existed. Marc Stein reported<\/a> that while the Warriors had a \u201clongstanding fondness\u201d for Davis, they weren\u2019t \u201cactively\u201d pursuing him. There are two big reasons why.<\/p>\n One is that they\u2019d have to trade Jimmy Butler or Green to make the money work in the trade. The second is that Davis has two years and over $121M remaining on his contract, if Davis picks up his player option for 2027-28. Last year, Davis played 51 out of a possible 80 games (the Lakers had played two fewer games than the Mavericks when he was traded for Luka Doncic). This season, he\u2019s played 20 out of 39 games, and 29 of 72 Mavericks games since the big trade.<\/p>\n It\u2019s easy to see why a team would covet Davis, who is one of the NBA\u2019s few truly game-changing players with his shot-blocking, rebounding and ability to score inside. He\u2019s averaging 20.4 points, 11.1 rebounds and 1.7 blocks per game. The Mavericks are 10-10 when Davis plays and 4-15 when he sits.<\/p>\n But if Davis is out with an injury at the Feb. 5 trade deadline, it\u2019s hard to see a team making a move for him. The only reason to do so is if a team had assets that would expire before the summer, like that Atlanta Hawks and their expiring contract of Kristaps Porzingis. Even then, the Hawks don\u2019t control their own first-round pick in June, so they have no tanking incentive to acquire a guy who doesn\u2019t play.<\/p>\n Rumors continue to swirl around the Brooklyn Nets and Michael Porter, Jr., but it\u2019s important to remember that most trade rumors never end up happening. Mike Dunleavy, Jr. warned last month<\/a> that a blockbuster trade would be \u201cpretty unrealistic,\u201d although it feels to this author that trading for<\/a> Michael Porter, Jr. makes a lot of sense. Come on, Mike Junior! Go get another Mike Junior!<\/p>\n The Warriors may have dodged a bullet with the timing of Davis\u2019 injury, which is not one of AD\u2019s recurring maladies. He\u2019s had issues with his calf muscle, his Achilles tendon, his back, his adductor, his labrum, his knees, his toes, his shoulder, his ankle, his retina, his wrist, and concussions, but a torn ligament in his hand is new. Of course, if Davis had to dodge a bullet, he\u2019s agile enough to do it, but afterward, we\u2019d expect him to miss the next six weeks with a hamstring strain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Golden State Warriors claim they were never interested in trading for Dallas Mavericks big man Anthony Davis,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499773,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[7,686,149,4057,166,6,37651,1224,8939],"class_list":{"0":"post-530544","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas-mavericks","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-mavericks","11":"tag-dallasmavericks","12":"tag-mavericks","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-nba-news-and-rumors","15":"tag-warriors-news","16":"tag-warriors-rumors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115879261298669509","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=530544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/530544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=530544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=530544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=530544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}