Saturday 2 February 2019 11:28, UK
The New Orleans Pelicans wasted the chance to build a contending team around the elite talent of Anthony Davis. Now the race is on to sign the wantaway All-Star. Mark Deeks examines the favourites and the outsiders to secure Davis' signature.
In a way, it was inevitable. The New Orleans Pelicans currently sit in a lowly 13th place in the Western Conference with a 23-29 record, five games back of the Los Angeles Clippers in eighth place and trending the wrong way. This comes after finishing above .500 and making the playoffs in only two of the previous six seasons, with only one playoff series win in that time, and a cumulative 218-274 regular season record over that span.
That said, when the news broke this week that Anthony Davis had made known his desire to leave the team, it still came as something of a surprise. After all, why now?
It has long been assumed that at some point, Davis would become available. That six-year period for the Pelicans began in 2012, the season after the franchise drafted Davis first overall. Yet a 43.5 regular season winning percentage and five playoff game victories is all they have to show for it.
By virtue of the guaranteed four-year contracts given to first-round draft picks, and the restricted free agency at their conclusion that rather ties stars and superstars to the teams that drafted them for at least one more contract, the Pelicans had control over Davis for that long. They had their opportunity to build a contender with a legitimate Hall of Game talent. They wasted it. Now, it seems, they have no more chances.
Any speculation on what happens now must be done with an understanding of Davis's contract situation in mind. Davis' contract runs through the end of the 2020-21 season, and although there is a player option on that final season - one he absolutely will not exercise as he will be eligible for a big pay rise at that time - he cannot be a free agent until the summer of 2020 at the earliest.
The timing of Davis's decision, then, strongly indicates he has no plans to wait that long, his patience has run out and that he really wants to be traded prior to that.
Due to a complicated salary cap machination, however, Davis is not able to be traded to every other team right now.
The 2011 Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) brought in four rules, later expanded upon and liberalised in the 2017 CBA; the Designated Rookie rule, the Designated Veteran rule, the Fifth Year 30 per cent Max Criteria rule (colloquially known the 'Rose Rule'), and the Designated Veteran Player 35 per cent Max Criteria rule (colloquially known as the 'Super max'). When combined, these rules are designed to allow teams to give bigger and longer contracts to star players.
The Designated Rookie rule allows teams to give an extra year than is usually allowed to a maximum of two players receiving rookie scale contract extensions that are for at least the maximum player salary. Davis signed his extension for the maximum player salary in the summer of 2015, thus the longest deal he could get was for five extra years (one more than the usual maximum of four), which he accepted.
These rules were brought in with a view to curtailing the rise of 'super teams' (several superstar players being on one team at the same time), about which there was much concern at the time following LeBron James' move to the Miami Heat.
The longer contract and increased maximum salary rules were introduced concurrent with other salary cap rules devised to prevent 'super teams' such as the Heat, so that incumbent (and often small market) teams had an advantage in retaining their own players rather than losing them in free agency. They might not be able to offer contendership, but they could at least pay their players more.
However, one such caveat designed to prevent super teams is inadvertently going to hinder the Pelicans' trade options with Davis. Specifically, no team can have more than one player playing under a Designated Rookie contract on its team at any given time that they acquired via trade.
The Boston Celtics, then, are not going to be enamoured with the timing of Davis's announcement, as they already acquired their quota of one when they traded for Kyrie Irving. Therefore, they cannot trade for Davis until either the expiration of Irving's contract this summer, or unless they trade Kyrie prior/concurrently. This is not something they are at all likely to do. Down goes one big player, then. The Celtics are the only team in the league inhibited in this way.
Of course, every team in the league should want to have Anthony Davis, and they surely do. It is not however realistic for many of them to be in the running. Davis' motivation for trade is that he no longer wants to be mired in the mediocrity that the Pelicans have been in - he wants to compete. So those teams several steps below contending, even with Davis on the roster, can by and large be discounted. Even if they could put together the appropriate trade package, the probably-unwinnable struggle will be re-signing Davis in 18 months' time.
Whoever trades for Davis will be able to offer Davis more money via his Bird rights, but if it was purely about money, Davis would have stayed in New Orleans and taken the Designated Veteran Player 35 per cent Max Criteria contract (something only New Orleans can offer him that would pay a lot more than any other team could do).
Without having an actual trade veto power, Davis has an implicit one - if he is not happy with the team he is traded to, he can walk in 18 months' time. Many teams, Boston included, have been strategising for Davis' free agency from years out. There will therefore definitely be suitors at that time, and Davis can essentially veto a trade by telling any interested trade partner that he will not re-sign.
The Chicago Bulls may want to try and leverage the fact that they play in Davis's home city. That said, the Bulls are among the league's very worst teams, and free-falling. In theory, they could begin to put together a package based around Lauri Markkanen and Wendell Carter, sell it as the next Paul Millsap/Al Horford pairing, and compete with other offers. In practice, Davis is not interested.
Similarly, the New York Knicks are always said to be interested in any star that becomes available. Like the Bulls, they surely need them; last in the league, losers of 11 games in a row, armed with no stars following the shock trade of Kristaps Porzingis to the Dallas Mavericks.
Davis does not seem realistic for them, neither in terms of what the Knicks could offer (without Porzingis the Knicks cupboard is threadbare) nor Davis's incentive to stay there (see previous comments about bare cupboard).
The need to re-sign Davis should not entirely be a deterrent to some suitors, however. The recent example of Paul George should give some heart to any team worried about whether they can keep a superstar player they acquired only one season before their contract expires.
The Oklahoma City Thunder traded for George with a year left on his contract, and it had long been expected that George would walk to the Los Angeles Lakers upon its expiration. However, the Thunder took the risk, used that season to do some internal recruiting on George, and he ultimately re-signed at the earliest opportunity.
The Toronto Raptors are looking to do the same with Kawhi Leonard this upcoming summer, and any competitive team that backs itself should do the same. Potentially, this includes Toronto again. But who else?
Despite their knack for acquiring All-Star players, the Golden State Warriors are surely not in the running. The Pelicans will seek young talents for Davis around which they can build again, and the Warriors do not have those of enough pedigree. Nor likely do Portland, Miami, Oklahoma City, San Antonio or Milwaukee, and, much as the Houston Rockets would love to win this bidding war, they definitely do not.
In theory, the Philadelphia 76ers could construct a deal around the unique talents of Ben Simmons, who would be the best player New Orleans could foreseeably hope to get back for Davis. How Davis and Joel Embiid would pair would have to be figured out - Davis is better suited to the center spot, much as he may not want to play it full-time. Yet the sheer volume of talent at the top end of the 76ers' roster would be something special and finding a way to make it work would be quite a pleasant problem to have.
In a similar situation out west are the Denver Nuggets, briefly the league's best team this season. Denver are a legitimate contender at this point, and if they could add Davis to that in a package based around Jamal Murray (an excellent player to be sure, but several tiers below Davis even at his peak), then they should go for it. Among the bidding teams, Denver offers Davis the chance of title competitiveness as much as anyone.
Outside chances perhaps include the Brooklyn Nets, for so long now an afterthought but who have played their way into the Eastern Conference playoff picture, and who are plenty young enough to have more growth on top of that.
So too may the Sacramento Kings, themselves very much trending upwards, although their leverage to retain someone like Davis is not strong. The Los Angeles Clippers may accelerate their 2019 free agency plans if Davis is available, and they have some pieces with which to do it, while although it is less obvious how they would go about it, the already-good Indiana Pacers and Utah Jazz could vault into true competitiveness with Davis on board.
And then there's the Lakers.
Just as was the case with Paul George, Kawhi Leonard and LeBron James before him, Davis has been inextricably linked to the Lakers long before this week. The Lakers are recommitted to the idea of Lakers Exceptionalism, and although they are only batting 1-3 on those targets so far, that is no reason to stop swinging for the fences.
Davis sharing an agent with LeBron - an agent so powerful at this point that they do not even mind having their name so clearly front and centre in this news - is thought to be part of the allure for him, as of course is LeBron himself.
The hurdle to clear, however, will be whether the Pelicans are interested in what the Lakers have to trade. In theory, the Lakers have a package of Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma, Josh Hart and the enigma that is Brandon Ingram to trade, yet per the above, these are offers that can be beaten by others teams.
The Pelicans have no requirement to deal Davis at all right now, let alone to one team in particular.
That said, the timing of this news is not a coincidence. The NBA's trade deadline is February 7, and it just kicked into top gear.
Davis and his people, it seems, have issued a concurrent deadline of their own.
Currently out of the line-up with a short term injury, Davis may well have played his last game for the Pelicans already.
There now follows a few days of negotiation, posturing and selective leaking.
And then it's game on.
