Moments of Permanence - NBA update: this season goes out on shocked gasp noises

From: sami Date: April 14th, 2019 04:23 am (UTC) (Link)

Dude has not been making friends.

It's actually kinda weird.

He was drafted first overall by the New Orleans Pelicans, and... they haven't had that much success, but a lot of it has actually been bad luck. They've been trying really really hard to put a good team together, but more than anything their problem has been injuries.

Last season DeMarcus Cousins was playing for them when he had his Achilles tear. They still made the playoffs and the second round of the playoffs at that, so the team hasn't actually underperformed, he's just apparently developed some serious resentment in the last year.

Where things got particularly sour is that earlier this season he demanded a trade. The demand was public, which is already a bad look, but then his agent made it known that he wanted to go to one team, specifically - the LA Lakers - which badly depressed his trade value.

The Lakers offered about half their team for him, but the trouble is those players were all various kinds of not that good, and it's pretty much only Lakers fans who thought the offer was worth it, especially since if the Pelicans waited until this offseason, they'd have a decent shot at getting *better* players for him from the Boston Celtics, who could really use him and have a surplus of young talent.

This ruined team chemistry for the Lakers at the same time as the sullen presence of Anthony Davis hasn't been great for the Pelicans, although the Pelicans not named Anthony Davis look like they're coming together anew, so there's that.

The best guess anyone has for what got Davis so incredibly sour is that he switched agents to Rich Paul of Klutch Sports, an individual and business very strongly linked to LeBron James, now of the Lakers. The theory is that Rich Paul convinced Davis that as a Laker he could be living the LA high life and winning championships with LeBron James.

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From: fred_mouse Date: April 14th, 2019 06:42 am (UTC) (Link)

That sounds like the change of agents was a really bad move!

Thanks for summarising this for me, because I really didn't have the brain space to go and look it up for myself.

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From: sami Date: April 14th, 2019 07:02 am (UTC) (Link)

Any time. I honestly wouldn't know where to look to start collecting all the disparate threads of the storylines in the NBA, for the most part.

There's just been *so much*.

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