Wow, my attempt to break down the luxury taxes effect on the Cs off-season somehow has become another Anthony Davis thread.
Bottom line with Davis is this.
The Pelicans are likely going to trade for Mirotic as has been reported.
They are also likely to still go all in and pay Cousins big this off-season.
They have no incentive to trade Anthony Davis this trade deadline or this off-season.
The time to trade AD will be around the 2019 draft. At this point he will have 1 yr left on his deal and a player option. If the team isn't a top 3 team in the west at that point there will be a real threat that he leaves as a FA after the 19/20 season. At that point Al will be going into the player option year of his contract and the Cs will have the Kings pick (if they don't get lakers this year), Grizz pick (top 6 protected), and clippers pick (top 14 protected) to build a potential trade package with. It also could be important to have a player like smart on a roughly 10mill deal that maybe needed to construct an AD package if Al isnt going to take his option
Until the 2019 draft I do not see any reason for the Pelicans to even think about trading AD.
Cmon, it’s CB... every thread is an AD thread.
As for your bottom line, I disagree. Mirotic doesn’t move the needle, at all. First round playoff fodder, at best.
Isn’t Boogie eligible for that supermax, where he will get something like $40M per? Are you sure NOP is ready to dole that out for a guy his size coming off that type of injury?
So there can certainly be reason to believe the time will come sooner rather than later to trade AD. The less time on his contract, the less valuable he becomes. How many teams will give up the farm when he has a year left and no guarantee he will stay? When it’s 2 years, that’s a big difference. Let’s be real, they won’t be a top 3 team next year. Not happening. But let’s say they are the 4-5 seed, which is super-optimistic. Then what? They will be in no real position to make additional moves. I reckon they don’t have any potential top picks on the horizon, just their own.
So they will be stuck in the good-but-not-great category for the foreseeable future, all while AD’s value continues to come down. Maybe they can sell him and the fans on a couple more years of what they are, mediocre. I don’t know. But after a while they will have to put a much better team around him or start over. If they start over, the time to move him would be this offseason, or the latest the 2019 deadline.