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On January 28, 2019, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Anthony Davis had requested a trade from the New Orleans Pelicans, marking the beginning of a five-month trade saga that ended with Davis’s trade to the Los Angeles Lakers. However, it seems that Davis wanted to leave New Orleans much earlier.
During a recent appearance on the “All The Smoke” podcast, Paul George revealed that he had spoken with Anthony Davis about teaming up in Indiana, where George played from 2010 to 2017. Davis confirmed George’s comments after Lakers practice on Sunday, but said he’s happy with the way things have gone since then.
“The Paul thing in Indiana, it was a conversation, sure, but it faded,” Davis said. “I’m not sure what happened in the end. Said management didn’t want to do it, or whatever, but it was a conversation.
“And then LeBron said he wanted to build a team and in the year that we do that, we won a championship, so I think Bron made it exist and it happened, and I’m glad it happened. For me, for my selfish reasons, I wanted it to happen in my first year teaming up with him.
But who knows what would have happened to Paul in Indiana? He is another great player. Especially when he was in Indiana. It was definitely difficult to protect. It’s still tough to score today but I think that was a long time ago and we’ve met so many times since then … you always think about what could have happened. Would my career be very different from what it is now? “
Reading that as a Lakers fan has to feel better than reading that as a Pacers fan, but not by much. As much as Pacers fans would surely have loved to see George and Davis on the same team, there was nothing Indiana could have offered New Orleans for Davis when George was still with the Pacers, especially considering that a Davis still had three years left. on his contract in 2017.
If it had cost the Lakers a monster package to get Davis to an expiring contract, it probably would have cost the Pacers twice as much, and they didn’t even have half of what the Lakers had to offer. In other words, Davis could have told the Pelicans that he wanted to play for the Pacers outright and it probably wouldn’t have mattered – timing is everything, and the Lakers went after Davis at the perfect time.
Now Davis is a champion, and if George wants to win a championship while he is also in Los Angeles, he will have to go through Davis as they both got better again with their teams over the next five years. The plot thickens.
For more Lakers talk, subscribe to the Silver Screen and Roll podcast at iTunes, Spotify, Stapler or Google Podcasts. You can follow this author on Twitter at @RadRivas.
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