Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr received some mixed reactions following his decision to criticize new Los Angeles Lakers star Anthony Davis for the superstar's unwillingness to see out his contract with the New Orleans Pelicans.

Jared Dudley, himself a newcomer to the Lakers, came to the defense of his teammate, saying Davis had every right to request for a trade from the Pelicans, a team he had given so much to over the past seven years:

“You know what, I am a huge Steve Kerr fan,” Dudley told Ethan Strauss of The Athletic. “Obviously, he traded for me. I was in Phoenix with the same agent (Mark Bartelstein). That’s the only time I think I’ve disagreed with him. Because, why can’t a player ask out of his contract if what you sold him on changed? Happens all the time. Hey, we want to win, but now we’re going to rebuild. Vice-versa where a guy gets traded after a year when there are three years left on his contract. And so why can a team be able to trade but a player can’t ask for a trade?”

Dudley went on to explain that Davis' case is no different from other trade scenarios, except that the six-time All-Star merely decided to go public with his demands:

“Now, the only difference of this is the perception,” he said. “Paul George asks for a trade, but no one knows about it. But Anthony Davis comes out and because it’s public, now he’s getting killed, just because it’s public. So you know, the way for players to do it is in private, but obviously he thought he couldn’t get out of there if he did it privately. And so people ask for trades all the time, all the time. And so I just don’t understand Steve’s stance on that because, if you run your organization well enough, Anthony Davis was in New Orleans, he didn’t make it past the second round in eight, nine years. Like, what do you want him to do?”

Dudley puts forth a valid stance here, and he does well to deflect Kerr's recent statement against Davis. Whatever the case may be, this is all water under the bridge now, and Davis will now be front and center of the new era of Lakers basketball.