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With speculation that the Los Angeles Lakers are interested in trading for New Orleans Pelicans superstar Anthony Davis, Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry had to set the record straight ahead of his team's game against the Lakers on Friday night.
Gentry began his shootaround media session by saying, “No, we're not trading him,” and then voiced his displeasure with Lakers superstar LeBron James expressing his desire for Los Angeles to acquire Davis:
Alvin Gentry began his shootaround availability with “No we’re not trading him.” He said of course LeBron saying it’d be amazing if the Lakers traded for Anthony Davis was tampering. “So should we start having AD say, ‘Why don’t we trade for LeBron?’” 👇🏼 pic.twitter.com/iIWFyHL7GT
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) December 21, 2018
Clearly, Gentry is peeved, and he has a point.
Why is it only tampering if a front-office executive makes the type of statement that James did? James is an NBA player and absolutely has a voice within the Lakers' front office, so Gentry is right in his assertion that he should be treated in a similar fashion.
Of course, it's no secret that Los Angeles—and the other 28 teams in the league—would love to pry Davis away from New Orleans.
With Davis set to enter free agency during the summer of 2021, teams will be lining up to acquire his services should he decide not to re-up with the Pelicans before then.
To be fair, Davis has given no indication that he wants to be traded. That being said, whenever a star player is toiling away on a mediocre team, especially in a small market, bells go off.
Davis, considered by some to be the best player in basketball, is averaging 28.0 points, 12.3 rebounds, 4.7 assists, 2.8 blocks and 1.8 steals over 36.8 minutes per game while shooting 50.4 percent from the floor, 33.8 percent from 3-point range and 81.1 percent from the free-throw line.
