Tag: nba article

What Is The Pelicans Best Option In The AD Trade Situation?

The biggest story this off-season is where Anthony Davis will end up. Everyone is talking about where Davis should go. However, everyone seems to be forgetting that Anthony Davis will not be a free agent until after the 2019-2020 NBA season. It is really up to the Pelicans where Anthony Davis goes; or if he goes anywhere. New Orleans has four trade options that could benefit them the most.

The worst option for the Pelicans is trading Anthony Davis to the Knicks. If the rumors are to be believed, New York is one of the likely destinations for Kevin Durant. It is also rumored that Kyrie Irving may leave Boston and possibly go to New York. If that happens then New York would be a desirable destination for AD. However, trading Anthony Davis to the Knicks would be the worst option for New Orleans.

The Knicks can’t offer anything anywhere close to the packages that other teams can. The best offer the Knicks would be able to produce would be Kevin Knox, Dennis Smith Jr., DeAndre Jordan, and the number 3 pick in the 2019 NBA draft. Knox and Smith Jr. are good players but the Pelicans already have Jrue Holiday and E’Twaun Moore to fill those spots. DeAndre Jordan is an interesting asset. He would give the Pelicans a solid Center to replace Anthony Davis. Jordan is no where near as good as Davis but he can help the pelicans fill that gap. The number 3 pick in the draft is a great asset and could help New Orleans get Zion Williamson and his duke teammate, RJ Barrett, on the same team. But they could get a much better package from another team that would include more young talent.

A better option for the Pelicans would be trading Anthony Davis to the Boston Celtics. Danny Ainge has been known as an extremely aggressive GM and has made a lot of trades in the past few years and adding AD could give the Celtics the boost they need to win a championship. However, by making this trade they will also give up their future. In order for the Pelicans to even consider giving up Davis, Ainge will have to give up the house. A good trade package for the Celtics to put together would be Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Aaron Baynes, and possibly the number 14 pick in the 2019 NBA draft. This would give New Orleans a formidable starting five in Jrue Holiday, Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum, Julius Randle, and Aaron Baynes with E’Twaun Moore as a solid scorer coming of the bench. The biggest issue with this trade is on the Celtics side. If Kyrie Irving doesn’t stay in Boston then the Celtics may not want to trade away their future stars. It all depends on if Kyrie stays or not.

Another option, and in my opinion the best option, for New Orleans is to trade Anthony Davis to the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers need AD, which means they are desperate. They have a limited amount of time with LeBron and they believe that a LeBron and AD pair is the key to championship success. Anything the Pelicans want they are sure to get. This trade will be much like the Boston trade in terms of the Pelicans receiving a lot of good, young talent. The Pelicans would most likely receive Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, and Lonzo Ball. They may also try to get one of the Lakers big men, like JaVale McGee, to fill the hole that loosing Anthony Davis will leave in the starting line up. But what makes this trade so much more enticing than the Boston trade is the Lakers number 4 pick in the 2019 NBA draft.

While they may not get RJ Barrett with that pick they could get Darius Garland, a guard from Vanderbilt who is a solid scorer and could be a good back up for Jrue Holiday while Garland learns the NBA game. However, nothing is set in stone and RJ Barrett may not be taken in the top 3. With this trade the Pelicans will get several young players with a lot of potential and a good prospect.

New Orleans’s last option is to keep Anthony Davis. This will be difficult because AD has made it clear that he doesn’t want to be in New Orleans and most people doubt he wants to share the spot light with a young rookie. If he did stay then a Zion AD pair could be a big threat to the rest of the league. However, with Davis seemingly intent on leaving New Orleans the Pelicans best option would be to trade AD and get something in return now, rather than keep him for a year and then lose him for nothing in free agency.

The New Orleans Pelicans hold all the cards. They can get just about anything and anyone they want. All they have to do is decide what they want and they have some very good options.

How Masai Ujiri Made The Raptors A Contender

In 1995, The Toronto Raptors franchise was born. In their inaugural season the Raptors won 21 games. For years the Raptors have been the laughing stock of the NBA. Conspiracies to keep the Raptors out of the finals have even raced through the ranks of Toronto basketball fans. So how did a franchise that felt more like the NBA’s weird cousin than it did an actual NBA team get to the NBA finals in 24 years? The answer is simple. Masai Ujiri.

Masai Ujiri is the General Manager of the Toronto Raptors and is possibly the best General manager in the NBA today. He took a franchise that seemed like it was stuck in the second round of the playoffs and turned them into not only a contender, but a genuine threat to the Golden State Warriors. He did this by taking risks that many GM’s in the league would consider insane.

His first risk was perhaps the biggest one he took. Ujiri fired the Raptors head coach, Dwane Casey. This caught the NBA by surprise. Dwane Casey had just had a historic season with the Raptors. Not only had he led the Raptors to their winningest season in franchise history, with 59 wins. but he was also a candidate for coach of the year, an award that he would later win. Everyone knew the Raptors needed a change to move up to the next level, but to fire the best coach in franchise history? What could Ujiri be thinking?

After firing Dwane Casey, Ujiri named Nick Nurse as the Raptors next head coach. Nurse had a lot of experience as a basketball coach, coaching high school, college, and having championship success in the G-league. However, the most NBA coaching experience he had was 5 years as an assistant coach with the Raptors. Masai Ujiri had just fired the best coach in franchise history for the assistant coach.

The next risk Ujiri took was trading DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl, and a 2019 protected first round pick to the Spurs for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green. This was risky for two reasons. DeMar DeRozan was the face of the Toronto franchise. What he meant to that city and that franchise is difficult to describe. He gave his heart and soul to the Raptors organization and their fans. Losing Poeltl, Green, and the pick wasn’t a big deal for the Raptors, but loosing DeRozan was like loosing a loved one and DeRozen wasn’t happy about it either.

The biggest part of the trade was the Raptors receiving Kawhi Leonard. Kawhi had made a mess of the situation in San Antonio, stating that he was unhappy with how the Spurs staff had handled his injury and that he wanted out. The Spurs didn’t want to trade one of the best players in the league to any western conference competition, so they traded him to Toronto. Kawhi had made it clear that he wanted to go to LA, so it was pretty much a forgone conclusion that wherever Kawhi went that wasn’t LA, he would be there for 1 season before moving on.

Masai Ujiri had just traded the most beloved Raptors player and a 4-time all-star for a superstar who would more than likely only be there for a year. Kawhi was clearly not happy about the trade and with DeRozen leaving Kyle Lowry and Ujiri’s relationship deteriorated. Lowry and Ujiri, reportedly, didn’t even talk outside of a professional situation for a good portion of the first half of the season. So, Ujiri traded DeMar DeRozen, a beloved Raptors player and the best on the team and he damaged his relationship with the second best player on the team. All for a player who would probably leave after a year.

The last risk that Masai Ujiri took was trading Jonas Valanciunas, Delon Wright, C.J. Miles and a 2024 second-round pick to the Memphis Grizzlies for Marc Gasol. The Grizzlies were clearly in the beginning stages of a rebuild and wanted to get Gasol out of Memphis. This was not a bad trade by any means. The Raptors may have lost Valanciunas and some role players but they gained a former defensive player of the year in Gasol. This was less of a risk and more of a move that required Gasol to perform to make the trade worth it.

If even one of these risks went wrong Ujiri would look like a terrible GM. Luckily for him, they all panned out. Gasol has performed great in the playoffs and was instrumental in the Raptors defeat of the Philadelphia Seventy-Sixers with his excellent defense on Joel Embiid. Nick Nurse has proven himself to be a fantastic coach. He has made the necessary adjustments in the playoffs that Dwane Casey wasn’t able to. He has coached the Raptors into a historic post-season and is on the verge of winning an NBA championship as a rookie head coach. And Kawhi Leonard is looking better and better in his Raptors uniform. While he hasn’t made a commitment to stay with the Raptors I believe that the chances are looking good that he will stay. Not only that but he has performed incredibly for the Raptors, hitting game winners and averaging 30.7 points-per-game with 50.1% shooting in the playoffs.

With Game 1 of the NBA finals having just concluded and the Raptors essentially dominating the Warriors on both ends of the floor, a Raptors in 6 prediction doesn’t sound so crazy anymore. All these risks that Masai Ujiri took have not only paid off; they just might help the Raptors win their first NBA Championship in franchise history.