{"id":5104,"date":"2019-02-06T23:39:38","date_gmt":"2019-02-06T23:39:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/?p=5104"},"modified":"2021-01-31T21:48:22","modified_gmt":"2021-01-31T21:48:22","slug":"nba-trade-deadline-uneventful-with-no-significant-player-moves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/nba\/nba-trade-deadline-uneventful-with-no-significant-player-moves\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Trade Deadline Uneventful With No Significant Player Moves"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA Trade Deadline has come and gone without any really significant personnel movement for any team. There were a fair number of trades but the overwhelming majority were motivated by financial concerns, not the on-court performance of the NBA team in question. Some teams are clearing payroll in hopes they can compete for the big free agents that will become available this Summer, most notably Kevin Durant of the Golden State Warriors. Other teams–typically those with losing records–are just trying to get their financial ‘house in order’ thinking that there’s no reason to pay higher than market value salaries for lower than market average performance.<\/p>\n

In fact, the biggest story of the NBA Trade Deadline was one that didn’t happen. After the New Orleans Pelicans benched disgruntled center Anthony Davis before the trade deadline they issued a statement that he would be playing again going forward<\/a>. Davis is unhappy in New Orleans and has demanded a trade. He’s not in a great position since he has a year left on his current deal meaning that the Pelicans would be justified in letting him ride the pine for the rest of this season and the next if they can’t find a deal to their liking.<\/p>\n

That might have been the plan but based on the statement the team released it sounds as if the NBA League Office might have intervened. Clearly, this is not a precedent they want to see set and although the statement issued by New Orleans GM Dell Demps tries to save face it’s obvious that the call for the change in course re: Davis came from a ‘higher power’. Demps statement begins:<\/p>\n

“A number of factors contributed to this decision. Ultimately, Anthony made it clear to us that he wants to play, and he gives our team the best opportunity to win games.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Now here’s the real reason for the switcheroo on Davis:<\/p>\n

“Moreover, the Pelicans want to preserve the integrity of the game and align our organization with NBA policies. We believe Anthony playing upholds the values that are in the best interest of the NBA and its fans. We look forward to seeing Anthony in a Pelicans uniform again soon.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The NBA simply didn’t want a healthy star being forced to sit out over financial or contractual reasons–even ones that the star in question brought upon himself. The NBA probably said something about the ‘optics’ of this. Davis has said that he wants to return to the court and finish out the season.<\/p>\n

Davis has already informed the team that he’ll leave via free agency in 2020 giving New Orleans no incentive whatsoever to a) make a last minute trade deadline move that didn’t bring the team decent value in return or b) bend over backwards to make Davis happy which includes playing him. Clearly, they’ve got a vested interest in keeping him healthy to preserve his ‘tradability’. Like seemingly every other player in the NBA, Davis is hoping to end up in Los Angeles and the Pelicans and Lakers had some preliminary discussion over the past few days but nothing substantial came out of them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NBA Trade Deadline has come and gone without any really significant personnel movement for any team. There were a…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nba"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5104"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15509,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5104\/revisions\/15509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.betonline.ag\/news-room\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}