Phantom my man... I appreciate the threads but this one is just really bad, specifically for the Kevin Love point that people have already made. Pelicans trading AD means they're blowing it up. They're going to want 3 top tier young assets/trades. Cavs have 1 in the pick. Love is actually a negative asset for a team that just blew up. He would be figurative cap filler.
The Pelicans have a lot of bad contracts though, that could be swapped for Kevin Love, actually making him a net positive to the trade. Asik, Hill, and Moore are all awful contracts for a rebuilding team. I'd much rather have Kevin Love than those 3 guys (as an example).
Would you give up a future hall of famer for it when the Celtics could take your bad contract and give a similar lotto pick plus smart and one of Tatum or brown? Something that you can actually build around ? Put another way, would you rather have 30 million in Kevin love or 30 million in 3 top prospects? Love will just walk or get old. He's just a waste of cap space for a team who won't make the playoffs for 5 years.
Davis, Hill, Asik, and Moore make just over 55 million this year. That is a lot of salary to acquire. For Boston to acquire Davis and those contracts, Boston would have to trade at least Horford along with Tatum, Brown, Morris, and LAL (post trade as you need the salary - this summer Boston can't trade Smart). Does Boston still want to do that? I might still do that if I'm Boston, but that trade becomes a lot more costly to do and Love is certainly more valuable than Horford going forward.
The Cavs on the other hand have a lot of extra salary. Love, Shumpert, Smith is enough salary to acquire all 4 of the NO players (that assumes Shumpert takes his player option before the trade). Cleveland could then add in whatever draft picks or young players that New Orleans wants. Cleveland also can work the trade so many different ways with Thompson and Crowder. Heck, Cleveland could even take on Holiday (if New Orleans was looking to move on fully).
Boston certainly can put together a more attractive package than the Cavs for just Davis, but there is a lot of extra value to New Orleans in dumping all those other unattractive contracts if they are moving on from Davis and in that Boston would struggle a great deal coming up with a better package.
The Sixers are also a real problem in any sort of major trade as they have a lot of attractive assets and can take on salary next summer as they are under the cap (even with the Embiid signing). The Lakers also have young player assets and cap room.
I didn't mean to say that we'd give them Tatum, LAL18, Smart + absorb ALL of their bad contract.
A fair deal would be something like this:
BOS:
Davis, E. Moore
PELS:
Tatum, LAL18, Smart (estimating him at 15-20 mil/yr extension), M. Morris + whatever filler
That would give the Pelicans some cap relief (Morris has a good contract), Marcus Smart, Tatum, and a good lottery pick. Everything they'd need to begin the rebuild.
Just because they have Hill and Asik on contract for another 2 years (after this season) doesn't mean anything. They need to get over the cap minimum anyways (I'm assuming Cousins walks in FA in this scenario).
This is much better than anything the Cavs can do.
Having said that, I'd rather wait til he's a free agent, sign Horford to a vet minimum (please Al!!) and recruit him for free. But if Pelicans agree to the above trade (they won't), you gotta pull the trigger.