Anthony Davis traded to Lakers(page 272)

[iadera]

How in a world have Spurs got better?!

[ETNCeltics]

How in a world have Spurs got better?!

Well, Kawhi didn't play much last year and wasn't much when he did, so a healthy Derozan makes them better than they were last year.

[Fafnir]

If he is willing to commit to resign and stay with the C's long term, pretty much anything that's not bolted down. I'll assume Kyrie stays on a new contract or leaves, so its next offseason and its all legal.

You need to keep "enough" to contend and not put yourself in the NOP's situation where you don't have a title team around him, but I don't think any individual piece is unmovable. Build the package around Kyrie? Sure. Build it around Horford/picks, sure. Build it around Hayward/picks, sure. Build it around Marcus/Brown/picks, sure.

If I was sending them Tatum though, they wouldn't be getting anything more than other salary to make the deal legal.

[ausbacker]

No, I want a homegrown talent I can root for for the entirety of his NBA career.

[byennie]

Regarding playoffs... Kevin Garnett says hi.

The TWolves won 7 playoffs games in his first 8 years.

[Ogaju]

NO, I am good.

[nickagneta]

Salary being equal, one on one, how can anyone say no? Tatum's skills on this team are repetitive. We have enough players that do what Tatum does. The Celtics, heck, only New Orleans, have what Davis brings to the game as a total package. Trading Tatum for Davis probably makes the Celtics title favorites for like the next 5 years, minimum.

[ETNCeltics]

Davis top 3 player..nuff said

Davis is obviously a great player. However, how many top 5 players have only made the playoffs twice in their first 6 seasons and only got out of the first round once in that time frame? With all of the star treatment a top 5 player receives by the referees, this seems like an almost impossible feat.

You keep banging this drum, and it doesn't make a lot of sense.  Durant didn't win a playoff series til his 4th year, and not until he had another all star playing alongside him. AD has had no such luxury.

He's generally been on garbage teams with questionable guard play, and then was saddled with a ball hog center who thinks he's a 3 pt shooter. He started to get some continuity and decent guard play for the first time in his career, and his team rolls over Portland, and gave GSW a lot better fight than Lebron did.

AD is the most valuable commodity in the NBA. No one matches up against him, and he can match up against any other big man. The one and only legitimate case against him is he's only averaged 68 games/season, but then he's played 75 in each of the last 2, so it's getting harder to even make that case.

Trading any individual player for AD is a no-brainer. I love JT and hope we can keep him forever, but not trading him straight up for AD is absurd. And a hypothetical, because we're at least a couple years from AD being available anyway.

The 2014-15 season was the first time he made the playoffs, and New Orleans was a tie breaker away from missing the playoffs altogether. Last season was the second time Davis made the playoffs, and they were only two games from missing the playoffs again. Can you imagine LeBron or Durant having a stretch of 6 years like this on any team?

I don't watch him enough to know the answer, but something doesn't add up. LeBron went to his first finals on a team that would have made Davis' team last season look like an all star team. When your a top 5 player, making the playoffs every year should be the bare minimum as far as team success. That's not asking much, when half the league makes the playoffs.

As someone pointed out above, good thing Ainge didn't look at Garnett that way. You play for a garbage organization, you're not going anywhere, especially in a western conference that was dominated by SAS and GSW over AD's entire career.

2014-15 was AD's 3rd season. Guess which was Lebron's first playoff season? His 3rd season.

Now you're moving the goalposts that his team wasn't impressive enough in actually making the playoffs? AD is a guaranteed 1st ballot HOFer if he stays relatively healthy. He lead the NBA in shot blocks, again. He's the only big man in the game that's perennial 1st team all-nba. He's the league's best post player, best post defender, and one of the best rebounders.

Not only would most of us do that deal, Ainge would do it at lightspeed, although admittedly, the odds of such a deal are tiny.

I think JT is going to be a huge star and Larkin isn't overstating his potential, but the fact remains, AD is already at the level we hope JT gets to.

[chiken Green]

Tatum looks like a Taller Kobe Bryant... I don't trade a Kobe Bryant for anyone.

[mmmmm]

Davis top 3 player..nuff said

Davis is obviously a great player. However, how many top 5 players have only made the playoffs twice in their first 6 seasons and only got out of the first round once in that time frame? With all of the star treatment a top 5 player receives by the referees, this seems like an almost impossible feat.

You're not really acknowledging the absolute dumpster fire that New Orleans has been, which has been the major contributing factor to that

Yeah, people need to step back and acknowledge that franchise' tracking for championship titles is probably far more weighty than all but the absolute single, generational players.   Lebron has been literally the only player the last couple of decades who can individually swing a crap team into being a contender.   Every other title contending team has tended to be based on multiple stars assembled on a well run organization.

If you put Davis on a team as well run as the Celtics?  That's a whole different story from what he has written so far in NOLA.

[CelticsElite]

Davis top 3 player..nuff said

Davis is obviously a great player. However, how many top 5 players have only made the playoffs twice in their first 6 seasons and only got out of the first round once in that time frame? With all of the star treatment a top 5 player receives by the referees, this seems like an almost impossible feat.

You keep banging this drum, and it doesn't make a lot of sense.  Durant didn't win a playoff series til his 4th year, and not until he had another all star playing alongside him. AD has had no such luxury.

He's generally been on garbage teams with questionable guard play, and then was saddled with a ball hog center who thinks he's a 3 pt shooter. He started to get some continuity and decent guard play for the first time in his career, and his team rolls over Portland, and gave GSW a lot better fight than Lebron did.

AD is the most valuable commodity in the NBA. No one matches up against him, and he can match up against any other big man. The one and only legitimate case against him is he's only averaged 68 games/season, but then he's played 75 in each of the last 2, so it's getting harder to even make that case.

Trading any individual player for AD is a no-brainer. I love JT and hope we can keep him forever, but not trading him straight up for AD is absurd. And a hypothetical, because we're at least a couple years from AD being available anyway.

how good was tatums team last year? He was missing kyrie, Hayward, theis, and larkin

Tatum essentially took brown, horford, and average scrubs to the ecf game 7.

[gouki88]

Davis top 3 player..nuff said

Davis is obviously a great player. However, how many top 5 players have only made the playoffs twice in their first 6 seasons and only got out of the first round once in that time frame? With all of the star treatment a top 5 player receives by the referees, this seems like an almost impossible feat.

You keep banging this drum, and it doesn't make a lot of sense.  Durant didn't win a playoff series til his 4th year, and not until he had another all star playing alongside him. AD has had no such luxury.

He's generally been on garbage teams with questionable guard play, and then was saddled with a ball hog center who thinks he's a 3 pt shooter. He started to get some continuity and decent guard play for the first time in his career, and his team rolls over Portland, and gave GSW a lot better fight than Lebron did.

AD is the most valuable commodity in the NBA. No one matches up against him, and he can match up against any other big man. The one and only legitimate case against him is he's only averaged 68 games/season, but then he's played 75 in each of the last 2, so it's getting harder to even make that case.

Trading any individual player for AD is a no-brainer. I love JT and hope we can keep him forever, but not trading him straight up for AD is absurd. And a hypothetical, because we're at least a couple years from AD being available anyway.

how good was tatums team last year? He was missing kyrie, Hayward, theis, and larkin

Tatum essentially took brown, horford, and average scrubs to the ecf game 7.

The players surrounding Tatum were way better than those Davis has been surrounded by. You're surely not comparing those two rosters, are you?

AD has had 65 games of DMC over 1 and a half seasons or so, Jrue Holiday (who was really only healthy and playing very well in 17-18), and Rondo as his best teammates. Without DMC (although, with playoff Rondo) AD led his team to the Western semis where they put up a bigger challenge to GSW than Cleveland did, lol.
Give AD Horford, Brown, Smart, Rozier, Morris and Baynes and that team would definitely have made the ECF, and might have posed a bigger threat to LBJ than we did with JT. They're not comparable at all man.

[jdrocko]

3-team trade:

Kyrie to Minnesota
Wiggins and SAC pick (and Yabusele for salary matching purposes thanks to AD’s trade kicker) to New Orleans
Davis to Celtics

Minnesota gets Kyrie to pair with Butler, and the Bird rights to both.
New Orleans gets a potential franchise player just starting his second deal and a pick with high potential to be in the top 5.
Celtics get Davis.

I think we should probably include another first (direction NO) and maybe Minnesota gives up something too but wow, that would be a huge trade for us...TP for letting me dream about this scenario

[Androslav]

Tatum looks like a Taller Kobe Bryant... I don't trade a Kobe Bryant for anyone.

I voted no. He is a controllable asset could turn out to be even better, also Davis isn't available.

It is still early, but he doesn't seem like a selfish dork Kobe was. And yet hasn't been a narcissist. The league advertised him in the absence of MJ, and he copied his game after him to 85%.

Let us remember that Kobe contended ONLY when he had the best big men rotation in the league around him. Shaq + Gasol/Odom/Bynum/MWP, in a more of a back to the basket era.

If he didn't have the leagues best big men around, he either failed to make the playoffs or bounced in the 1st round.

Kobe is top 20 of all time, but I honestly think Tatum can surpass him.

[smokeablount]

How in a world have Spurs got better?!

They have the same team as last year but swapped Danny Green for DeRozan.  Kawhi isn't on the team this year but he wasn't on the team last year either.