Interesting article from Lowe. So let's game it out from the viewpoint of the three parties:
1) New Orleans: At this point, it seems they have to work under the assumption that Davis isn't coming back. Thus, there's an incentive to trade him. Do you trade him now, when the only real player is the Lakers, or do you wait until the summer, when the Celtics can get involved? Lowe mentioned Kawhi as a reason that NOP might want to trade him now, to avoid a collapse in his value. But it seems to me that Kawhi was an entirely different situation. Davis has no marks against him, whereas Kawhi was either A) coming off a season ending injury, or B) was so toxic in the locker room that he couldn't get along with one of the most popular coaches in the league.
In other words, I don't see much threat of AD's value collapsing. I guess that he could declare that there's no way he's resigning with NOP, which would, in theory, diminish his trade value. But for a top-5 player without Kawhi's issues, there's still going to be a huge bid.
2) Lakers: Because the Lakers have to assume that NOP is willing to hold out, they're gonna have to make their Godfather offer before the trade deadline. None of this "We'll offer them our second-best package and raise it later if we need to." Their goal is to prevent this situation from ever getting to the point where the Celtics have a shot at him. What will it take? As someone suggested earlier, looks like Kuzma, Hart and Ball, plus a few draft picks. It definitely leaves them a little thin, but with a starting two like AD and LeBron, they could definitely attract players to come to LA at a discount and will have some room to do so.
LeBron plans on winning a championship in LA, and I'm sure that the Lakers promised him that they would spare no expense to do so.
If Davis is still available after the trade deadline, I feel much better about the Celtics' chances.
3) Boston: Totally screwed by an obscure rule, and can't get involved until July. I think we all know that, so their ability to play is controlled by the other two parties. The plus side is that we have the best assets to offer. A deal of Brown, Smart, Yabu and Williams, plus the Memphis and Sac picks, is a better deal than what the Lakers can offer.
The problem is this: We don't know the future value of our assets, only the current value. If Brown continues to play like he is now, his value drops. We don't know how NOP would value Smart, but he strikes me as one of those players who won't do nearly as well anywhere else (and who can picture the Celtics without Smart, anyway; could we do a S&T with Rozier instead of Marcus?). And if SAC and Memphis continue their winning ways, those picks won't be nearly as valuable.
Ultimately, if I'm New Orleans, I'm probably better off waiting it out. Even if the Cs players fall apart, the LA offer will still be on the table. But the one thing that we don't know is how AD feels about all of this. If he says, "I want to go to LA," then chances are that's where he'll end up. On the other hand, from Davis's point of view, it's now him, LeBron and a much thinner team, not to mention the fact that stars don't see to work well with LeBron, even though I'm sure that James is promising him that it will be his team in a couple of years.
Right now, I think I'm slightly leaning toward LA, because of the whole bird in hand thing, not to mention that they don't want to risk a situation where AD tells them that he wants to go to Tinseltown, scaring off other suitors.
Mike