Have the New Orleans Pelicans ruined their future?

The New Orleans Pelicans refused to acquiesce Anthony Davis’ trade request prior to the 2019 NBA Trade Deadline and have already been feeling the consequences. How badly could that decision hurt the franchise in the long-term?

We are now a week past the 2019 NBA Trade Deadline and life for the New Orleans Pelicans is even more awkward than many imagined it would be after they failed to deal Anthony Davis. Tuesday night was just one of what figures to be an endless succession of lows, as the Pelicans got smashed by 30 points on their home court by the Orlando Magic.

With an amped Oklahoma City Thunder team coming to New Orleans Thursday night, the Pelicans figure to limp into the All-Star break shaken and discouraged. They are 1-2 since Davis returned to the team after a finger injury sidelined him for the prior nine games, and not a minute of any of those three games has been pretty or passionate.

Unfortunately for New Orleans, every single game for the rest of the 2018-19 season will sully a franchise that is 24th in attendance and isn’t exactly working with the greatest reputation around the league to begin with.

Davis’ trade request — ultimately maneuvering to force New Orleans into sending the star to the Los Angeles Lakers —  was first reported by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, and sent the entire league into a chaotic spiral in the week and a half leading up to the trade deadline. After perhaps intentionally frustrating talks with the Lakers and president of basketball operations Magic Johnson stalled, New Orleans and the league are now in for an additional four months of rampant speculation and uncomfortable postgame locker rooms.

The situation is made worse by the NBA’s needless intrusion into the matter, as the league office apparently put pressure on the Pelicans to play Davis after they failed to deal him.

That level of risk — Davis has already missed multiple stretches of games this season, doing little to dispel worries about his injury history and workload — could sink the Pelicans if Davis does get hurt again.

The league is doing no favors to one of its smallest media markets, especially considering the double standard they’ve shown when other players have been banished this season without repercussion.

The Pelicans don’t want to sit AD to tank, as they are so far above the bottom fray of the league — the New York Knicks, Chicago Bulls, Phoenix Suns and Cleveland Cavaliers — that they have no hope of cracking the top-five lottery odds. The desire to hold Davis out is purely in the interest of his health, something he should likewise be focused on, particularly after he derailed the Pelicans’ playoff run this season by requesting a trade.

New Orleans occupies an awkward middle ground at the moment, sitting at 25-33, 6.5 games out of the playoffs and eighth in lottery odds. Before Davis and agent Rich Paul leaked as much as they could to get AD in a Lakers jersey, the Pelicans were a long shot for the playoffs, but they had a chance as Nikola Mirotic and Elfrid Payton were finally getting healthy.

Now, two weeks later, the race for the 8-seed out West looks timid compared to the situation in early January. The Los Angeles Clippers would rather keep their pick than get smashed by the Golden State Warriors in the first round, the Sacramento Kings are still young and inexperienced, the Minnesota Timberwolves are plagued by injuries and the Lakers continue to underwhelm.

The Pelicans with an engaged AD are probably better than all of those teams; now, with Davis openly making googly eyes at the Lakers, New Orleans had to become a seller, shipping Mirotic to the Milwaukee Bucks and positioning itself for the future.

That future does not concern tanking in 2018-19, even if the rest of this season poses a lose-lose situation for the franchise. Every game they win keeps them from maximizing their draft slot and every game they lose will bring more scrutiny about the hapless conditions in New Orleans. It’s bad enough that unestablished players like Lonzo Ball are angling to avoid New Orleans entirely, but having Davis around the team every day will only further highlight the franchise’s failures, no matter how professional he is.

An extended standoff between a team and an unhappy superstar is never ideal, but not trading AD to anyone at the trade deadline set the franchise up for more turmoil. It is perfectly understandable why a team would want to not do business with the Lakers — they are ridiculously entitled and lack high-end assets — but not doing a deal at all shows that 27 other teams didn’t make an appealing offer or that the Pelicans won’t do business with them anyway.

That leaves the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers — due merely to their own persistence and AD’s focus on going there — as the main bidders come summer 2019. You likely know about all the hoopla surrounding the Celtics, such as the Rose Rule that prohibited them from trading for AD while Kyrie Irving is on his current deal, and the anticipation of the fireworks to come once Kyrie decides on his future.

All of that boils down to one single decision: whether Celtics general manager Danny Ainge will offer Jayson Tatum to the Pelicans for AD. Tatum is a stud, one of the few blue-chippers currently in the NBA and perhaps the only one realistically available to the Pelicans. While Tatum himself has been open to the idea of being the face of the Pelicans franchise, per ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, there is no guarantee Ainge will ever offer him.

Davis and his LeBron James-centric team at Klutch Sports aren’t stupid and know the Celtics are the Lakers’ main competition for Davis. That’s why AD’s father openly scorched the idea of his son playing in Boston and why the Celtics were not on Davis’ list of teams he’d sign an extension with. With all the noise surrounding these trade talks, Ainge would have to be a brave man to offer a player as good as Tatum without a long-term commitment from the Brow.

It’s absolutely possible that Kyrie Irving re-signs with Boston, AD publicly states a willingness to play there and the Pelicans escape this game of chicken with Jayson Tatum and a boatload of draft picks, but that doesn’t look like the most likely ending to this saga, and that has to make people in New Orleans nervous.

Ainge has not guaranteed the Pelicans anything, which means they were flying blind when they rejected the Lakers’ Godfather offer — as reported by the LA Times’ Brad Turner — that included Kyle Kuzma, Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, two first round picks and L.A. taking Solomon Hill to give the Pelicans some financial relief.

The Pelicans have bet big that the Celtics will give up Tatum or that the Lakers will offer a similarly complete package this summer, but if those things don’t come to fruition, New Orleans is going to suffer. The Celtics’ deal without Tatum isn’t a mega-offer, especially since the Kings’, Grizzlies’ and Clippers’ picks don’t look as tantalizing as they once did.

In Los Angeles, Kyle Kuzma and Brandon Ingram have picked up their play as of late, so perhaps the team might decide to make one off limits after witnessing their growth. There are copious factors that could lead to the Pelicans not getting what they want and only one realistic situation where they end up happy.

Anthony Davis has put the Pelicans in an incredibly difficult situation, and he knew exactly what he was doing. None of this is to say New Orleans should have swallowed its pride and just dealt its superstar to the Lakers, but by so consciously holding off on trading Davis, it has set the table to be disappointed this summer. Right now, all New Orleans has is hopes and assumptions, and in today’s NBA of player empowerment, that’s a dangerous place to be for a small market team.