Los Angeles Lakers: Best trade ever with the New Orleans Pelicans
By Jason Reed
The Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans are recent trade partners.
In an ongoing series here at Lake Show Life, we are breaking down the best trade that the Los Angeles Lakers have made with every single other NBA franchise. Today, we break down the best trade the team has made with the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Pelicans and Lakers had a blockbuster trade last summer that shifted the entire landscape of the NBA.
In fact, that is the only trade that the Los Angeles Lakers and New Orleans Pelicans have ever made. So it is pretty self-explanatory what the greatest trade in Lakers’ history with the Pelicans is.
The Los Angeles Lakers’ best ever trade with the New Orleans Pelicans was for Anthony Davis.
The Los Angeles Lakers traded Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, the fourth pick in the 2019 NBA Draft and a slew of other draft picks to the New Orleans Pelicans in exchange for Anthony Davis in the summer of 2019.
There were other moving parts in the trade as well as the Pelicans flipped the fourth pick for more draft capital from the Atlanta Hawks, as well as the Lakers trading Isaac Bonga, Jemerrio Jones and Moritz Wagner to the Wizards to free up cap space, but the spine of the deal is what we mentioned above.
Even if there were other trades in franchise history this likely would have gone down as the best one. It is rare in the NBA where you are able to land a star as great as Anthony Davis in a trade and because of Davis’ demands, the Lakers did just that.
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Even if the Lakers do not win the title in 2020, Davis sets the team up for years of success as he and LeBron are not only title-contenders but Davis himself could be a long-term Laker and pave the way for the team to succeed in the future.
It is important to note that the Lakers almost had another blockbuster trade with the New Orleans Pelicans, who at the time were the Hornets, and were trading Chris Paul.
Of course, that trade is now infamous as the league vetoed the trade and arguably stole at least one more championship from Kobe Bryant, who would have been part of one of the best backcourts in league history as he was still in the late stages of his prime and Paul was in his prime.
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Luckily, this trade did not get vetoed and now the Los Angeles Lakers have the best superstar duo in the NBA.