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Anthony Davis brushed off the reported Golden State Warriors‘ trade interest back in February for his Los Angeles Lakers co-star LeBron James.
“I don’t think it affected anybody,” Davis told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin following their October 15 shootaround before facing the Warriors in a preseason game in Las Vegas. “That might be the first time he was on the trade talks in his career. I don’t think it affected him. It didn’t affect our team. But it was strange to hear that it was the first time he’d been talked about in a trade.”
Davis was just glad it didn’t happen.
The trade talks, according to ESPN, began at the ownership level when Warriors’ Joe Lacob, with the encouragement of Draymond Green, James’ friend and fellow Klutch Sports client, reached out to Lakers’ Jeanie Buss.
“Buss told Lacob the Lakers had no desire to trade James, but that he would need to seek the answer on James’ state of mind from his agent, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, sources said. As an owner, Buss has operated with the mindset that she wants her star players content with the franchise, and that instructed her thinking on referring Warriors leadership to James’ representation, sources said,” the ESPN report said.
LeBron James: ‘Trade Talks Didn’t Go Far’
Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul quickly rebuffed the Warriors’ interest, and it never reached James, which he confirmed in an interview with Inside the NBA crew on TNT on February 18.
“It didn’t go far at all,” James told Inside the NBA on TNT. “I actually heard about it when everybody else heard about it … It never even got to me. I heard it when the reports dropped as well.”
Davis also could not exactly remember how he caught wind of the trade rumor.
“I wasn’t on social media at that time, so I didn’t see it,” Davis told McMenamin. “It was a [expletive] national news. But I can’t exactly remember how I’ve heard about that.”
According to Substack’s NBA insider Marc Stein, Paul nixed it to protect James’ reputation.
“Sources say Paul implored both teams to scrap the concept — despite some owner-to-owner dialogue between the Warriors’ Joe Lacob and the Lakers’ Jeanie Buss and Green’s determination to lobby James to push for relocation to the Bay Area — largely because he wanted to insulate James from potential backlash over switching teams for the fourth time in his career,” Stein wrote on August 18.
Sixers Were Also Interested
It was not only the Warriors who were bold enough to inquire about James’ availability leading to the last February trade deadline.
The Philadelphia 76ers also inquired, but it did not reach the ownership level as Lakers general manager and vice president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka quickly shut it down, according to the same ESPN report.
“After seeing James’ cryptic social media post of an hourglass a week before the trade deadline, Philadelphia 76ers president of basketball operations Daryl Morey called Pelinka to probe on a James trade and was immediately told that James wasn’t available. In fact, Pelinka responded by asking Morey if Joel Embiid was available, sources said. And that ended that brief conversation,” the ESPN report said.
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