Brian Windhorst: Anthony Davis' hand injury makes it hard for Mavs to trade him
Yahoo Sports Daily hosts Caroline Fenton and Jason Fitz are joined by Brian Windhorst, NBA insider with ESPN, to discuss why it will be difficult for the Dallas Mavericks to trade Anthony Davis Watch the full episode of Yahoo Sports Daily on YouTube or YahooSports.TV .
Video Transcript
... What do you make of the AD situation?
Will he actually be traded?
Um, so, well, Good morning.
So, first off, I think, um, There's some obfuscation going on here.
Um, I wish I could say I knew exactly what the four corners are, but the Mavericks haven't announced what this injury is.
They just said it's a hand injury, quote-unquote, "ligament damage," and he Obviously, had at least some possibility of having surgery.
Where that decision actually ended up, you know, he, He and his doctor, and maybe not even 100% with the Mavericks.
But they know.
And the reason I think that they're Motivated to leave it vague is that, they want to trade him.
And I think the interest here is that AD wants to get traded.
And so that is playing a role in how they're handling this injury.
So, I would say that any team that has interest, before you even begin to You know, what you might do in a trade offer, what you might think contractually, Because the contract is a big part of this talk, figure out what's up.
Hand.
Because if you're trading for Anthony Davis, You're trying to get him for this year's playoffs.
Um, and, you know, the... You, you, you, a tea- a, A team that would trade for him would only be a contending team.
So, this is an unusual situation, and, you'd have to probably get access to X-rays, and talk to the doctors and stuff, so I think this makes it pretty hard.
It's going to be hard to come up with a value for AD anyway.
Because he's coming off two seasons where he's been dramatically impacted.
He's now 33, 34, and he's owed $120M over the next two years.
With uncertain availability this year, this is not the ideal time to trade.
His value is not strong, so the question is: Does Dallas have a threshold they want?
Value?
If they just want to trade him money, like, to just get off the $120 million and then rebuild around Cooper Flagg.
That's a reasonable thing to do.
But it's hard to do that when 11 months ago, You traded Luka Doni for him, and you have a public relations problem.
If you just salary-dumped him now, I think you'd deal with quite a fallout.
Fan base, even if that kind of is the type of deal you might have to do.
