The Lakers are reportedly ‘pessimistic’ that they can deal for Anthony Davis before the NBA trade deadline

In case you haven’t heard, the Los Angeles Lakers are doing everything they can to complete a trade for New Orleans Pelicans superstar Anthony Davis before the NBA trade deadline.

Davis has asked out, and made it clear by only including the Lakers and teams that don’t have the assets to do a deal for him on his list of “preferred” trade destinations that he truly wants to end up in Los Angeles.

For the Lakers’ part, they’ve pushed all their chips into the middle of the table, reportedly offering a package that includes Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram, Rajon Rondo, Lance Stephenson, Michael Beasley and two first round picks for Davis. They’ve also signaled they’d be willing to take back Solomon Hill’s albatross of a contract.

But even with all of that on the table and Davis’ camp doing its best to decrease the Lakers’ opponents’ leverage, the Lakers reportedly still aren’t hopeful that they’ll be able to get a deal done before the trade deadline on Thursday because the Pelicans seemingly really don’t want to do a deal with them, according to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN:

Look... There isn’t much left to say at this point. If the Lakers have done all this and the Pelicans are still determined not to make a trade with them, they should shake general manager Dell Demps’ hand, congratulate him on his truly admirable stubbornness and see if they can make something work with whoever the Pelicans replace Demps with when they fire him this offseason.

The Lakers have pushed all their chips into the middle of the table now. If they aren’t good enough for the Pelicans, that just is what it is. There are reasons to be skeptical that New Orleans actually holds this firm and that these aren’t just theatrics to see if the Lakers will offer them more before Thursday, but if the Pelicans are truly this determined to wait to trade Davis to L.A. or elsewhere until Danny Ainge has a chance to try and swindle them this summer, then you just respect their commitment and play out the rest of the season.

The Lakers front office has done what it can do. Now we wait and see what happens.

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