Through all of the chaos in the NBA offseason, it almost seemed forgotten that in the middle of June the Los Angeles Lakers made a huge splash by trading for Anthony Davis.
Davis and his agent Rich Paul leveraged their way to the Lakers by saying it was the only team in the league he’d sign long-term with. Because of that, the Lakers had to give up Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, and a few first round picks.
But all of those assets pale in comparison to a near-unanimous top-five NBA player.
In his introductory press conference, Davis spoke about the moment he found out he was being traded. In Davis’ case, it involved ignoring his agent more than once while in the middle of a sailor movie at a Malibu hotel.
“I was actually in Malibu — I don’t know the name of the hotel — the one right next to Nobu, I was at that hotel,” Davis said. “I was laying in bed watching a movie and my agent called me. In the middle of a movie, I don’t like to answer the phone or texts, so I was going to call him later.”
“And he called me again, so I kind of panicked. ‘Wait, let me call him back,’” Davis continued. “When I called him back it went straight to voicemail, so as me being a 26-year-old, I went straight to Instagram and just started looking. That’s when I saw it. I was blowing his phone up now and we finally talked, figured out what happened and he was telling me what was going on.”
Davis was clearly thrown off by the timing of the trade and followed that up by calling the whole situation ‘a blur,’ making it so that he couldn’t even remember the name of the movie he was watching.
“I don’t even remember. It was like a blur, it all just happened so fast. I can’t even think of the name of it. It was like some sailor movie. I don’t even know why it was on, but it was pretty interesting.”
Davis was clearly just as shocked and happy about the trade finally happening as many Lakers fans. And it’s good to see the excitement within Davis while recalling these moments now that he is officially donning the purple and gold. It should bring an added touch of joy to the hearts of fans everywhere for the 2019-20 NBA season.