The pressure was on the Los Angeles Lakers front office and general manager Rob Pelinka to make some big moves this summer as this was the offseason the franchise targeted to truly reset and build the team around superstar guard Luka Doncic. Of course, the Lakers acquired Doncic by trading away Anthony Davis in what was one of the most shocking deals in sports history, and perhaps there’s still some hard feelings about how everything went down.
The Lakers would go on to make a flurry of moves in free agency, prompting popular social media star “Cuffs the Legend” to make a post questioning Pelinka and how he treated Davis, and LeBron James. And Davis would actually respond to the post with laughing emojis, and not offering any differing opinion:
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
— Anthony Davis (@AntDavis23) July 1, 2026
While with the Lakers, Davis did openly ask for them to acquire a traditional center on multiple occasions so that he didn’t have to play the position regularly throughout the season. The team still viewed his best position as center, however, and while they did bring in other bigs whom he would share the court with at times, they never brought in a true starting caliber big man to pair with Davis, which undoubtedly didn’t sit well with him.
The Lakers finally acquiring someone like that in Walker Kessler would possibly raise some eyebrows from Davis, but the move was all about pairing the right big man with Doncic. But Davis choosing to publicly laugh at the post does seem to show that there may still be a slight bit of animosity with how things went down.
Davis has said in the past that he doesn’t believe that no one knew about the deal that sent him to the Dallas Mavericks, but that he had moved on. And there are some who have questioned the way Pelinka handles his dealings over the years. But Davis’ response, and the fact that he felt compelled to respond publicly, would certainly seem to suggest that he doesn’t disagree with how things were laid out in that post.
Lakers agree to deals with Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Collin Sexton
Pelinka and the Lakers front office have been active in free agency so far this summer. Not only did the team pull of the sign-and-trade for Kessler, but they also added stretch big Sandro Mamukelashvili, as well as guards Quentin Grimes and Collin Sexton.
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