Report: Water is wet... also, Celtics keeping an eye on Anthony Davis

(Exasperated audible sigh)

I didn’t think this was necessary to report or go into, but it seems like it is getting talked about a lot so I might as well write (briefly) about it.

Yesterday, Chris Mannix of Yahoo! Sports mentioned the following (buried deep in his latest article).

In addition, rival executives expect Boston to be keeping close tabs on New Orleans, which is entering a critical season. The Pelicans are committed to seeing if an Anthony Davis-DeMarcus Cousins frontcourt can work, but if the season goes awry, it’s widely believed the Celtics will make a strong run at Davis, who is under contract through 2020.

Update: He followed up with extended thoughts on CSNNE here.

My initial reaction upon reading this was “well, yeah, of course they are.” Little did I know that it would create a social media ruckus.

Pelicans fans are understandably defensive. Some Celtics fans are smugly confident based on the Gordon Hayward signing. Bitter Jazz fans are jumping in to express their angst. And of course anyone who has a bone to pick with Boston fans is poking fun at their “inability to make a trade for a superstar.”

Obviously the only logical conclusion to make of this is that I need to spend less time on social media.

Just a few ice cold points to consider in this hot take discussion.

• The above report was simply passing along the thoughts of rival executives. It isn’t even a direct rumor. Not in any way knocking what Mannix is doing, he’s passing along relevant information.
• Every team is going to be keeping an eye on Davis and the Pelicans this season. They would be foolish not to.
• Davis is, as noted in the original story, under contract through 2020. So even if everything went bonkers tomorrow, there’s little immediate incentive for New Orleans to make a move.
• Even if the Pelicans lost leave of their senses and decided to trade Davis way too early, the Celtics would have to either include Al Horford in a deal or somehow cobble together 4-5 players together to make the salaries match. Which gets really complicated if you assume that the Pelicans would also be looking at one or two of the picks the Celtics have coming from Nets and Lakers.

Bottom line: This seems like much ado about nothing... for now.