Anthony Davis and the Pelicans seem destined for a sad future

Keeping Anthony Davis happy was always going to be difficult. Keeping any NBA superstar happy is difficult. So few teams actually win NBA championships and there is a title-or-bust paradigm among players, borne out by the fact that the very best players of previous generations won lots of rings. By virtue of multi-year contracts and a soft salary cap, teams competing for titles tend to stay static in excellence for several years at a time.

It’s hard to break into that club of elite squads. To win a title, you need to do that and experience some good fortune. Sometimes that’s not even enough.

Consider the Thunder, who seemingly did everything right and got lucky by landing Kevin Durant instead of Greg Oden, Russell Westbrook instead of Michael Beasley, and James Harden instead of Hasheem Thabeet. The Harden trade will be debated for eternity, but even after that point, OKC’s fortune twisted completely as untimely injuries killed every shot at a title but the last one in 2016. All that smart team building, all the early good fortune, all for naught as Durant sought golden pastures while the Thunder sat on the cusp of glory.

When New Orleans landed their own superstar in Anthony Davis, the franchise did not follow in the Thunder’s footsteps. Instead of looking to the draft to add another superstar to the roster, GM Dell Demps focused on acquiring young veterans with star potential. Knowing that New Orleans had Davis for a likely seven or eight years, Demps sought to speed up the team’s growth curve. To acquire said young veterans, Demps had to give up draft picks. This was a conscious choice: Instead of rolling the dice in the draft, he’d roll the dice on the trade market and in free agency.

The dice came up snake eyes again and again.

This strategy was in some ways forced on Demps by the particular constraints of the New Orleans market. With arena subsidies on the line and relocation threats looming, the Pels needed to sell tickets immediately. Winning boosts the gate. Tanking wouldn’t have worked.

Some of the problems are due to poor performance by Demps. The Omer Asik trade was an unmitigated disaster. Asik doesn’t fit with Davis at all, and he had just one year left on his deal when acquired. That led to Demps overpaying Asik in free agency just to avoid losing a pick (the original trade bait) for a one-year rental.

Demps also gave up on Trevor Ariza and Al-Farouq Aminu at inopportune times, bet on Tyreke Evans and was completely negligent in finding guard help last year given his roster’s injury woes. Most galling of all was perhaps his 2015 dismissal of Monty Williams as coach, a decision that came after Williams met a playoffs-or-be-fired ultimatum.

But a good deal of the Pelicans’ woes can be blamed on poor luck. Jrue Holiday played in 95 percent of his team’s games through four seasons, and was an All-Star at age 22. Since being traded to the Pelicans, he’s played in just 56 percent of New Orleans’ games. That’s bad luck. (It’s also due to a bit of chicanery from Philadelphia.) Ryan Anderson missed most of a season with a brutal neck injury. That’s bad luck. New Orleans’ roster — a playoff roster the prior season — was devastated by injuries at the start of the 2015-16 campaign. That’s bad luck.

Very little has gone right for New Orleans, and while Davis puts up gobsmacking numbers — 38-13-3-3-3 through three games — the Pelicans sit at 0-3, staring down the barrel of another season conceded before Thanksgiving. If this is indeed a lost season, New Orleans has just three more with Davis under contract (plus a fourth-year player option). The idea that Demps or any GM would be able to transmute this roster into a championship-caliber squad within that time, even with Davis playing like a god, is inane.

There is remarkably little future left to be mortgaged in New Orleans outside of The Brow, and what’s there can’t possibly be too attractive to other teams. No one wants Asik at $10 million a year. Holiday and Evans are free agents in July. The most recent pick ups, E’Twaun Moore and Solomon Hill, are defense-first role players that won’t relieve any offensive pressure from Davis. The Pelicans have Buddy Hield (a soon to be 23-year-old rookie) and all of their own future firsts. But time is running short. It may seem like Davis’ potential 2020 free agency is a long ways off, but it’s really not. Ask Oklahoma City how quickly the apocalypse comes.

So, what do you do? You don’t trade stars the wattage of Davis unless they beg for it. The only star this hot to be traded this young was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975. Kareem basically demanded to be traded to New York or L.A. He got his wish. Davis isn’t going to do this, and New Orleans wouldn’t likely comply if he did. But the status quo is an uneasy waste of Davis’ prime. It’s all quite unfortunate for the basketball world, for Davis and for New Orleans, who should be ecstatic — not nervous — playing host to such a bright light.

Perhaps there’s still time for the Pelicans to at least make it interesting, as the Thunder did over the past three years. Perhaps in this case, moderate success can be enough and the binary championship-or-bust mentality can be set aside as a victim of realism. Perhaps the Pelicans can be something like average, allowing Davis’ brilliance to stand on a more solid platform. Or just maybe we can ignore the approaching future and bask in the glory of The Brow as it exists. Wins are overrated anyway.