The Lakers are expected to offer some combination of young foundational players to the Pelicans in exchange for Anthony Davis, who requested a trade from New Orleans over the weekend. The most prominent of those young players is one Lonzo Ball, who by this time last year was viewed as the crown jewel of Los Angeles’s multiyear rebuilding project.
Lonzo is not prepared to sit idly by while the Lakers deal him off to some third-rate also-ran. Lonzo still sees himself as not only a starting-caliber point guard, but as one who shouldn’t need to bother with unseating anyone of any particular prominence, like, say, Pelicans point guard Jrue Holiday:
Lonzo’s star has already fallen mighty far in Los Angeles. His scoring hasn’t come around, like, at all, and Luke Walton hasn’t been real happy with his energy on the court. And with LeBron James on board, the team has less use for a pass-first point guard with a scattershot jumper in their immediate plans. Lonzo was viewed as the future face of the franchise as recently as spring 2018, but he is now part of a handful of “assets” the Lakers would happily swap in a mid-season trade.
As such, you might bristle at the impertinence of Lonzo’s “camp” nudging their preferences into a trade discussion for a player of immeasurably greater ability and stature. I, on the other hand, am inspired by his confidence and willingness to advocate on his own behalf, which is why I wish to make known this very night that I would prefer to stalk and defeat my many enemies from atop a full-grown Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Yes, I could wait for more traditional opportunities of attack to present themselves in the normal course of events, and it may in fact come to that. But rather than resign myself to the whims of pure circumstance, I choose instead to draw upon the law of attraction by making known my preference for waging a sustained assault from atop a mighty Tyrannosaur, the king of dinosaurs. A man who rides down his foes from the saddle of the largest land predator in the history of Earth has truly transcended fear and intimidation and become master of his domain. I would very much prefer to be such a master, just as Lonzo Ball would prefer to be traded to a team where he can start from day one.