And would New Orleans even think of doing that? If New Orleans were able to get one of the top 10 players in the NBA for their pick. that person together with Davis should be a formidable team. I'm thinking of Lebron James wanting to trade the #1 pick to get Kevin Love. Although in this case, you'd want to get back a first scoring option to pair with Davis. Someone Davis wants to play with.
I think you have to look at which team to trade AD to, so that he will likely stay with that team. So which team out there with a top end player does AD want to play with and then you get good pieces in return for the Pelicans to pair with Zion. I am secretly hoping Blazers, but not holding my breath.
Griff will get AD to stay. Even if AD holds on to his stance that he will leave them in the summer, I think Griff will let him leave for nothing if that's what AD wants. What's AD going to do? Refuse to play and lose a whole season is in his prime?
Trading Zion to the Lakers for LBJ and #4 would be pretty funny just to see the look on LBJ's face at the press conference.,
AD would be more likely to end up a Laker of thet dont trade him, and not only would he end up a Laker, LA wouldn't have to give anything up, and the Pelicans would get nothing in return.
I think he and Paul will end up Lakers somehow. They'll gut the shit out of their team and hemmorage future draft picks, but I think it'll happen.
I don't think that matters at all. If I was the GM, I'd find the best situation for the PELS, not AD. There are plenty of teams willing to risk losing him in FA (a la PG, Kawhi). If they can trade him to NY for the #3 and filler (NY doesn't have to worry about taking salary back), they will have #1 + #3 in a pretty top heavy draft.
As an academic exercise, AD should at least listen. They might be able to get 1-2 prime all-stars for Zion from the right team. As an extreme and unrealistic example, trading Dame and CJ for Zion, would give him a killer lineup that would compete for a title, and it would be his team because he was the cornerstone. Unless he just hates New Orleans. If I where GM I would shop Zion around for 1.5 all stars and see what I could get. FWIW, I would trade CJ and Nurk for AD to get a lineup of Dame, ____, Harkless, AD and Collins.