Why Anthony Davis will be a Pelican through at least the 2019-2020 season

Many of the more casual Pelicans fans out there seem to be under the impression that Anthony Davis will have the ability to leave once his rookie contract is up. While this is technically true, this is not practically true.

The short version is, if Davis wants to leave in the best case scenario it would cost him $33 million over a 5 year period. In the worst case scenario it would cost him $100 million. How much would he have to hate it here to pass up that much money? Eric Gordon actually hated it here and he opted to go for the money rather than his freedom.

The long version is, there are 3 levels of Max contracts. For younger guys coming off their rookie deals you can get up to 25% of the salary cap, that's the $14-$15 million guys like Eric Gordon and Roy Hibbert have. Once you've been in the league long enough to reach your 3rd contract, you can get 30% of the salary cap, the $18-$19 million guys like Dwight and CP3 are getting. For guys that have been in the league forever, you can get up to 35% of the salary cap, guys like Kobe and Dirk making well over $20 million per year.

The new CBA has what is called the Derrick Rose rule where a player that makes multiple All Star or All NBA teams before his 2nd contract can actually get the more veteran version of the Max (30%) by extending with their current team. Based on the new cap figure Anthony Davis would sign a 5 year extension worth $110 million. The Derrick Rose rule wouldn't apply to him if he went to another team, which he could do if rather than signing a 5/$110 deal, 30% max with 7.5% raises, he chooses a 1 year deal for $9 million to gain his freedom, and then gets a 4/$67.5 deal, 25% max with 4.5% raises, from another team the following year. So not only is this $33 million less over a 5 year period, he also takes on a year of injury risk by signing the 1 year deal to gain his freedom. If he gets injured in that year he may never get another NBA dime and essentially he lost $100 million just to switch teams, but if he takes the Pelicans offer and the unthinkable injury happens, he still gets all $110 million.

So when can he leave like Melo/Dwight/CP3/LeBron/etc did? CP3 was traded 2 years before his deal was up because the last year on his deal was a player option, so technically he was traded in what could have been the last year of his deal. Most other superstars like those mentioned above were not traded until the last year of their deal. The last year of Anthony Davis next contract would be 2020-21 meaning the team needs to reach contention level by the 2019-20 season to keep him. That gives the team 6 offseasons including this upcoming one, to turn the Pelicans into a contender.

For those of you that are still shell shocked over losing CP3 and think the worst will always happen with this franchise, the worst is at least 6 seasons away with Anthony Davis. So snap out of it and stop posting trollish misinformation in threads.