Report: The Pelicans Invented A New Kind Of Tampering And Used It To Exact Sweet Revenge On The Hated Lakers
brutallllll if true.
The idea, here, is that the Pelicans, by drawing out negotiations, and strategically leaking details to NBA scoopsters, and routing more and more of the communication between the teams through all-too-willing media proxies, have deliberately destabilized the Lakers, by distracting and humiliating their players and ruining the team’s internal chemistry. Nichols asked Windhorst straight up if that ulterior motive could be behind the way New Orleans has communicated throughout trade negotiations, and Windhorst was pretty clear in his response:
“It’s not just possible, it’s what happened. I know that the Pelicans, you know—the Pelicans had a method to their madness, in the way this went. Did they know it was gonna lead to a 40-point loss, because everybody’s upset? Not necessarily.”
Windhorst describes the “information war” going on behind the scenes across the NBA—and presumably centered on Anthony Davis—as like nothing he’s ever seen in his 16 years covering the NBA. If it’s true that the Pelicans have been stringing the Lakers along and outsourcing bad-faith trade communications to the same reporters who facilitated what the Pelicans all along saw as tampering, and did all this to nuke the Lakers’ internal chemistry and torpedo the second half of their season, holy ****! They invented a new kind of tampering, and deployed it like a ******* smart-bomb! The Pelicans may be horrendous at building a contender around a generational talent, but for sheer dark-hearted vindictiveness, they are in a class all their own.
