The NBA Brought The Hammer Down On Anthony Davis For Requesting A Trade Mid-Season By Fining Him For What Basically Amounts To His Pocket Change

Pelicans star Anthony Davis has been fined $50,000 for his representative, Rich Paul, going on the record for trade request, violating CBA. https://t.co/oYex8zL1O3

— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) January 29, 2019

The NBA dined Anthony Davis $50,000 for making his trade request public. pic.twitter.com/L5SuOFRoMq

— Tim Bontemps (@TimBontemps) January 29, 2019

Hammer, down. Message, sent. That hammer might resemble one of those rubber-tipped ones that the doctor might gently use to test your reflexes and that message might ring hollow to the main recipient, but that $50,000 fine for what's starting to look a lot like the most conspired trade of a transformative player in NBA history has put the league on notice. Of course, that notice really just reads "there, happy now?" in being CC'd to every organization that complained about the laughably obvious tampering that has gone on throughout the Lakers' (more accurately, LeBron's) shameless pursuit of Anthony Davis, but at least everyone knows where the NBA stands on the matter. 

To be honest, I had no idea that trying to force a trade through your agent was forbidden by the CBA. Be it through an official or unofficial request, it seems to happen quite often. Kind of leads me to believe that NBA HQ has one of those decibel measuring devices that tracks the volume of the bitching and moaning around the league and has a threshold in which discipline, no matter how dumb, is required.

Make no mistake, dumb is exactly what that five-figure fine is, as the player who is being asked to pay it has already set tens of millions of otherwise promised dollars on fire in asking out of New Orleans. As far as I'm concerned, this slap on the wrist wallet is basically the pro athlete equivalent of the annoyingly vague convenience charge that gets tacked onto your total right before you click 'Purchase' for tickets on the secondary market. Anthony Davis has already made it quite clear he's willing to shell out about $33 million on a one-way trip to Los Angeles, so - relatively speaking - that additional 50K makes a $25 baggage fee seem expensive by comparison. It's like punishing your child for coming home shit-faced by making him chug another beer before bed. Anthony Davis already accepted the cost and consequences of his actions, might as well tip well on top of it.

If anything, what's basically a parking ticket-sized penalty to an elite NBA talent is just patronizing to the franchises that don't have to concern themselves with clearing garage space for the player-comp of a fully-stocked Range Rover.

this is actually Anthony Davis and Rich Paul right now pic.twitter.com/P9KqTo3zVm

— Tyler Conway (@jtylerconway) January 29, 2019