Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr recently came out and openly disagreed with the Anthony Davis trade request that sent him to the Los Angeles Lakers with a full year remaining on his deal.
Kerr called the situation ‘bad’ for the NBA and was swiftly met with backlash from players, a list that now includes Davis’ new teammate, Jared Dudley.
Dudley is one of the NBA’s most open and honest players. This is why he’s become a huge media darling as he’s become someone the media can always rely on for a good story. Dudley held nothing back when talking about Kerr’s comments, pointing out the hypocrisy of a player not being able to ask for a trade when teams can trade players whenever they want.
Dudley specifically said that this may be the first time he’s ever disagreed with Kerr despite the respect he has for him, according to Ethan Strauss of The Athletic:
You know what, I am a huge Steve Kerr fan. Obviously, he traded for me. I was in Phoenix with the same agent (Mark Bartelstein). That’s the only time I think I’ve disagreed with him. Because, why can’t a player ask out of his contract if what you sold him on changed? Happens all the time. Hey, we want to win, but now we’re going to rebuild. Vice-versa where a guy gets traded after a year when there are three years left on his contract. And so why can a team be able to trade but a player can’t ask for a trade?
Dudley then also brought up the difference between the criticism Davis and Paul George received — likely due to the public nature of the former’s trade request. In the end, the requests are just the same:
Now, the only difference of this is the perception. Paul George asks for a trade, but no one knows about it. But Anthony Davis comes out and because it’s public, now he’s getting killed, just because it’s public. So you know, the way for players to do it is in private, but obviously he thought he couldn’t get out of there if he did it privately. And so people ask for trades all the time, all the time. And so I just don’t understand Steve’s stance on that because, if you run your organization well enough, Anthony Davis was in New Orleans, he didn’t make it past the second round in eight, nine years. Like, what do you want him to do?
Comments like this from Dudley is why he manages to gain respect from players, coaches, and media at the same time — something that is growing increasingly difficult in the modern NBA.
He calls out an issue while remaining respectful and if his on-court presence can match his off-court one, the Lakers have gotten a steal in terms of veteran leadership.