5 Secrets in Sin City The Celtics can’t have Anthony Davis just yet, and Kyrie Irving is why. Gerald Herbert/Associated Press Marc Stein The week after baseball’s Winter Meetings headlined Las Vegas, executives from throughout the N.B.A. will descend upon the desert this week for their own convention — during which they will also have a flurry of actual games to scout. The annual G League Showcase — 27 teams from the N.B.A.’s developmental league playing two regular-season games each over a span of four days — has been moved up from January to December and relocated from suburban Toronto to Sin City. The official purpose of the event is to provide talent evaluators with one easy-to-reach locale to scout every player toiling in the G League. But trade talks are inevitable when so many league operators get together — especially with the N.B.A.’s annual trade deadline (Feb. 7 this season) just 50 days away. There appear to be more buyers than sellers in the marketplace, thanks in part to a Western Conference in which 14 of the 15 teams believe they are in contention for eight playoff spots. It is a climate which certainly raises the possibility that the most significant deal so far — Philadelphia’s acquisition of Jimmy Butler from Minnesota on Nov. 12 — will go down as the biggest blockbuster we get during the regular season. Yet there is plenty of trade chatter in circulation already, with more surely to come. Here are the highlights of what we’re hearing so far on the personnel grapevine: All signs continue to point to Anthony Davis’s future in New Orleans playing out in the summer. That’s when the Pelicans can offer Davis a contract extension worth well in excess of $200 million — and when they will know, in the dreaded event Davis declines it, that they realistically have to trade him. The long-held belief in this newsletter is that the notion of Davis being traded during this season is folly, mainly because that would likely require Davis himself to go urge the Pelicans to move him. That’s just not his style. Davis also has a strong connection with the city after six-plus seasons in The Big Easy. Knowing that makes it really hard to picture him at the center of a January trade orchestration project. Yet there is a compelling question making the rounds: Why aren’t the Los Angeles Lakers taking advantage of the Boston’s inability to pursue Davis until the off-season by making an all-out effort to deal for Davis before the Feb. 7 trade deadline? As long as the Celtics have Kyrie Irving on their roster under the terms of his designated rookie scale contract extension — which they acquired via trade — they cannot get Davis. Reason being: Davis’s current contract was hatched via the same scale and no team can trade for two designated rookie scale extensions. The Lakers’ fantasy haul, of course, is twofold. They want to sign an elite free agent from the Kevin Durant/Kawhi Leonard tier next summer with the significant salary-cap space they are on course to possess. But the Lakers also dream of beating out Boston’s well-chronicled treasure trove of trade assets in a pitch for Davis with some combination of L.A.’s own promising starlets: Kyle Kuzma, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart and Lonzo Ball. Maybe what the question suggests isn’t L.A.’s preferred sequencing. Maybe New Orleans isn’t prepared to even answer the phone to field a trade pitch for Davis until after the season. But the concept inevitably grabs you when it gets presented in the manner I heard last week: Shouldn’t the Lakers ignore all the above and go after Davis right now while Boston is forced to spectate? Trevor Ariza, as predicted, didn’t last long on the market once he became trade-eligible Saturday. The Houston Rockets, however, are still scouring for an Ariza replacement after watching him sign a one-year, $15 million deal with Phoenix in July — and then watching the Suns deal him to Washington after just 26 games together. As reported earlier this month, Houston has expressed exploratory interest in Cleveland’s J.R. Smith, who has been sent home by the Cavaliers as they try to find a new home for him via trade. But the Lakers’ Kentavious Caldwell-Pope is said to be the Rockets’ top target in their search for help on the wing, with Smith somewhere further down the list. Caldwell-Pope can veto any trade as what is known as a One-Year Bird, having signed a one-year contract in July with the same team that employed him last season. All indications are that Caldwell-Pope would agree to a trade that lands him in Houston if the Rockets can indeed construct one. Houston’s problem could prove to be that teams — most notably New Orleans and Philadelphia — are on the hunt for reinforcements at the same position. Keep your eye on the Atlanta swingman Kent Bazemore. The Hawks like Bazemore for both his on-court production and his veteran presence in a young Atlanta locker room. But he’s generating interest from contending teams that covet a versatile swingman. The interest in Bazemore — in addition to the longstanding rumblings about the expiring Hawks contracts of Jeremy Lin ($13.7 million) and Dewayne Dedmon ($7.2 million) — comes even with one more season left on his contract after this one at a heady $19.3 million. Which tells you that, in this marketplace, he’s regarded as a difference-maker. Terrence Ross is the Orlando swingman generating the most external interest. Word is that the Magic, though, prefer to move Jonathon Simmons rather than part with Ross, who not only has an expiring contract ($10.5 million) but is in the midst of a career-best season. Simmons isn’t the shooter Ross is but sports his own cap-friendly contract at $6 million this season — and with only $1 million of next season’s scheduled $5.7 million guaranteed. I’m eager to see how much discussion Carmelo Anthony’s plight will generate in Vegas. The former Knick has officially been in exile from the Houston Rockets since Nov. 15, searching for another team to give him a shot. Anthony, like Ariza, became trade-eligible Saturday. And Houston has some incentive to keep trying to find a trade taker for him, since shedding Melo’s $2.4 million veteran minimum contract in such a deal will result in a luxury-tax savings in the $2.6 million range. But the teams most often mentioned as potential landing spots for Anthony — Philadelphia and LeBron James’s Lakers — have resisted the idea thus far. Charlotte has likewise passed to date, despite rumbles that the Hornets would naturally consider him given Anthony’s long association through with the Hornets’ owner Michael Jordan through Jordan Brand.