Ricky Pearsall returns to the field with Brock Purdy just in time to face the Cardinals, and fans can’t stop talking about it.QQ

The San Francisco 49ers will have a much-needed boost to their offense in Week 11 as quarterback Brock Purdy and wide receiver Ricky Pearsall will return from injury for Sunday’s matchup against the Arizona Cardinals at State Farm Stadium, head coach Kyle Shanahan revealed on KNBR.

Purdy has been unavailable since Week 4 due to an aggravated turf toe initially sustained in the season opener against the Seattle Seahawks, while Pearsall has missed the same span after suffering a PCL knee injury versus the Jacksonville Jaguars.

Purdy, who practiced fully on Thursday for the first time since September 26, confirmed he expects to start, with Shanahan officially naming him the Week 11 starter. Backup Mac Jones, who started the past six games and led the team to a 5-3 record during that stretch, will return to a backup role. Purdy’s return comes after a careful rehabilitation process, including limited practices over the past four weeks, with Shanahan assuring that the quarterback will maintain full mobility despite the injury.

Meanwhile, the 25-year-old second-year receiver, Pearsall, will also take the field after returning to practice this week on a limited basis. Shanahan acknowledged Pearsall has progressed well and will be eased back into the lineup after missing six consecutive games. Before his injury, Pearsall had reeled in 20 receptions for 327 yards, averaging 81.8 yards per game on 29 targets.

The return of both players reunites San Francisco’s core offensive weapons for the first time since Week 1, providing a timely lift for a team currently sitting 6-4 and fighting to keep pace in the NFC playoff race. The 49ers have already been dealing with season-ending injuries to Nick Bosa and Fred Warner, making the return of Purdy and Pearsall a meaningful addition.

Inside Anthony Davis’ Lakers feud: New bombshell details reveal Luka Doncic trade spark

No matter what trades are made from now until the end of existence, nothing will ever come close to the shocking and time-stopping trade the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers made at the start of February 2025. Never in a million years could someone have predicted that the Mavs would ever trade Luka Doncic, and the Lakers trading Davis was unfathomable at the start of the 2024-25 season.

However, there is always a story to every case of madness in sports, and the one between Davis and the Lakers is no exception.

When Davis requested a trade from the New Orleans Pelicans in 2019, he harbored a desire to play for the Lakers, not only to team up with LeBron James but also to win a championship. Davis was traded to the Lakers in July 2019, and that pursuit of a title with James began.

About 15 months later, battling through a worldwide pandemic and all, the Lakers could once again call themselves champions of the NBA. It was definitely different given the circumstances of the NBA Bubble in Florida, but in his first season with the Lakers, he won a championship.

All was great in Los Angeles. James and Davis formed a strong bond with one another, and their ties ran deeper than just on the court due to Rich Paul and Klutch Sports. Paul, who has been one of LeBron’s closest friends throughout his career, represents both James and Davis, along with several other notable stars around the league, like Draymond Green, De’Aaron Fox, Brandon Ingram, and others.

Along with a strong bond between Davis, James, and Paul, Klutch Sports and Paul had also formed a strong connection with Lakers executive Rob Pelinka and the organization since James decided to join the Lakers in 2018.

This relationship led to constant communication between the two sides when Davis became available in trade talks in 2019, and it has also led to countless Klutch clients signing with the Lakers through the years. At the same time as all this success was resulting in a title, it was also the start of a clock that would eventually lead to Davis’ departure from Los Angeles five years later.

As great a talent and competitor as Davis is, his injury struggles and availability in Los Angeles were concerning.

From the start of the 2019-20 season to when he was traded in 2025, Davis played in about 71.5 percent of the Lakers’ total games, only eclipsing the 60 games played mark twice in his five and a half years with the franchise.

There was always a level of concern with Davis’ soft-tissue injuries following the team’s championship run in 2020, but the organization pushed forward with the All-Star big man alongside James.

After capturing their last championship in 2020, the Lakers made it out of the opening round of the playoffs just once in 2023, when they advanced to the Western Conference Finals. While Los Angeles’ struggles on the court, and specifically in the postseason, were at the front of everyone’s minds, what was happening behind the scenes ultimately led to the Doncic-Davis trade this past February.

Over the last several months, ClutchPoints has been gathering information from a variety of league and team sources to discover what exactly happened with Davis and the Lakers, a marriage that was destined to end, whether Doncic was on the table or not. Here is what was discovered, starting with secret trade talks involving Davis.

Lakers began contemplating Anthony Davis’ future

The bright lights of Los Angeles were exactly what Davis wanted as he entered the peak years of his career. As soon as he won a championship with James, the Lakers’ ideology was simple: have Davis lead the team into the future.

Even with LeBron still playing at the highest level possible and performing at an All-NBA level, Davis represented the future of the Lakers.

Originally, the hope in Los Angeles was that it wouldn’t just be Davis by LeBron’s side in the later stages of his career, as Pelinka had dreamed of adding a third superstar to compete for championships during the league’s “Big 3” era. The goal of landing Kawhi Leonard never happened, as he ultimately chose to sign with the Los Angeles Clippers.

Looking back on how this played out, the Lakers dodged a bullet when it came to potentially signing Kawhi. Perhaps it was fate that their pursuit of Leonard in free agency did not work out, as it eventually led to the Davis-Doncic trade.

Years before the coffee shop meeting between Nico Harrison and Pelinka that ultimately led to this groundbreaking trade in 2025, the Lakers constantly challenged Davis and his ability to cement himself as the face of the organization because of injury concerns.

He only played in 36 games the season after winning a championship due to calf and Achilles strains, and then Davis only played in 40 games during the 2021-22 season because of a left MCL sprain and a right ankle sprain. The very next season (2022-23), Davis missed 26 games with a right foot injury.

Throughout these three years, in which Davis was constantly in and out of the lineup as a result of many injuries, internal concerns about the way Davis took care of his body began to loom large, multiple league sources told ClutchPoints. There were points before the 2024-25 season when Davis’ side and his representation would not see eye to eye with how the Lakers wanted to handle his injury recovery and prevention.

In the offseason, Davis wouldn’t always communicate with the Lakers, sources said, and his fitness levels entering training camps were said to be “well below average.”

“There were moments in the preseason where we wondered if he had even worked out at all in the summer,” one team source who was granted anonymity to speak freely said of Davis entering the 2024-25 season. “He would come back, go through warmups, and then either sit out to be with the training staff or basically half-ass what the team was doing.

“When he first got here, that wasn’t the case. He was always wanting to go above and beyond, and he was one of the first in the gym, last out of it. Over the years, that changed, and he almost became content in a way. It was clear he was out of shape and didn’t seem to care what the higher-ups were telling him. Something definitely changed.”

Even before the Davis-Doncic trade became a thought, there was ongoing tension building between Davis’ team and members of the Lakers’ front office, multiple sources said. This rising tension was not only from his injury struggles and conditioning levels not being up to the standard the team wanted, but there were also genuine concerns about how he took care of his body, which directly resulted in some of his injuries.

Serious doubts began to form internally for the Lakers among a small group, some holding front-office roles. Eventually, as this noise grew louder, Pelinka and his inner circle began to take notice.

The strong bond the Lakers and Klutch Sports once shared, with many fans calling the organization the “Klutch Sports Lakers” because of all the clients Paul had with Los Angeles, began to show some cracks.

Multiple Klutch Sports clients had left the Lakers since that 2020 championship run, and many around the NBA began to wonder if this was a result of Paul and James’ influence with the team’s front office. Neither side commented on whether Paul or LeBron impacted the roster decisions being made since Davis was acquired in 2019.

But the answer seemed all too obvious, with the team becoming discouraged by Davis’ side and his willingness to fully commit to what the Lakers wanted of him. Between worries about Davis’ offseason conditioning, commitment, and ability to become the “alpha” of the team once LeBron was ready to move on, Pelinka and the Lakers began making calls to some teams in December 2024, multiple sources said.

Minor conversations were held between Pelinka, other team front-office personnel, and rival teams around the league. Davis was the topic at hand. Although Pelinka and the Lakers as a whole didn’t hold virtually any desire to trade Davis, they began reaching out to some teams about Davis’ value and the possibility of putting him on the trade block in the summer after the 2024-25 season ended.

Initially, other organizations didn’t think much of the Lakers presenting Davis’ name in conversations, and the belief was that it was nothing more than a ploy by Los Angeles to try and pull a fast one on them. In fact, one source from an Eastern Conference team who was present for these conversations about Davis and the Lakers claimed they were “laughable” at first because they didn’t believe for a second that Davis was truly available.

“When AD (Anthony Davis) was the name that came up, we all kind of looked at each other like, ‘Yeah, okay.’ But the conversation was actually serious, and things began shifting to the point where they were seriously wanting to know whether we would be interested. That’s as far as it got. We kept all of it in-house to make sure that opportunity didn’t disappear, whether it be at the deadline or in the offseason.

“Little did we know, they did the same thing with Nico and the Mavs, and obviously nobody was going to beat a Luka deal.”

Of the teams that the Lakers spoke with when they were first putting out feelers for Davis, the Boston Celtics held a couple of calls with Los Angeles, sources said. Nothing ever progressed to where there was any actual momentum, but Los Angeles was receiving signals that Brad Stevens and his front office were receptive to the idea.

The five-word message the Lakers got back from Boston was enough to let them know they would consider such a move in the summer: “We’ll keep it in mind.” It is worth noting that the Celtics were next to the Lakers in terms of pursuing Davis when he was traded from the Pelicans in 2019.

Before Jayson Tatum tore his Achilles in the playoffs, the Celtics were already signaling that they were going to cut costs in the offseason. This still could have been achieved by trading Jrue Holiday and Kristaps Porzingis, both of whom were dealt in the summer, along with other assets in a big deal for Davis. It was certainly something for the Celtics to consider.