LUKA DONCIC/ANTHONY DAVIS TRADE GRADES
The Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks made the most shocking trade in NBA history late Saturday night -- those jerks
I went to bed Saturday night around 11:00 pm Eastern Time. Around 1:00 am, my house alarm went off. A little freaked out, I crept downstairs to discover that the wind had blown my patio door open — a false alarm (at least, I hope!).
I climbed back into bed, randomly checked my phone, and shot through the roof like a sleeping cat awakened by, well, a house alarm.
THE MAVS TRADED LUKA DONCIC FOR ANTHONY DAVIS???
Folks, it is really early in the morning on the East Coast. I can’t say for certain that when I wake up, this won’t have been a bizarre fever dream brought about by some combination of fatigue, wine, and low blood sugars. Please excuse any typos you see.
But I just banged out 2,500 words on this anyway — because you all deserve nearly instant analysis (give or take a few hours). Hopefully (*cough, cough*), this sort of dedication may even inspire a handful of you to become paying subscribers.
Enough introduction. The trade, per Shams:
So, yeah, this is basically Doncic for AD + one first-rounder.
By the time you read this, additional reporting may have come out, but here’s the gist. Supposedly, no one had any idea this was coming. Supposedly, LeBron, who is close to Davis, was out to dinner and shocked by the news. Supposedly, none of the players involved asked for this, and supposedly, the Mavericks approached the Lakers asking about the trade.
Supposedly. We’ll see in a few days.
Can you imagine being Lakers’ head honcho Rob Pelinka? You check your texts one day, and your peer in Dallas is asking you if you’d take one of the league’s brightest lights off his hands in exchange for an aging star and a single first. Oh, to be Pelinka in that moment. People spend their whole lives chasing that dragon.
We’re just a few days away from reports that James and Davis were pressuring Lakers ownership to make a trade for a center! Doncic was negotiating what felt like a slam-dunk supermax extension from Dallas for $345M! What in the name of the basketball gods is happening?
Dallas Mavericks
The Mavericks have slowly but steadily built up a contender around Doncic. The Kyrie Irving trade, widely panned at the time (for off-court reasons, to be fair), paid off handsomely. Last year, the PJ Washington and Daniel Gafford swaps resulted in an NBA Finals run. This offseason, the team landed Klay Thompson and a couple of dangerous role players who have played as well as could be expected.
Again: this team made the NBA Finals last year and was arguably even better this year!
Dear readers, I cannot recall a more stunning, out-of-the-blue trade in NBA history.
The reporting is juicier than a raw Texas ribeye. Despite his tremendous on-court success for the Mavericks, including a First-Team All-NBA nod in his second season and a consensus top-five ranking, Doncic has been widely mocked online for years for his, uh, less-than-svelte body. “Imagine how good he’d be if he cared,” goes the thinking, ignoring the fact that Doncic has been historically dominant regardless.
I guess Mavs’ GM Nico Harrison and staff (or at least, the Mavs’ owners) agree with the trolls. The ESPN reporting from Shams is shockingly specific. Apparently, Dallas management has harbored “significant frustration” over Doncic’s diet and conditioning.
Related: Mark Cuban is no longer the controlling owner of the Dallas Mavericks. About a year ago, he sold nearly three-quarters of the team to Miriam Adelson and the Dumont family, hotel and casino magnates who own the Las Vegas Sands Corporation. They are remarkably wealthy even among NBA owners, an upgrade in the financial sense from Mark Cuban, who had become one of the poorer owners in the association.
That said, there aren’t too many rich people who don’t want to keep getting richer. I can’t help but shake the feeling that the looming supermax scared them. $345 million is a whole lot of money to burn on a frustrating, oft-ailing player, no matter who is spending it.
But this is Luka Doncic. Sure, he’s constantly out of shape. But he’s also played at least 61 games every year of his career until this one. We are not talking about Zion Williamson here; Doncic is usually available and performs well even at his worst. Despite constantly being chubby (by NBA standards) and banged up, he’s actually been one of the league’s more durable superstars until this year.
He’s also immensely popular internationally.
I am sure that this is financially motivated. Fans will be mad, and they should be. But I want to acknowledge that there’s at least a chance we look back ten years from now and shake our heads at the remarkable bravery shown by this decision. The line between bravery and stupidity is usually determined by the result, not the process. It’s so hard for me to imagine this was the right choice, but maybe Doncic does end up an injured mess who can’t stay on the court when it matters.
But that’s just so incredibly theoretical for a player who has been in the MVP discussion since his second year in the league.
If I were a Mavericks coach or GM or owner, I’d probably be frustrated with him, too! I’ve said before that Doncic’s competitive spirit is overrated because real competitors work to gain an edge in the offseason, training their skills and working on their bodies even when the cameras are off.
However, I’m an idiot! Don’t listen to me! If you have a top-five player in the world just entering his prime, one who just led you within a few games of a championship, you don’t trade that guy for a soon-to-be 32-year-old because you don’t like how he eats!
And how could the Mavericks not have opened up this bidding? How could they have not gotten more for him? If nothing else, the Lakers had more juice to squeeze, and they would have gladly put themselves in the juicer if the Mavs had asked nicely.
We’ll talk more about Doncic below. Let’s turn to Davis for a second. Davis is unquestionably an excellent NBA player having a fantastic season. He’s playing his usual All-Defensive Team caliber defense, averaging 26 points per game on reasonable efficiency, and was just named an All-Star.
When the Mavs are healthy, they’ll still be good. I had Kyrie Irving as an All-Star this year; he and Davis should have enough offensive juice to carry a defense scary enough to make offenses sleep with the lights on. PJ Washington, the hero of last year’s playoff run, has a slightly murkier role now. Still, if he starts at small forward, a Washington/Davis/Daniel Gafford frontcourt will be impenetrable (and even more so when talented second-year center Dereck Lively comes back). They will be difficult to score on even with relatively weaker perimeter defenders like Irving and Thompson and knife-fight vicious when slotting in someone like Naji Marshall or Quentin Grimes.
Sure, the Mavericks with a healthy Davis are better than the Mavericks with an unhealthy Doncic. I can’t see them making another miracle Finals run, however. Doncic has always been a horror-movie villain in the playoffs, mowing down helpless defenses like so many teenagers with poor survival instincts. And Davis isn’t healthy right now himself, as he suffered an abdominal strain likely to keep him out for a week or two at minimum.
So, where does this leave the Mavs? Instead of having a super-duper-uberstar in his mid-twenties, the team is tethered to a historically fragile non-stretch big man and an undersized guard, both in their early 30s. They’re still good. But if they have a title window now, it’s one of those itty-bitty viewing ports you see in submarines. I can see a world where the defense propels them to playoff success, but a repeat of last year’s Finals run seems far less likely now than it did before my alarm woke me up.
Nico Harrison has proven to be a smart man. I can’t imagine this was his idea. Despite statements to the media that “defense wins championships,” etc., etc., there’s no way he really believes this is the best the Mavericks could’ve gotten for Doncic on the open market, either. They could have commanded a king's ransom if they had put him up publicly for trade. Instead, they got Anthony Davis and a single first-rounder whose future value is immediately degraded by Doncic’s presence, which will likely prevent the Lakers from being truly bad for the next half-decade at least. (I’m also worried about what this says about the Dallas front office moving forward, but we’ll save that discussion for another time.)
Maxi Kleber will be missed, but a broken foot meant he might miss the rest of the season. Despite being a cult hero for Dallas over the years, his time as an impact player is likely over. Max Christie is a solid, young 3-and-Dish player who will provide even more bench depth for an already deep team.
Grade: D
Utah Jazz
It is 2:30 am my time, and I’m dying here. Let’s make this quick. The Jazz used a bit of cap space to take in disappointing young player Jalen Hood-Schifino and two seconds to help make the salary-matching work for the other two teams. Getting draft picks to take on some short-term salary is always good business. Who knows, maybe they can even rehabilitate Hood-Schifino, still just in his second year.
Grade: A
Los Angeles Lakers
While this isn’t quite a slam-dunk trade for LA, it’s pretty close. However, I do have a few reservations.