The Dallas Mavericks have made one of the worst trades in NBA history. They decided to move away from league phenomenon Luka Dončić amid his upcoming contract extension, citing “conditioning issues” as the reason they were trading him. General manager Nico Harrison traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers for a future first-round pick and Anthony Davis. While Davis is a borderline top-10 player in the league, he is incredibly injury-prone and isn’t getting any younger at 32. He reigns as a far different player than Dončić, who had begun to enter his prime at 25 years old and cemented himself as a top-three player with an incredible run to the finals last year. Somehow, the Mavericks chose to send away the superstar because they didn’t want to cough up the cash for a supermax deal that Dončić was about to be owed. Most franchises have never had a player like Luka Dončić and would do anything to have a generational prospect like him, but not the Mavs.
To illustrate how insane this trade is, fans have to look at what Dončić has done in his time in the NBA to date. In his seven years in the league, Dončić is a 5-time NBA first-team player, a feat not accomplished since the GOAT of the sport LeBron James did it. Luka has also finished in the top 5 for MVP voting the last 3 years, along with being an all-star every year except his rookie season. Dončić has averaged 29-8-8 over his NBA career, playing at a level that has rarely been seen in professional basketball. Last year, he averaged 34 points in the regular season and was an MVP favorite before Jokić ascended to a different plane offensively. All in all, Dončić has been nothing but elite for his entire NBA career, and was clearly remarked as one of the least tradable assets in the league next to people like Jokić, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, and Jayson Tatum.
With this trade, how do both teams look to come out on the other side? The Mavs are 4-4 in their last eight games, with clear struggles without their superstar, while the Lakers have exploded to 7-1 in their last eight matchups, suggesting a new aura surrounding the team offensively. Dallas is currently in eighth place in the Western Conference, which isn’t ideal but also is not detrimental, as they can compete for a playoff spot throughout the rest of the season led by the electric duo of Kyrie Irving and Anthony Davis.
The worst part of the trade was the Dallas front office’s sorry attempt to explain their reasoning behind trading a generational scorer. They cited his weight and conditioning as the reasons for his not fitting the culture. The player, who played 36 minutes a night for over 70 games, was described as being too heavy and slow for the organization. The guy who scored over 35 a game for the playoffs. Th guy who dragged a mild roster to the NBA Finals and only lost due to injury and overwhelming odds against a super team. However it’s framed, this will go down in history as one of the worst trades throughout all of sports.
