You Know You Sometimes Lie

“I don’t do anything that’s scary.” – Nico Harrison, Dallas Mavericks general manager, February 2nd, 2025, right after taking one of the wildest, most inexplicable swings in NBA history.

Firstly, no: I have no idea why the Dallas Mavericks would do this, “this” being trading Luka Dončić for Anthony Davis, which is exactly what they did late Saturday night. Secondly, yes: I do think LeBron and Luka can work it out as an oversized Tatum-Brown spanning generations and leading a dynamite offense, if only anybody on the Lakers could defend anymore. 

Third and finally: I don’t know if the league really and truly has it in for the Lakers, but a trade with optics like this make it so much more plausible to so much of the basketball-viewing public, and while it doesn’t outwardly behoove Adam Silver to lean into conspiratorial revelry, recent events outside of basketball have proven that misdirection and bombast keeps eyes in place.

Pair that with a Kings-Spurs trade sending, finally, De’Aaron Fox and Jordan McLaughlin to San Antonio to join everybody’s new favorite NBA2K template in Victor Wembanyama, and all arrows pointing toward sustained commerce for the league do seem aimed at one or two o’clock. Jimmy Butler is actively torpedoing his own trade value for the Miami Heat. Bam Adebayo, meanwhile, was in Columbia to watch the number two-ranked University of South Carolina women’s basketball team beat Auburn 83-62, on the occasion of A’ja Wilson’s jersey retirement.

Returning to the Mavs-Lakers trade: it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to deal a 25-year-old supernova still in the early stages of his prime for an injury-prone big on the other side of 30, no matter his defensive reputation. It’s also necessary, here, to point out that Dallas apparently did not put out any feelers on Luka’s trade value, with ESPN’s Brian Windhorst reporting that other teams had no idea Dončić was even available: they seem to have only talked to the Lakers, a team with massive but not comprehensive asset depletion going forward. The Mavericks left one tradable future first round pick on the table, as some kind of favor[?] to the Los Angeles Lakers[???]).

I can picture a world in which LeBron suddenly and drastically shifted into mentor mode as a further extension of his “What didn’t Mike do?” world tour. Adding that Jordan wasn’t the, ahem, most welcoming colleague to Toni Kukoc, and Bron can add taking an international wunderkind under his wing to a list of abstract things people who aren’t him will bring up in the many years leading to, and for at least a decade or two after, his death.

That’s not why either of the Lakers or Mavericks did this, though, or at least it doesn’t look like it. Los Angeles, a marquee brand with a marquee player already, acquired a next-gen face of the league, still coming into his own. There isn’t much reason you wouldn’t trade for Luka Dončić if you knew you could. To pair him with LeBron James, no matter their respective ages? The headlines and ad revenues abound. Even with Dončić’s injury history, his pop appeal as a leading player and conductor in an offense is much stronger than Davis’s has ever been. 

Adding to everything else is the Mavericks’ ownership change in December 2023, from Mark Cuban to a group headed by Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont, and this gets even more complex. Did the new group have concerns about paying Dončić the supermax? Do they know something about his health, habits or demeanor that the rest of the league doesn’t? Is Luka Dončić a known Palestinian state agent, and the Adelsons had to ship him out of the heartland so that he can live out his fantasy of becoming Eurotrash in Los Angeles?

Then there is Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison, an ex-Nike exec whom Anthony Davis knows well and whom, perhaps crucially to the armchair conspiracist, was once in the inner circle of Kobe Bryant. He cited defense specifically and alluded to work ethic concerns and “culture” when discussing the trade…while also mentioning how much money Dončić would be due at the time of his next extension: had Dallas kept him, he would be up for a five-year, $345 million dollar supermax contract. Instead – aww, I can hear you all groaning sympathetically – he can re-sign with the Lakers this summer for $229 million, or stick around and opt out in 2026. 

Harrison’s basketball bona fides deserve some scrutiny. Before orchestrating what some are already calling the worst trade in NBA history with the Mavericks, he had re-purposed a presentation meant for Kevin Durant and apparently referred to Steph Curry as “Seth” in his marketing capacity with Nike. This meeting caused Curry to bolt for Under Armour.

We haven’t even gotten to the third team in this trade! In collecting two second round draft picks and absorbing Jalen Hood-Schifino’s contract, the Utah Jazz helped facilitate the whole deal. GM Danny Ainge, famously late of the Boston Celtics and someone with a track record for almost trading for nearly every player in the league at some point or another, didn’t even realize he was assisting the Lakers in acquiring Dončić until the deal was all but complete. Hilarious wrinkle! Ainge must be furious.

Nobody will ask why the Lakers did this, even if a James-Dončić fit figures to take some time to coalesce on offense, never even mind the defensive side of the ball without Davis. None of that matters. The Lakers set themselves up for a more sustainable superstar-led future by snagging the six-years-younger Dončić, whom Los Angeles obviously hopes to be the face of the franchise for years to come. If he helps LeBron grab another ring on his way into retirement, all the better for Lakerland.

Dallas, however, will be answering questions about this for a very, very long time. They had their post-Dirk bridge to continued contention in place. Kyrie Irving actually seemed to enjoy playing basketball. They made the Finals just last season. Subtraction by subtraction doesn’t seem like the way to squeeze the most juice out of two superstars on the wrong side of 30, which, again, was a problem for the Los Angeles Lakers to have to figure out instead not 48 hours ago.

Luka Dončić is one of the, at worst, five best basketball players alive right now. As great as he is, Anthony Davis is not one of the others in that realm. It might be the case that this trade doesn’t even demonstrably move the needle for either team this season, both of which could still convince themselves of having a shot at winning the West[1]. 

There are many examples of Lakers exceptionalism throughout league history, but this trade is instantly the exemplar of the genre. Sure, there are the things the Lakers do that no other team can, but this should have been something no team could’ve pulled off, period. 

This is the first time two all-NBA players have been traded for each other mid-season because trades like this do not happen. Rumors and speculation on motivation and pretense will run rampant; despite the best efforts of Ramona Shelburne, Tim MacMahon, et al., we may never know the full story of how this went down. The only thing we know for sure is this: Luka Dončić is a Los Angeles Laker.

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[1] Despite the Mavericks going out and promptly dropping one of the worst losses in franchise history Sunday night, a 144-101 loss to the NBA-best Cleveland Cavaliers