No one saw it coming. Well, at this stage, maybe outside of Lakers and Mavericks general managers Rob Pelinka and Nico Harrison.
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Anthony Davis “had no idea” according to ESPN’s Shams Charania, who broke the news of Sunday’s blockbuster trade. The same goes for Luka Dončić, who Charania said is “still stunned about this trade”.
Even LeBron James, so often called LeGM because of the impression that any deal the Lakers make has to be signed off by the four-time NBA champion?
“I can assuredly tell you it’s a fact – LeBron James had no idea this was coming,” Charania added.
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Suns superstar Devin Booker told reporters that when he was told about the trade on the bench during Phoenix’s game against Portland, his first reaction was to ask if it was Timberwolves backup center Luka Garza being dealt.
“Luka being a guy who everyone claims is untouchable, un-tradeable, and the NBA shows you again … you can’t predict it,” Booker said.
“It’s a business. They are always having a conversation about you, so don’t think you are safe at any point.”
Teammate Kevin Durant, meanwhile, said it had to be the “biggest trade” he has since he’s been in the league.
“Insane. It’s crazy, crazy,” he added.
“Damn, would have never thought Luka Dončić get traded at this age, midseason. The NBA is a wild place.”
NBA insider Marc Stein has been covering the league for 32 years and even he said on the ‘DLLS Dallas Mavericks Podcast’ that he had “genuinely never seen an in-season trade like this one”.
So, how did it come about and what could it mean for both the Lakers and the Mavericks? Here, foxsports.com.au breaks down those key questions and more.
HOW DID THE TRADE COME TO BE?
Well, that is still in the process of being pieced together because the trade was so out of left-field that it left NBA reporters scrambling to their phones, trying to understand how even they hadn’t even heard the smallest of whispers that something may be in the works.
Jake Fischer wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Dallas had contacted several teams during the week looking to reroute additional salary for a potential three-team deal, while Stein said he had NBA teams contacting him to ask what the Mavericks were up to after hearing similar rumours.
Stein, though, hadn’t heard anything. He definitely didn’t know a trade involving Dončić was on the cards. The same goes for those NBA teams Dallas reached out to.
Fischer wrote that while a “bunch of teams knew inklings about the Mavericks being close” to making a trade, “nobody” knew it involved dealing Dončić.
Further to this point, Charania said on SportsCenter that the trade was “out of nowhere” and “materialised in the shadows”.
“A lot of people on both sides of the Mavericks and Lakers had no idea,” he added, while Stein said on the ‘DLLS Dallas Mavericks Podcast’ that there was “shock” throughout the Dallas organisation because the front office had kept it so quiet.
Given how surprising the trade was, along with the fact the Mavericks’ return seemed quite underwhelming, the natural assumption was that Dončić had demanded the move.
But that has unequivocally denied by a number of NBA insiders, including Charania who reported that Dallas approached Los Angeles “a few days ago” about the idea of trading for Dončić.
“They knew exactly who they wanted,” Charania added.
“They wanted Anthony Davis. That’s the player that if they were ever going to trade Luka Dončić, if this was even a thought that was going to cross their mind, it was for AD.”
Stein echoed those sentiments, saying that while he has not yet had the chance to speak directly with Mavericks GM Harrison, he suspected when he fronts the media on Monday he will tell reporters that they had a “very short list of players” they would trade Dončić for.
“And Anthony Davis is at the top of it,” Stein added.
Supporting this was a quote ESPN’s Tim MacMahon received from Harrison, who told him that he believes “defence wins championships”.
“I believe that getting an All-Defensive center and an All-NBA player with a defensive mindset gives us a better chance. We’re built to win now and in the future,” added Harrison.
But are they built to win now and into the future? Or, more specifically, even if Davis was at the top of Dallas’ hypothetical list when it came to players it would trade Dončić for, did the Mavericks make a mistake not getting enough draft capital?
THE MOST ‘SHOCKING’ PART ABOUT THE MAVS TRADING LUKA
That seems to be the prevailing thought after news of the trade broke, as for how it impacts the Mavericks moving forward.
It is not so much that Davis isn’t a talented player or isn’t the right fit. He is having another All-Star year, averaging 25.7 points and 11.9 rebounds while having to shoulder the added responsibility of carrying a Lakers team that has consistently struggled on defence, especially on the perimeter.
He will now partner Dereck Lively II in the middle for the Mavericks and is obviously a great mentor for the developing Dallas big man to learn from.
Harrison told MacMahon that this move allows the Mavericks to “win now” and “in the future”. But is that actually true?
For all the knocks there are about Dončić’s defence, which improved at times last season, and conditioning, he was their best player in a run to the NBA Finals just under a year ago.
He was supposed to be the face of the franchise and, at 25 years old, was still yet to enter the prime of his career.
Now with Dončić out of the picture, this is a Mavericks team built around a 31-year-old Davis who has battled injuries of his own over the years, a 32-year-old Kyrie Irving and 34-year-old Klay Thompson.
It is a strong core group of veteran guys but considering the strength of the West, where the Thunder are runaway favourites and will only get better in the future while Houston, Memphis and even San Antonio all loom as consistent contenders in the long-term too, there doesn’t seem to be much of a window for Dallas to work with.
Then you consider the fact the Jazz received four first-round picks and a pick swap when trading Rudy Gobert. The Nets, meanwhile, got five first-rounders as part of their deal which sent Mikal Bridges to the Knicks.
Obviously every trade needs to be analysed within its own context because the market and demand isn’t always there, but this is Luka Dončić we are talking about.
Yahoo Sports’ Kevin O’Connor put it best on a livestream reacting to the trade, revealing one text he received from a league executive.
“I have never in my 11-plus years covering the NBA talked with executives after a trade who have been more baffled and confused by something happening like this,” O’Connor said.
“One executive texted me, he’s like, ‘Sure, maybe the Mavericks were tired of Luka’s antics and all that but how do you not hit up all these other teams? How do you not go for it and try to get more from these other teams and a bunch of picks’.
“So, there is a lot of confusion all around the NBA.”
MacMahon provided some sort of an explanation, reporting that the Mavericks were driven by concerns over Dončić’s “constant conditioning issues and the looming commitment of another supermax contract extension this summer”.
But even if that was true, as O’Connor conceded, it still didn’t answer one simple question.
“How do you only get one future first-round draft pick, Max Christie and AD, who is over 30 years old and has an extremely long injury history already?” he said.
“I just think it’s weird.”
ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, meanwhile, revealed that one current All-Star texted him to ask: “Do you know how much the Mavericks must hate Luka?”
Dončić was headed towards a five-year contract extension in July worth a record $345 million but now he is no longer eligible for the super max, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks.
Even if the Mavericks had concerns about Dončić’s conditioning and hence, were hesitant to offer him that amount of money, this is a future league MVP we are talking about. It is not like anyone would have batted an eyelid if Dallas signed Dončić to that contract.
“I find it completely unbelievable that he would not sign that contract,” Windhorst said, describing it as the “ultimate insult” if Dallas, as MacMahon reported, believed extending Dončić for that amount of time and money was a smart move for the franchise.
“This was not done because the Mavericks didn’t think Luka wanted to be there. Even if he didn’t sign that contract, he would have a whole year to figure it out.
“This was done because the Mavericks didn’t think that going forward with Luka was best for their franchise. Think about that statement – a 25-year-old who’s been first team All-NBA the last five years and carried them to the Finals a few months ago.
“And they said, we want out of the Luka Dončić business, and we want out of it.”
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Which is fine. Again, not many people necessarily seem to agree that Dallas should have traded Dončić but they could come around to the idea if the Mavericks hadn’t seemingly been so fixated on the idea of landing Davis in return that they didn’t see what else was out there.
“They didn’t put him on auction, they didn’t say we’re going to trade Luka Dončić, bring us your offers. They targeted one team, and they made the deal in stealth mode,” Windhorst added.
“This is just shocking, and I will say this, we all know what Luka’s pock marks are. We all know what his deficiencies are.
“We all have seen his greatness. But nobody in the world has more information on Luka Dončić than the Mavericks. And the Mavericks just pulled the rip cord – it’s a stunning situation.”
The Athletic’s Sam Amick later reported that while “there was no shortage of teams that expressed shock at the fact that the Mavericks didn’t broadcast their willingness to move Dončić”, there was “at least one team” beside the Lakers who Dallas approached nearly two weeks ago suggesting a trade.
And so, the intrigue builds.
THE BIG LEBRON QUESTION THAT IS YET TO BE ANSWERED
Now, on the flipside, the situation is still intriguing in Los Angeles too, even if most people seem to agree that this was a slam-dunk trade for the Lakers.
As Stein said, they “just got the heir to LeBron James”. The new face of the franchise.
The idea was that Davis would be that guy once James finished up. But that never really looked like the solution given the concerns with his durability, while there were also question marks over whether Davis was that guy even when healthy.
Naturally, there will be questions about what this all means for the Lakers in the short-term.
How will Dončić fit next to another ball-dominant superstar like James? Who will be willing to make the sacrifice?
Plus, even before he was traded, Davis had told ESPN that he was hoping the Lakers would be able to add a big before the deadline to allow him to play at the four more often.
Now with Davis out of the picture, where does that leave the Lakers’ big-man depth, which was already shaky at best?
Surely more Jaxson Hayes or Maxi Kleber at center is not conducive to winning, even if you have James and Dončić as the two focal points of the offence.
But this doesn’t seem to be a trade that was made to better position the Lakers for a tilt at the title in the short-term anyway, as Sports Illustrated’s Chris Mannix posited on X.
“So many questions being asked league-wide,” he wrote.
“What does this mean for LeBron? Luka is a transformative talent but short term this already bottom-third defensive team just got measurably worse. Acquiring Luka feels like the start of a pivot, not a move to make an immediate run.”
Could that pivot include moving off of James? Well, you’d expect it would be the other way around, and James does have the power to decide his playing future at the end of this season.
He signed a two-year extension last summer which includes a player option for the 2025-26 season.
Alternatively, having secured their franchise centrepiece for the future, could the Lakers now decide to trade James to free up cap space and capitalise on a desperate team that wants to take a big swing before the upcoming deadline?
There is no concrete reporting yet to answer that question either way. But The Athletic’s Sam Vecenie said that regardless of how James reacts to the news or what it means for his future, this was a move the Lakers simply had to make because of what they’re getting in return.
“If you’re getting Luka Dončić, he’s one of the only guys in the league where it doesn’t matter,” Vecenie said on ‘The Game Theory Podcast’.
“It doesn’t matter what LeBron thinks, we’re going to get Luka Dončić. If we have a chance to go get one of the guys who’s going to be the next eight years, we’re doing that. LeBron can be frustrated… it just kind of doesn’t matter.
“If you’re getting Luka, what the decisions are there are just kind of simple.”
What isn’t so simple for the Lakers is the fact Dončić becomes an unrestricted free agent in 2026, so there is the risk that he doesn’t stay put — which would make the 2029 first-round pick they’re giving up as part of the trade even more valuable.
There are just so many directions this could go and so few answers at this point, which as Vecenie put it, is why this deal is “so interesting”.
“It raises 97 different questions about where this goes after… this is insane, this is completely crazy and I don’t know what it means,” he said.
Even someone like Durant, a two-time NBA champion with nearly 20 years of playing experience in the league, thought he had seen everything — thought he understood the NBA.
But now that Dončić was traded? “Anybody is up for grabs,” Durant said.
Welcome to NBA trade deadline week, where seemingly anything is now possible.
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