It’s not often that a trade happens in the NBA that takes everyone by surprise — and has everyone in the league talking — but that’s what happened on Saturday night when the Mavericks traded Luka Doncic to the Lakers for Anthony Davis in a three-team blockbuster.
The deal came out of seemingly nowhere, with all of the players involved apparently having no heads up about the trade, as Dallas decided to pull the ripcord on their All-NBA star over concerns about his “constant conditioning issues.” Mavs fans (including Patrick Mahomes) were sick upon finding out they had just traded their 25-year-old superstar, and everyone else around the league was left scratching their heads at how and why this trade came about. That included the teams actively playing when the trade broke, as the Portland Trail Blazers continued their strong play of late with a blowout win over the Suns.
However, as the fourth quarter wound to a close, the talk of the Blazers bench was not their performance against a Phoenix team desperate to make a big move, but instead was about the Doncic-Davis trade that they were all learning about.
Matisse Thybulle’s face is incredible and was pretty much the same facial expression most NBA fans made when they saw the news was real. I do love that the Blazers TV broadcast was keeping the players in the loop on the craziest NBA trade maybe ever, and the bench was doing what every NBA fan group chat was doing, just in real life.
On the other sideline, Kevin Durant, Devin Booker, Royce O’Neale, and the rest of the Suns were having a similar conversation, with Durant scrolling his phone as the clock wound down late in disbelief (video here).
