The biggest trade in recent NBA history went down in the middle of the night on Saturday (at least on the East Coast) when Shams Charania reported the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks had agreed to a league-shaking deal that would send Anthony Davis to Dallas and Luka Doncic to Los Angeles in a blockbuster three-team trade..
The full details of the trade are:
Lakers get: Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber, Markieff Morris
Mavericks get: Anthony Davis, Max Christie, 2029 LAL 1st
Jazz get: Jalen Hood-Schifino, 2025 Clippers 2nd, 2025 Mavericks 2nd
The trade was so stunning everyone thought Shams had been hacked, but Chris Haynes and Dan Woike quickly confirmed the news that two of the league’s top stars were changing teams. The trade took place mere hours after the Lakers polished off an impressive victory over the Knicks in New York, and will send shockwaves across the league as the trade deadline approaches on Thursday. There was no indication either Davis or Doncic were even on the table, but the Lakers and Mavs somehow ended up in a conversation that resulted in two of the league’s best players changing teams.
Doncic was the centerpiece of everything the Mavs have been building and led them to the Finals last year. While the Mavs have sputtered some of late (largely with Doncic out with injury), no one ever expected them to move on from the perennial MVP candidate. He now joins LeBron James in L.A. to play for his former teammate, JJ Redick, as the Lakers finally make the all-in move fans have been hoping for — just one even the biggest Laker believer wouldn’t have imagined.
Davis, meanwhile, had been pushing for the Lakers to bring in reinforcements, making clear he wanted another center to play with, and instead got shipped to Dallas where he’ll join Kyrie Irving and a very talented center rotation. Doncic didn’t issue any kind of stealthy trade request, but instead the Mavs wanted to move him before having to pay him a supermax due to “conditioning concerns”, per ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. Now they are taking a big swing on making Kyrie Irving the leading man in the backcourt and hoping to create one of the most dominant frontcourts in the league with Davis, Daniel Gafford, and Derek Lively III (who is out for a few months with an injury).
It is, legitimately, the most stunning NBA roster move in nearly a decade. I don’t think the league has been this stunned by a player changing teams since Kevin Durant left the Oklahoma City Thunder for the Golden State Warriors in the summer of 2016 as a free agent — and even that had some smoke to it. This came out of nowhere, with Charania reporting it was Dallas, somehow, that initiated the conversations and offered Doncic in a trade proposal.
