So much for Jimmy Butler or De’Aaron Fox being the biggest name on the market ahead of the trade deadline, eh? In the early hours of Sunday morning — after the Saturday NBA slate had mostly come to an end — the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers agreed to one of the most remarkable trades in the history of American professional sports. The long and the short of it: Luka Doncic is a Laker, Anthony Davis is a Maverick, the Utah Jazz got involved, and other pieces moved around outside of those two.
I’m still trying to wrap my head around it, and I assume you are, as well. Players of Davis’ caliber do not get traded in the middle of the season unless they force their way out. Players of Doncic’s caliber just don’t get traded. There are rumblings that Dallas had major reservations about handing Doncic a supermax extension this summer. Luka, AD, LeBron James, and Kyrie Irving all apparently had no clue this was coming. It’s a lot to wrap your head around, whether you got the first push notification from Shams Charania as the trade was announced or you woke up on Sunday to a flurry of texts from friends who were talking about the deal into the early hours of the morning.
Like any transaction, there are winners and losers in how all of this played out, and here, we’re going to break them down here.
WINNER: Luka Doncic
I really do not think we have ever seen a trade in any sport quite as fascinating as this. Doncic is, any way you slice it, one of the five best basketball players in the world, a guy that the Mavs have built their entire franchise around from the day that they acquired him during the 2018 NBA Draft. And yet, whether it’s due to his conditioning or whatever else, Dallas does not think that it is worth betting on Doncic anymore. Or, perhaps more accurately, they do not believe it is worth betting on Doncic over the life of the contract extension he was eligible to receive this summer, which would have kept him under contract until he was 32 — Tim Bontemps of ESPN compared this to “The Big Short.”
Giving up on guys of Doncic’s stature never happens, because the only way they go to a new team is on their terms. But doing it at this point in their careers? We’re talking about a once-in-an-ever type of move from the Mavericks. Now, Doncic is on a team that is going to have to build around him going forward, because while the Lakers got an absolute steal here, you can’t trade for a guy to be the face of your franchise and then just let him languish, especially when you are almost certainly going to give him a max contract extension the nanosecond you can this summer.
Above all else, Doncic is the guy who is going to take the baton from LeBron James and become the face of the Los Angeles Lakers whenever James decides his time in L.A. comes to an end, whether that’s because he retires or goes to play somewhere else. That’s a pretty special spot to find yourself in. And I, for one, am not going to miss a single game he plays against the Mavs between now and the end of his career, because while Doncic can be disengaged during regular season games, when he flips that switch, he will rip your heart out, and I expect him to be firing on all cylinders whenever he plays Dallas going forward. A constant theme of all the greats in recent NBA history is finding that extra motivation from people doubting you, and Doncic now has that in abundance thanks to the Mavs.
LOSER: Luka Doncic’s bank account
Ok, so this is semi-facetious, but Doncic can no longer sign what could have been the biggest deal in NBA history — it would have been a 5-year supermax worth $345 million. Instead, he can sign a 4-year deal worth up to $228.6 million that would go into effect in 2026-27. It’s one fewer year and less money, but still, I don’t think he’s going to be late on his rent or anything.
WINNER: Anthony Davis in his never-ending quest to play power forward
Last week, Davis made clear to Shams Charania of ESPN that he wants to get back to playing the 4, saying of the Lakers, “I think we need another big. I feel like I’ve always been at my best when I’ve been the 4, having a big out there.”
Davis has never been shy about how he prefers to play the 4 and let someone else handle the physical toll that playing the 5 takes on them. This is despite the fact, if you have watched AD over the last few years, he is clearly at his best when he is playing the 5 and impacting winning from that spot on both ends of the floor. His shooting has never been great outside of the Lakers winning a title in the Bubble, while his defense is more devastating when he’s around the rim.
But now, he’s going to a team where Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II have formed a pretty stellar center duo — I do wonder if, at some point, the Mavs look to get some help elsewhere by moving one of them (I’d assume Gafford, but also, I would have never assumed that they’d trade Doncic, so). For now, though, AD gets what he wants … although it’s safe to assume he would have preferred playing that role in L.A.
WINNER: JJ Redick
Here’s a fun clip from the Mind the Game podcast (remember that!?) where Redick and James discussed how difficult it is to defend Doncic. Redick specifically lumps Doncic and James together as part of a rare class of guys that can make any pass against a double team. He now has the two of them together on the team he is coaching, and while there is always a learning curve (for a coach getting a talent like Doncic, for guys who become teammates with LeBron, etc.), one line that Redick says in that clip seems especially prescient: “There’s just not good answers for the best players right now.” He’ll do some tinkering, surely, but once he figures out how to strike a balance between Doncic and James, it’s possible the Lakers offense ends up being a nightmare to deal with.
LOSER: The army of three-and-D guys the Mavs got in recent years specifically to play with Luka
Dallas won’t have to totally remake its roster, but if you assume Kyrie Irving is the point guard, Anthony Davis is the 4, and they’ll roll with the Daniel Gafford/Dereck Lively II duo at center, there’s suddenly a lot of guys all log jammed on the wing, like Klay Thompson, PJ Washington, Quentin Grimes, Jaden Hardy, and Naji Marshall. All of them but Hardy were acquired via trade or free agency with the idea of playing alongside Doncic, and now, he’s gone and the playmaking load will fall onto the shoulders of guys who are not on Doncic’s level, which isn’t a knock, he’s just an otherworldly talent. Davis figures to have the ball in his hands a ton, and while he’s not a bad passer, he’s not exactly the second coming of Bill Walton or anything.
What does the Mavs’ roster look like at the start of next year? Will they try to wheel and deal to build things out around Irving and Davis more, or do they think their army of wings fits well enough that a downgrade in playmaking is worth it? There’s a lot of pressure on Nico Harrison to figure that out, in large part because Irving turns 33 next month and has a player option in his contract for next year. Hey, speaking of Nico Harrison:
PROBABLE LOSER: Nico Harrison
I say probable because the bet Dallas seems to be making is that, at some point over the life of Doncic’s next deal, his body is going to break down because he is not focused enough on conditioning. If that happens, and if the Kyrie-AD duo works in perfect harmony over multiple years, then you can argue he’s a winner.
But still, to move a guy who is either in the beginning of or entering his prime and is universally considered one of the best basketball players on the planet because you’re making this bet is a move that general managers do not make. Obviously, you have to consider the bad outcomes before you do things, but the reward of having a guy who has carried your team to the heights Doncic has carried the Mavs outweighs the risk that he might not be “worthy” of a supermax deal by the time he’s 31 or whatever. Just the process alone here is not great.
And then, to reportedly only call one team instead of generating some sort of market and THEN get just one of the firsts that L.A. can send back in a deal — along with an excellent but frequently banged up player in Anthony Davis and a nice youngster in Max Christie — is shocking. Check back in in a few years, but my hunch is we’re going to have a pretty negative view of how Harrison approached the biggest trade of his life.
WINNER: Rob Pelinka
Credit where it’s due, Pelinka knocked this out of the park. He’s come under a ton of criticism for most of the moves he’s made since the Lakers won a championship in 2020, particularly since the team traded for Russell Westbrook and lost a lot of the shooting and defensive versatility that has tended to be the best fit alongside LeBron James. But he never gave into the pressure to rush into a trade with his valuable future first-round picks. Funny enough, the biggest move he made this year prior to the Doncic deal was bringing in Dorian Finney-Smith, one of Doncic’s best friends from their time in Dallas and a hand-in-glove fit next to both James and Doncic.
And then, you consider he got a once-in-a-lifetime deal for a player of Doncic’s caliber that only made him part with one of his remaining future picks, meaning he has one more first (and a few that can go via pick swaps) to play with on the trade market. The biggest question looming over everything the Lakers have been doing the last few years has been how do they position themselves for the post-LeBron era. Well, that’s solved and, even if there’s still work to do to build this year’s roster, they can realistically say they’re also trying to compete now by trading for a guy that just led a Finals run in Dallas. Really, incredible work by a guy who went out and got a top-5 player in the world to be the face of his franchise for the next 8-10 years for seemingly pennies on the dollar.
WINNER: Kyrie Irving
The Mavs are justifiably getting dragged over the coals for this trade, and it makes sense, because giving up Doncic and getting less future-facing stuff back than what, like, the Nets got for Mikal Bridges is nuts. But at least in the short-term, I’m very interested in watching Kyrie Irving with a bunch of long, rangy, athletic guys who can erase everything on the defensive end of the floor. Irving has been very good this year, and this is a pretty big bet on his ability to run the show full-time on the offensive end of the floor. As I mentioned a little higher up, he has a player option for next year, and it’s fair to wonder if the Mavs did this with a plan in place to keep him in Dallas beyond 2025-26.
Now, whether he can go blow-for-blow with someone like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Anthony Edwards, or another top-tier guard in the West come playoff time remains to be seen — frankly, I’m a little skeptical he can do it four times in a seven game series — but he’ll have every chance to do that alongside one hell of a pick-and-roll partner in Davis.
LOSER: The Lakers’ center rotation as it stands now
Currently, L.A. has Jaxson Hayes, Christian Koloko (on a two-way deal), and Trey Jemison (on a two-way deal) as its centers under contract. Guys like Maxi Kleber and Rui Hachimura have deputized as a small ball 5 over the years. For a team in the conference that has guys Chet Holmgren/Isaiah Hartenstein, Alperen Sengun, Jaren Jackson Jr., and Nikola Jokic currently sitting in the top-4 seeds, that’s untenable. They can dangle their 2031 first-round pick and guys like Hachimura/Gabe Vincent on the trade market, but regardless, they need help. Could the Wizards expect a call for Jonas Valanciunas? Would the Raptors be willing to move Jakob Poeltl? Is it possible that the Lakers package those two players, that pick, and Jarred Vanderbilt and try to get a guy like Deandre Ayton, or parts of that package for Robert Williams? Who knows! But boy, they better figure something out at the center spot this week.
WINNER AND LOSER: Jason Kidd
Kidd has always been a coach who tries to build stout defenses, and man, did the Mavs give him a fun guy to throw into the mix. Building a defense around Anthony Davis, Daniel Gafford, Dereck Lively, and a whole host of wings is legitimately terrifying, and I would not be stunned if Dallas has a top-5 defense over the rest of the regular season. As for the other side of the ball, well, if Davis does primarily play the 4, Kidd is going to have to build an offense that has him (a bad shooter) and Gafford/Lively (non-shooters) playing a ton, which is not an easy thing to do.
But even beyond that stuff, it is something to be the head coach of a team, not know your best player is about to get traded, and then get given a heads up at the very end of the process — he said he wasn’t away until the “11th hour,” according to Tim MacMahon of ESPN. He looked pretty miserable at the pregame presser with Nico Harrison on Sunday, and I can’t wait until we get his unfiltered thoughts on this trade at some point in the future once he’s no longer coaching in Dallas. It helps that he and Davis won a title together in L.A. during the 2019-20 season, but now, there’s gonna be a ton of pressure on Kidd to make this all work, and at least on the offensive end of the floor, Davis wanting to play the 4 is a structural issue that won’t be impossible to work around, but probably won’t be easy.
UNCLEAR: LeBron James
On one hand, Doncic is one hell of a running mate, and a pretty incredible guy to pass the baton to when the time comes. Plus he’s still a Laker, plans on continuing to be a Laker, plays on the same team as his son, and is LeBron James, so it’s very hard to ever complain about anything.
But at the same time, James and Davis were such an incredible pairing, and he was apparently blindsided by this move. For all the stuff about L.A. (and James specifically) wanting the Lakers to be Davis’ team, James was ultimately the conductor when the going got tough. How quickly will the Lakers want to get into the succession plan, where Doncic takes over as the guy for him? What does his role look like if that happens, and just generally, will he and Doncic play a ton of clunky, your turn/my turn basketball? Or will this truly be the part where he ages gracefully, lets someone else drive, and picks his spots where he can show there’s still some magic left in him? I’m probably more excited to watch this dynamic play out than anything else.
WINNER: The Utah Jazz
Few, if any, teams are as good right now at answering the phone and helping to facilitate a trade for a package of a young player (Jalen Hood-Schifino) and second-round picks (they got two of them) than the Jazz. Danny Ainge masterclass, he’s done it again.
