It has now been nearly two months since the Dallas Mavericks shipped Luka Doncic off in the middle of the night to the Los Angeles Lakers. And yet, it remains one of the hottest topics in the NBA. People just can’t believe a team would trade a player like Luka Doncic in the way Nico Harrison went about it.
One of ESPN’s NBA insiders, Tim MacMahon, who mainly covers the Mavericks, went on the Knicks Film Room podcast to talk about the Doncic trade and Jalen Brunson leaving the team to go to New York. Here’s how people around the NBA reacted to the trade, according to MacMahon.
“There’s two camps,” MacMahon said, “the majority say ‘I just don’t care if the kid’s a pain in the butt,’ which he is a little bit but by superstar standards I don’t think it that ridiculous… you just can’t trade that level of generational talent. Not based on the potential, proved on who he has proven to be, a five times All-NBA selection.”
“The other camp, this is more of a minority opinion, but I have heard this from several people, ‘Look, I understand wanting to get out of the Luka business, the reasons I’ve reported on the Mavericks concerns, the conditioning, etc., but you have to maximize the return.’ They did not, and the process they went about prevented them from being in a position to maximize the return.”
Nearly every Mavericks fan would sit in the first in the first camp, where even the thought of trading a player such as Doncic would’ve been inconceivable. He just led the team to the NBA Finals last season, but Nico Harrison decided he couldn’t help the team win for whatever reason.
But Dallas also did a poor job of getting value back for Doncic. Mark Cuban made the point that if the team had gotten back four first-round picks, Anthony Davis, Max Christie, Austin Reaves, and Dalton Knecht, maybe this would be a different conversation. Only getting back Davis, Christie, and one first-round pick makes it an abomination of a trade, especially since Davis has only played two games since the trade.
Some rumors have gone around that Nico Harrison at least sniffed around trades for Giannis Antetokounmpo and Anthony Edwards, but the validity of those rumors has varied. Either way, the Mavericks did a poor job of going about their trades this season.