Fifteen years ago, best-selling author Michael Lewis wrote “The Big Short,” a book that became the defining tome of the financial crisis of the late aughts.
Saturday night, Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison authored the NBA’s version of “The Big Short,” when he agreed to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for a package led by Anthony Davis. It was a deal so shocking that after ESPN’s Shams Charania broke the news, dozens of people instantly reached out to ask him whether his social media account had been hacked.
As Shams confirmed, it hadn’t been. The Mavericks chose to make a stunning bet against the future of a player who, at 25 years old, has one of the most decorated résumés in basketball history.
Doncic has been an All-NBA First Team selection each of the past five seasons. While he’s not eligible to make the team this season because of the calf strain that has sidelined him since Dec. 25, he is one of only five active players to have at least that many First Team selections (and one of only 28 in NBA history).
The other four? Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden, Kevin Durant and Doncic’s new teammate, LeBron James.
Antetokounmpo turned 30 in early December. Harden is 35. Durant is 36. James is 40.
Doncic doesn’t even turn 26 until Feb. 28.
Doncic led Dallas to the NBA Finals less than a year ago. He entered this season ranked second only to Nikola Jokic in ESPN’s NBA Rank, and was a co-favorite alongside Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to win his first MVP award. He’s had remarkable success internationally playing for his native Slovenia, and is an elite offense by himself.
As a result, the unanimous reaction from anyone outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in the early hours of Saturday morning was both that the Lakers had won the trade — and that they couldn’t understand it.
“What the f— is happening,” said an assistant coach.
“I feel like I’m dreaming,” said an agent.
“The confusion around the league is quite high,” said an executive.
This is a moment that will live on in the memory of the league for a long time — just like when Paul George was dealt to the LA Clippers in the middle of the night six years ago, ensuring Kawhi Leonard would sign with the Clippers, and when Durant declared he was going to the Golden State Warriors on July 4, 2016, and when James sat across from Jim Gray and said he was taking his talents to South Beach a few months after Lewis’ book came out.
The Mavericks betting against Doncic due to what sources told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon were concerns over his conditioning and the potential supermax contract he’d be eligible to sign this summer is the biggest takeaway from as big of a trade as the NBA has seen in quite some time. Doncic has been limited to 22 games this season, and hasn’t played more than 70 in a season since his rookie year.
“You better be sure his body is going to fall apart,” said an Eastern Conference executive. “That’s all I’m going to say.”
That’s just one of the biggest storylines as the league wraps its collective mind around what the deal means for Davis, Doncic, the Mavericks, the Lakers and everyone else moving forward.
Dallas clearly coveted Davis
Not only is this a massive bet against Doncic, for all of the reasons listed above, but it is also a truly gigantic bet on Davis himself. Several sources reacted to ESPN about the trade by asking why Dallas wouldn’t have canvassed the league to see how much they could get for Doncic if they wanted to move him, and that they clearly would’ve been able to get more than they did.
“Nico must really love Anthony Davis,” said a Western Conference executive.
Harrison clearly targeted Davis, someone he has a longstanding relationship with going back to his prior job as a high-ranking Nike executive. As for Davis, in the middle of possibly the best season of his career (averaging 25.7 PPG, 11.9 RPG and shooting 52.8% from the field), he showed he was more than happy to go to Dallas when, according to ESPN’s Bobby Marks, he waived his trade bonus to get the deal done and, also, keep Dallas under the luxury tax for the time being.
This isn’t the first time Harrison has gone after a player he knew from his past. Two years ago, Harrison acquired Kyrie Irving from the Brooklyn Nets. Last year, he acquired P.J. Washington from the Charlotte Hornets. Now, Harrison acquires Davis. All of them are players with whom he had preexisting relationships.
Both the Irving and Washington trades were questioned in the moments they were made. They helped power Dallas to the Finals last season. Time will tell if Harrison’s latest gamble will pay off, too.
This is the trade that will define Harrison’s career — particularly given he’s already traded away control of the Mavericks’ first-round picks from 2027 to 2030.
No pressure.
Lakers Exceptionalism is back
There’s a reason the Lakers have spent the past 60-plus years as the NBA’s most glamorous franchise. One star after another — from Jerry West to Wilt Chamberlain to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Magic Johnson to Shaquille O’Neal to Kobe Bryant to LeBron James to Anthony Davis — has found his way to the Purple and Gold.
All eight of those players, by the way, were among the 75 honored as the greatest players in the history of the NBA, and only West was acquired with a draft pick that originally belonged to the Lakers.
Now, Los Angeles has Doncic, who feels destined to be on the 100th Anniversary team in a couple decades — and has acquired him without sacrificing both of its tradeable first round picks. Several sources expressed shock Dallas didn’t get both the Lakers’ 2029 and 2031 first-round picks, and couldn’t believe the Lakers once again fell into a generational talent — in addition to the ongoing shock that Dallas was willing to give up Doncic at all.
The best comparison for this trade is when Abdul-Jabbar arrived in Los Angeles in 1975. That Lakers team, like this one, wasn’t good enough to win a championship. And it took another four years — until Los Angeles landed Magic Johnson in the 1979 NBA draft — for the Lakers to return to that stratosphere.
But like when the Lakers landed Abdul-Jabbar 50 years ago, they have now acquired an MVP-level talent who is in the middle of his prime. Abdul-Jabbar arrived in L.A. two seasons after the end of the Chamberlain era. Now Doncic is arriving as the LeBron era nears its end. And, unless Dallas’ big short of Doncic’s career comes to fruition, the Lakers could quite possibly see the best years of Doncic’s career in the seasons to come – just as James is preparing to exit the stage for good.
Now … what about on the court?
The Mavericks made this deal believing that the combination of Irving and Davis can be the fulcrum of a championship contending team, as Harrison told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon.
Harrison said that after this trade, Dallas is “built to win both now and in the future.” Multiple executives, in response to that, pegged the “future” part of that answer to the next 18 months, believing Irving and Davis, who turns 32 next month, can’t be expected to remain a championship-level core for a significant period of time.
But whatever the time horizon you want to put on the Mavericks’ hopes of contending, what isn’t in dispute is this is a trade a team makes if it’s trying to win today, not tomorrow. And, after making it, Dallas now has a roster with one high-level ball-handler on it — Irving, who is turning 33 next month and who is dealing with a bulging disc in his back.
As a result, it feels like this is going to be a busy week ahead in Dallas, as it seems highly unlikely that could remain the case by the time the trade deadline passes at 3 p.m. Thursday. It also makes one wonder about whether Dereck Lively could be a possible option in trades this week. Not only does Dallas have Daniel Gafford to play alongside Davis, but Lively is out for months with a foot injury. He might not be able to play again this season and would be a valuable trade chip to strengthen the current roster.
Beyond that, it’s going to be quite interesting to see how all the current pieces in Dallas fit together. Yes, Davis will be happy to play at power forward, where he’s wanted to be, but he’s had success as a full-time center the past few years, and especially this season, for a reason: his lack of shooting makes him playing power forward a problem. He’s shooting 29.8% from 3-point range this season, which is actually an improvement on the 24.8% mark he posted over the previous four seasons.
Washington is a power forward who now likely will have to spend time at small forward. Can he hold up there? Klay Thompson , who turns 35 on Saturday, has been starting at small forward but should really be guarding power forwards now himself. Now he might not even be in the starting lineup anymore. Instead, you can make a good argument that Max Christie, the other on-court piece to come over from Los Angeles in the trade and who has quickly blossomed into a quality 3-and-D wing at just 21 years old for the Lakers over the past couple of months, should start alongside Irving in the backcourt, with Davis, Gafford and Washington up front.
Overall, the Mavericks believe their size and defense gives them a legitimate shot to repeat last year’s run. They are a massive team across the board now, and we’ve seen positional size help both the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics win the last two titles.
But the bottom line is that there feels like an awful lot of work left to be done in Dallas this week – while the NBA is still coming to grips with the fact the trade happened at all.
“I’m still stunned,” an Eastern Conference executive told ESPN Sunday morning
How will the Lakers make Luka, LeBron and Austin Reaves work?
The Lakers, meanwhile, find themselves in the reverse situation, with a logjam on the perimeter and a hole in the middle. Just last week, Davis sat down with Charania and declared the Lakers should trade for a center. Now, they only have one healthy center on the 15-man roster — Jaxson Hayes — plus Trey Jemison and Christian Koloko on two-way contracts.
That’s not a tenable situation if it remains that way past Thursday’s deadline.
Meanwhile, while Doncic, James and Austin Reaves should be a fabulous offensive troika, trying to play the three of them together defensively would be a challenge — and that’s being kind. It’s fair to wonder whether Reaves could be used to re-balance the Laker roster over the next few days. Reaves has blossomed into a very good role player in Los Angeles, averaging 18.2 points and 6.1 assists per game. His salary — at $12.9 million this year and $13.9 million next year — makes him more valuable right now than he probably will be at any point in his career, given his ability to be traded to virtually any team.
If the Lakers were to make him available, perhaps he could bring them back the kind of frontcourt depth they need to both give them some defensive heft behind James and Doncic and better balance out the Lakers’ roster from where it sits right now.
This blockbuster could create more trades
Up until the moment this trade was consummated Saturday night, the expectation around the league was that we were heading toward a fairly quiet trade deadline. Jimmy Butler and De’Aaron Fox have both generated plenty of speculation, but both those situations were contained in their scope. The expectation was they would either happen, or they wouldn’t — not that they were holding up anyone else’s business.
This move, however, will undoubtedly have ripple effects. No one was looking at either the Lakers or Mavericks as teams likely to do much.
“In my conversations with Dallas this week,” one executive joked, “I was told they were looking for a backup center.”
It’s safe to say there was little if any indication something like this was coming.
But a move this out of the blue, and unexpected, is bound to shake things up. Both Dallas and Los Angeles feel like they have further moves to make. The Butler and Fox situations remain in flux. A league where there hasn’t been a repeat champion since Durant and Stephen Curry were playing together in Golden State feels like it could easily go a record eighth straight season without seeing a team claiming back-to-back titles, and that vacuum at the top could create even more movement.
A move of this magnitude has long lasting aftershocks. We’ll see how many of them ripple out across the league’s 30 teams this week, and how much movement they cause as a result.
Source: espn.com