At this point, Mavericks general manager/rogue agent of chaos Nico Harrison might be the only person on Earth who doesn’t think trading Luka Doncic to the Lakers was one of the most baffling decisions in NBA history.
From the start, everyone figured there had to be more to the story than Harrison simply preferring a 32-year-old injury-prone Anthony Davis to a 25-year-old generational talent. Doncic must’ve demanded a deal. How else could this be explained?
Count Minnesota Timberwolves star Anthony Edwards among those totally bewildered by the trade.
“They say that nobody knew about the trade. That’s crazy,” Edwards said while sitting at his locker after the Wolves’ two-point loss to Sacramento on Monday. “At 25 [years old], they traded probably the best scorer in the NBA. And he didn’t know about it. There’s a lot more digging somebody’s gotta do to find out why he got traded. Because you don’t just trade him at 25. He just went to the Finals. I feel bad for Luka, man.”
As details about the trade have continued to emerge, it appears that Harrison, as impossible as this is to believe, really did just want to be out of the Doncic business. He didn’t even shop Doncic around and was willing to take what can only be described as an extremely weak package in return (how on earth did Rob Pelinka whittle him down to just one future draft pick?) for a guy who has, in the first seven years of his career, already made more All-NBA first teams than Stephen Curry.
Even in a world where it can be reasonably be argued that the Mavericks are still in good, if not actually a little bit better, position to compete for a championship in the short term with Davis, nobody can wrap their head around the decision to just give away potentially another decade-plus with one of the greatest players we’ve ever seen — who hasn’t even hit his prime yet — at the helm of your franchise.
Mavericks GM willing to accept burden of Luka Doncic trade: ‘Ten years from now, they’ll probably bury me’
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