In a transfer our Mavericks specialists at Mavs Moneyball are calling “the worst second within the historical past of DFW sports activities,” Dallas made a commerce sending Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, a first-round choose, and Max Christie in a blockbuster deal late Saturday evening.
Within the aftermath of the deal, the prevailing cries from NBA followers, Mavericks supporters and basketball punditry alike have been united in asking “why didn’t the Mavericks make Luka accessible to extra groups?” and “was this actually the very best bundle they might get?”
The response is sensible, as a result of it’s uncommon for a transfer to be so beautiful and fully out of nowhere that it catches practically everybody concerned with the NBA off-guard. However it seems there’s a motive for that — preliminary reviews are that the Mavs certainly didn’t make Doncic broadly accessible, selecting to solely negotiate with the Lakers… and one thriller workforce.
In line with veteran NBA insider Marc Stein’s newest dispatch on his Substack, the one folks with the Mavs who actually even knew this was a risk have been proprietor Patrick Dumont and GM Nico Harrison, the latter of whom apparently determined to simply go after Davis and never even see what the market was for Doncic (emphasis mine):
Harrison made the choice, supported by new Mavericks majority proprietor Patrick Dumont, to pursue Davis and just about nobody else. The Mavericks didn’t make Dončić accessible to groups for the richest attainable haul of draft picks. Sources say that the Mavericks are satisfied that this transfer brings again a top-10 participant within the league in addition to a 2029 first-round choose from the Lakers.
That “just about” leaves open the likelihood that it wasn’t simply the Lakers they put in cursory calls to, although, and Sam Amick of The Athletic wrote that there was no less than one different workforce who turned down the Mavericks’ advances about buying and selling Doncic for his or her star:
The Mavericks have been enormously involved with Dončić’s sturdiness — or lack thereof — and satisfied his method to the sport would proceed to be an issue within the years to come back. But whereas there was no scarcity of groups shocked that the Mavericks didn’t broadcast their willingness to maneuver Dončić, league sources say there was no less than one workforce moreover the Lakers that was approached by Dallas practically two weeks in the past concerning the prospect of swapping Dončić for one more star.
That bid was turned down, however the message despatched within the course of had been clear: There was hassle brewing in Dallas. And the Lakers, in the long run, have been those who reaped the advantages.
Each reviews depart us with an attention-grabbing query…
Which different NBA star did the Mavericks attempt to commerce Luka Doncic for?
Theories abound, and we’ll most likely by no means know for sure. Nevertheless, it’s straightforward to surprise if Jason Kidd, who simply received again a participant he had received the 2020 NBA championship with in Davis, pushed his bosses to go after one other participant he had coached earlier than in Giannis Antetokounmpo, given their mutual admiration for each other each within the aftermath of Kidd’s firing and through the years since.
Mark Cuban is not working as (basically) proprietor/GM for the Mavs, energy abhors a vacuum, and Kidd is a famous coup fanatic with basketball accolades to woo Harrison and their new bosses with. So if we discover out later a part of this deal was his engineering, it wouldn’t be a shock, and neither would the Mavs throwing up a warmth examine to see if they might get Giannis amidst a bizarre season with the Bucks.
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Once more, we’ll most likely by no means know for sure, however the record of groups that may flip down buying and selling their star for Doncic might be extraordinarily restricted, and will solely embody:
And that actually is likely to be the tip of the record. Perhaps you might throw Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves on there and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors for legacy causes, nevertheless it’s a brief, quick record, and the truth that (apparently) the one different workforce the Mavs referred to as mentioned “no” to buying and selling for a consensus top-five participant within the NBA exhibits simply how selective they have been being of their targets, and the way secretive they needed to maintain Doncic commerce talks.
Nonetheless, for everybody mad that the Lakers have been seemingly in a position to purchase Doncic with out having to compete with another presents, it seems that’s not fully true, even when that absolutely received’t quiet league conspiracies concerning the NBA attempting to assist the Lakers right here.
