Dallas Mavericks guard Luka Dončić has a penchant for wowing crowds performing his magic on the court. But over the weekend, a development with Dončić off the floor gave basketball fans their biggest shock yet when he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
This didn’t just catch Dallas by surprise, it caught the whole NBA by surprise with no precedent for it and making the evening news Sunday night.
Tim Cato, who covers the Mavericks for AllCity Dallas, joined the Standard to talk about why this has created such an earthquake in professional basketball. Listen to the interview above or read the transcript below.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: For folks unfamiliar with the basketball world, tell us just how big of a shock this trade was.
Tim Cato: Yeah, this was the most stunning trade to, quite frankly, ever happen in the sport’s history. You know, I have not been alive for every single year of it, but this is what I’m hearing from people who work within the NBA.
It’s just really unprecedented to see a player who is 25 years old, still not even yet in their athletic prime and is universally considered to be a top five player, to be traded like this, to be traded at all. There have been examples of players who were just very clearly unhappy and did not want to remain in the franchise that they were employed by. But this isn’t that.
Every indication from Luka Dončić and from Nico Harrison, the general manager who ultimately traded him, is that Luka Dončić was going to sign an extension that was going to keep him in Dallas for five more years and pay him more than $300 million. And Dallas, despite that, decided that they were going to move on from the business of employing Luka Dončić.
It’s completely stunning, completely shocking. It took everybody in the league by absolute surprise. I’ll just tell you, I’ve never received so many text messages probably in my entire life – everyone trying to understand what had just happened.
I think listeners are getting a sense that this is a big deal. What was the deal, though? What did Dallas get in exchange for sending Luka to L.A.?
So Dallas acquired Anthony Davis – an excellent, excellent player, an All-NBA player. Somebody who, at points of his career, has been a top five top ten player in the NBA – is still something close to that.
He’s 32. You know, he’s seven years older than Luka Dončić. And that is what makes this so specifically shocking and jarring is that Dallas traded its chance, potentially, for a long-term future with one of the league’s best player for someone who is not as good as him and older.
Now, Dallas has clearly beliefs that maybe Luka Dončić will not be as great as long as the universal expectation is. Dallas and the decision makers and Nico Harrison were worried about giving that much money to a player who it seems they didn’t trust to stay on the court.
But this still has never happened. And that’s what the shock really stems from.
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
Not long ago, we covered Mark Cuban selling a majority of his interest in the Dallas Mavericks to the Adelson family. They’re casino owners, Republican megadonors. How big of a factor was that change of ownership in making this trade happen?
I do not think Luka Dončić ever would have been traded if Mark Cuban was still the owner. So in that sense, it was absolutely a massive change – a massive impact – in this trade happening.
I think the thing that stands out most to me about Mark Cuban is that this is someone who prided himself on his fandom, that he was a Mavericks fan before he bought the team. And what Mavericks fans are most enraged by today and over this weekend by this news is the breach of trust they had in the franchise.
And to the extent that the Adelson family understood that, I can’t say for sure. But I know with certainty that Mark Cuban is somebody who understands that fans care about the players and never would have expected something like this to happen. So I do think absolutely it made an impact.
So briefly, what does this do to the relationship between the Mavs and its fans as you see it?
Fans are infuriated. And we’ll see what the long term ramifications are.
But I have heard so many times over and seen so many times that there are people who are going to struggle to be fans of the Mavericks in the coming weeks and months and years, because this was, to them, such a slight and just such a disrespectful move that they just don’t know how to process it. And that really does speak to another aspect of just how shocking and stunning this trade is.
I’ve never seen quite this level of a reaction from a move like this.