In a stunning Saturday night trade, the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks agreed to a blockbuster deal that sent Luka Doncic to L.A. and Anthony Davis to Dallas.
According to ESPN, the deal is:
Lakers get: Doncic, Maxi Kleber, Markief Morris
Mavericks get: Davis, Max Christie, Lakers 2029 first-round pick
Utah Jazz get: Jalen Hood-Schifino, Clippers 2025 second-round pick (via the Lakers), Dallas Mavericks second-round pick
Karalis’ analysis:
Where do we start with a trade that sounded so outrageous that I and many others online were convinced Shams Charania was hacked?
Let’s start with the motivation. All the reporting from ESPN is that Dallas was done with Doncic. According to Sharania, “the Mavericks actually approached the Lakers and offered Luka Doncic a few days ago in a trade. The Mavericks went out, they knew exactly who they wanted, they wanted Anthony Davis. That's the player that, if they were ever going to trade Luka Doncic, if this was even a thought that was going to cross their minds, it was for AD. And so the Mavericks called the Lakers, offered Luka Doncic, and that's when the Lakers had to huddle internally.”
So it was the Mavs who called the Lakers out of nowhere and offered Doncic in a deal for Davis. Instead of shopping Doncic, a 25-year-old who came into this season as an MVP favorite, the Mavs called the Lakers and took back 31-year-old Anthony Davis.
That speaks to the depths to which the Mavs believed Doncic was a lost cause. To think someone as talented as Doncic, a perennial All-NBA player who just led the Mavs to the NBA Finals, couldn't get a bigger return is incredible. This is still a season that began with the New York Knicks giving up four of their own first-rounders, an additional pick swap, and a first-rounder from Milwaukee in the Mikal Bridges trade. The league is full of teams who would have gladly tried to out-bid the Lakers for Doncic.
That the Mavs just offered Doncic, out of nowhere, to the Lakers is mind-blowing.
"I believe that defense wins championships," Mavs general manager Nico Harrison told ESPN "I believe that getting an All-Defensive center and an All-NBA player with a defensive mindset gives us a better chance. We're built to win now and in the future."
Are they?
The Mavs may be living out Danny Ainge’s 2019 fantasy of pairing Davis with Kyrie Irving, but in 2025, I’m not sure that is changing the course of the Western Conference. Irving now becomes the face of the Dallas backcourt while the Mavs go with a big front line, but is this pushing Dallas to the front of the line in the West? I doubt it. Even if getting Davis makes the Mavs a better defensive team, is the upgrade over their current frontcourt so massive that it shifts the future of the entire conference?
No. It doesn’t.
This tweet sums it up nicely:
Imagine Nico Harrison watching the entire basketball universe thinking Shams was hacked rather than believe you actually made that trade
— Adam Mares (@Adam_Mares) February 2, 2025
That's right on the money. Everyone’s instant reaction was that Charania was hacked. No one believed this deal was real. Even after Charania followed it up, the reaction was that it was hackers trying to be convincing. Not until ESPN’s official account tweeted it and other reporters start to confirm the news did people believe it.
That's not a great sign for your franchise.
And let me be clear here, I’m not even saying Dallas is nuts for trading Doncic. I can see why the team might be sick of conditioning issues and the lack of defense. That moment when Michael Finley took the beer out of Doncis’ hand is now more telling than ever. I knew going into the Finals that attacking Doncic was the path to winning.
But even with all of that being true, Doncic just led the Mavs to the NBA Finals. And even if he’s a defensive liability, he’s still one of the game’s ultimate offensive talents. He can manipulate a game like no other. And he at least has some size.
Dallas keeping the process secret and not opening themselves up to the rest of the league is an egregious basketball sin. Even if they wanted Davis all along, they never even tried to sweeten the pot. They never created a bidding war for a player that 90% of the league would jump in on right away. This is not how you run a franchise.
There's no telling what Doncic would fetch on the open market. There's no telling what other team would make a big mistake in pursuit of a player like Doncic. The Mavs can say ‘we targeted a particular guy and got him’ all they want, but they will never know if a better, unexpected, deal would have presented itself.
In the meantime, the Lakers now have Doncis and LeBron James, two of the best passers the league has ever seen. They still have assets to make a subsequent move to make themselves better. And even if they don’t get over the hump this season, they now have 25-year-old Luka Doncic as the centerpiece of the franchise moving forward.
Teams spend multiple years taking for a player like Doncic and the Lakers just walked into a long-term relationship with him by giving up Davis and one first-round pick.
The Celtics traded Marcus Smart and got Kristaps Porzingis and a first-round pick in return. Yeah, Porzingis isn’t as good as Davis, but that gap isn’t gigantic. You know which gap IS gigantic? The one between Doncic and Smart.
The Lakers got better in this deal. And even if you like the deal for the Mavs, they now only have a one or two-year window to win it all coming out of a conference with OKC and Houston as young, hungry teams and the Nikola Jokic-led Nuggets. And Jokic feasts on Anthony Davis.
The bottom line here is Dallas botched this situation. They didn’t get nearly the return they should have for a player of Doncic’s talent and they gave a rival a centerpiece for their future. The only way out of this with any dignity for Dallas is to win a championship with Davis and Irving, and I just don’t see how they do that.