She was calling to tell me that Luka Doncic had been traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
My response? “Hahaha, OK, there is no way that is true. You misheard the report or something. What is actually happening?”
Alas, the report was, shockingly, correct. I immediately hung up with her and texted a couple people who would know what the heck was going on and they too confirmed that, yes, it was real. And yet, here we are over a week later and it simply does not feel real. I’ve now seen Anthony Davis, who Dallas got in return for Doncic from the Los Angeles Lakers, play for two quarters in a Mavs uniform, and Monday night, I watched Doncic play in a Lakers uniform and my brain still doesn’t accept it.
My brain simply does not want to comprehend that an organization I have loved since I was a kid could be this aloof toward its fan base and trade a homegrown, generational talent. We loved Luka, we attached ourselves to him. Finally, for the first time ever as a franchise, he made the Mavericks nationally relevant and had fans of other teams buying tickets to watch him play.
As I’ve written before here in the Observer, I grew up in North Texas. All the teams in this area are the teams that I’ve rooted for my entire lifetime. Through the ups and downs of the '80s and '90s, I loved the Mavs. But I, like so many others my age back then, also loved Michael Jordan. Watching him dominate during the years the Mavericks were cellar dwellers was beyond exciting. Kids all over the world felt like Jordan was their hometown hero.
But even when Dirk Nowitzki was leading the team to the playoffs, or to the Finals and winning awards, the Mavs were not as respected nationally as they have become recently. Make no mistake, Dirk is an icon, he is amazing. The dude has a statue, and he’s the greatest Mav of all-time, but he wasn’t Luka.
Doncic showed up in 2018 and immediately, our team had a star on par with the gods of the NBA GOAT conversation like Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James. Luka is an assassin. Luka is ice. Luka is that guy.
You’ve probably heard the stories about Bird showing up to the 1988 NBA All-Star Game 3-point contest and asking “who’s coming in second?” before going out and winning it without ever taking his warmup jacket off. Luka is that. Luka is iconic.
And he was ours.
He hit that dagger three in the face of Rudy Gobert in the Western Conference Finals last year and we loved him for it. We loved his showmanship, his flair for the dramatic, his ability to put up the 40-point triple-double. Every game he played, he’d do something that would make me giggle at just how absurd his ability is. His court vision, his destroy-all mentality, his showing up in the biggest moments, all of it. And they took that from us … why?
“Motherf*cker! You can’t f*cking guard me!”- Luka Doncic to Rudy Gobert 😳 pic.twitter.com/qV2AsJTOPW
— Complex Sports (@ComplexSports) May 25, 2024
There’s been the insinuation that he was bad for the team’s culture, or that management had concerns about his physical conditioning and how that might affect his health as he ages. General Manager Nico Harrison cited his desire to make the Mavs a better defensive team in explaining why he engineered the trade. But how out of shape and how bad for the culture was Doncic, really, seeing as how he almost single handedly led them to the NBA Final just a season ago?
And let’s not forget, in the offseason, the Mavericks made moves, including bringing in Klay Thompson, to put better pieces around Doncic. It was not their defense that was a problem against the Boston Celtics in the Finals last year, it was the offensive disappearance of anyone other than Doncic.
They were so worried about what Harrison described as a need to “win now,” they traded a 25-year-old not even yet in his prime for a nearly 32-year-old who has a well-documented, lengthy history of missing significant time due to injury.
Of course, none of this is Davis’ fault. When healthy he’s a top 10-12 player in the league, but how often is that? In his last five seasons, he’s played 36, 40, 56, 76 out of a possible 82 games, and so far this season, 43 out of a possible 51 games, and is now going to miss at least a month with an abductor strain.
But yes, let’s worry about Luka’s conditioning, the same Luka who played more minutes last season (regular season and playoffs combined) than any player in the NBA.
This new Mavs ownership group clearly doesn’t seem to understand the connection Dallas has with its icons. Perhaps Dirk made it harder for us because he played 21 seasons here and could’ve left and never did. I wasn’t alive when he played, but Roger Staubach never left. Troy Aikman and Michael Irvin played their entire careers for the Cowboys franchise they helped return to greatness.
I never thought Luka would not be a Mav. It never crossed my mind. What crossed my mind was this is the type of guy players want to come to Dallas to play with. This is a guy who wins multiple titles. I remember, as a kid, thinking how cool it would be if the Mavs had Michael Jordan. And we did, we had our own Jordan, and the powers that be didn’t care.
Luka was the guy that made people in Philadelphia, Oklahoma City, Cleveland, Sacramento or Orlando want to be Dallas Mavericks fans. They wanted to go see our team play in their arenas because they wanted to see our guy. And now, our guy is not ours anymore. He’s playing for the Lakers because he’s allegedly a culture disrupter and persistently out of shape yet somehow has averaged 29 points, 9 assists and 8 rebounds a game for his career (yes, you read that correctly). As the also-traded Markieff Morris, a 14-year NBA veteran said, “if that isn’t in shape, I don’t know what shape is.”
I just bought my 14-year-old son a Luka No. 77 jersey for Christmas. He wore it constantly. He cried when he found out they traded his favorite player on any team in any sport. What do you tell your kids? “Don’t worry son, it’s a business.” Good luck with that.
"I heard a lot of noise when I was introduced. ... It was a special moment."
— ESPN (@espn) February 11, 2025
Luka Doncic on how it feels to be a Laker 🥺 pic.twitter.com/80d5Rcb2Yl
This trade has fractured the Mavs relationship with its fanbase and perhaps more so with the youth of that group. The youngest Dallas fans, or more accurately, Luka fans, likely have never seen the Mavs win it all. My son was 5 months old when the Mavs won the title in 2011. He was attached to this new era of Mavs, he was attached to Luka. He’s of the generation where MFFL meant Mavs Fan For Luka and now he and thousands upon thousands of other kids will have to decide to either follow their favorite player or continue to follow their favorite team who broke their heart.
The world of the Mavericks winning multiple titles with the greatest basketball player I’ve ever seen put on a Dallas jersey is now just a fantasy. It’s as real as wishing that Michael Jordan would’ve been traded to Dallas back in the ‘80s. Unfortunately, we Mavs fans will never know what could’ve been for Luka Doncic here in Dallas.
I’ve been rooting for this team for 40 years, and I’ll keep rooting for them. This new reality is just that, reality. You either accept it or you don’t. Luka Doncic is a Los Angeles Laker. Nah, never mind, there’s no way around this one. It just sucks.
