Nah, April Fools’ Day didn’t come two months early. It’s all true: The Dallas Mavericks really are trading Markieff Morris to the Los Angeles Lakers. The deal reportedly also includes Maxi Kleber and, um, Luka Doncic?
Luka Doncic? Future-of-the-sport Luka Doncic? Once-in-a-lifetime-talent, face-of-the-franchise Luka Doncic? Dallas dumped that guy? Get the hell outta here!
Around midnight Saturday on the East Coast, ESPN NBA scoop genius Shams Charania tweeted out what has to be the clubhouse leader in any ranking of the least believable scoop of his career: The Mavs, Charania reported, are sending Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers alongside throw-ins Kleber and Morris as part of a three-team deal. In return, Dallas gets Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick from L.A., and Utah gets Jalen Hood-Schifino along with second-round picks from the Lakers (via the Clippers) and Mavs in this year’s draft.
With the trade deadline coming up on Feb. 6 at 3 p.m. EST, crazy trade talks are everywhere. On paper pretty much everybody is tradeable in the NBA: Only two players have no-trade clauses, Luka’s new teammate LeBron James, and, somehow, Bradley Beal of the Phoenix Suns. But trades are for folks like Markieff Morris, who has already been on nine different teams, including a two-season stint on the Lakers beginning in 2019.
But up until Shams broke the news, nobody seemed less likely to be sent packing by their team than Doncic by Dallas. The 25-year-old Slovenian has played his whole NBA career there since Dallas took him with the third overall pick in the 2018 draft. And only two players in NBA history, Kevin Durant and LeBron, had scored more points at his age. During the Mavs’ run to the NBA Finals last season, the world saw Luka give his body and soul, along with his back, an ankle and a knee, only to get beat by the Celtics in five games. Sure, this year has been a bust so far. He’s only played 22 games this season, none since suffering a strained calf in a Christmas Day home loss to the Timberwolves.
How does all of that really add up to trading away your franchise player if you’re Dallas? It was only two years ago Dallas traded for Kyrie Irving to put the final pieces around Doncic to win a title. So what happened? Already the Mavs company line is that Doncic was an overweight bum with all the strength and conditioning of a sack lunch. Maybe more pressing than his eating habits is the fact that Doncic was in line for a five-year, $345 million contract extension from Dallas this summer. But still. No NBA player seemed to mean more to his team than Doncic did to Dallas. Now he’s gone? Who can believe this?
Not that Davis, at 31, is slop. He’s averaged 25.7 points and 11.9 rebounds a game so far this season, and was announced as an NBA All-Star for the 10th time mere days ago. He took himself out of Tuesday’s game against the Philadelphia 76ers with what was later diagnosed as an abdominal muscle strain and has yet to return to the lineup. So Davis missed the Lakers’ 128-112 road win over the New York Knicks on Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. The Lakers gave up a haul to bring Davis to LA in 2019 from New Orleans. Davis was supposed to be the final piece that helped Lebron James build a new championship dynasty with the Lakers. But the only ring they won came in the bubble in 2020. This must have come as a shocker to everyone involved.
“Lebron James had no idea this was coming,” Charania said on ESPN after breaking the trade news. “Anthony Davis had no idea this was coming. I’m told Luka Doncic is still stunned about this trade.”
James seemed to confirm Charania’s assessment when he tweeted a clown “You a fkn lie!!!” in response to a post from CBS Sports reporting the trade. Another Dallas all-timer Eurostar, Dirk Nowitzki, tweeted a shocked-face emoji and nothing else in a tweet sent in the early hours after the news leaked.
More will come out in the days ahead about how this blockbuster trade was finalized. Look for Mavs brass, in hopes of staving off a fan mutiny, to leak even more nasty things about Luka’s lipids and personality to justify his jettisoning. But unless Dallas followers find out, like Dallas viewers did all those years ago, that this awful development was all a bad dream and the star is coming back, they’re gonna be pissed.
