Luka Doncic trade grades: Lakers get ‘A+’ as they solve future, why Mavs fail despite landing Anthony Davis

The modern NBA is built on drama and there’s no more fertile ground for wild stuff to happen than the days leading up to the trade deadline. But absolutely nobody could’ve seen this coming: The Lakers and Mavericks have agreed to a three-way trade with Utah that sends Anthony Davis to Dallas and … brace yourself … Luka Doncic to Los Angeles. Yes, Luka Doncic will now play for the Lakers alongside LeBron James.

While you’re digesting that, here are the full details of the deal:

Apologies to Jazz fans, but nobody has any time to assess their part of this deal. This is all about Luka joining up with LeBron and the Maverickls, as crazy as this sounds, possibly better positioning themselves in the short term to win a title. Now, let’s get to the trade grades. 

Lakers: A+

There’s no other way to look at this. Factoring in both age and production, the Lakers just scored what is probably the most coveted basketball player in the world not named Victor Wembanyama. Doncic is only 25 years old. To land a player this good and this young in a trade is absolute bonkers. You honestly might never see a score again like this in your lifetime. 

It almost doesn’t even matter how Luka and LeBron will pair together or whether they’ll have any chance to holding up defensively (probably not), because for the Lakers, the short-term implications of this deal aren’t nearly as important as what this does for them long-term, assuming they lock up Doncic on a max deal as soon as humanly possible. 

The Lakers have been trying to figure out their post-LeBron plan for some time now. They have held firm to their future first-round draft picks knowing they couldn’t empty their cupboard as LeBron ages out, which is bound to happen, right? Well, Luka Doncic pretty much takes care of that concern, and to think, they didn’t even have to give up both their trade-eligible picks to get him. They could still go out and make even more moves before Thursday’s deadline. 

This is truly unbelievable. I don’t know whether Rob Pelinka is the luckiest or smartest man alive, but the Lakers are celebrating tonight.

Mavericks: F

So here’s the weird thing: I truly believe the Mavericks are better positioned to win a championship with Anthony Davis, assuming full postseason health, than they are with Luka Doncic… today. Right now. And yet they still get an F because you just can’t trade Luka Doncic, not unless your hand is forced. 

Upon first hearing the news, that was my only rational explanation for the deal. The Mavericks had to have been forced by Doncic behind closed doors. He must’ve told them he wanted out, and they didn’t want to wait until next season when word would get out and they would lose leverage. 

Through that lens, I went on CBS Sports HQ and initially gave the Mavericks a C-, because I’m all for being proactive with these things rather than winding up like the Heat with Jimmy Butler or the 76ers with James Harden or the Pelicans with Davis and having to do everything on the players’ terms. But according to Marc Stein, Doncic “did not request a trade.”

Now, as CBS Sports’ Bill Reiter is hearing, maybe the Mavs were sensing Luka was going to want out even thought he had not requested anything. 

But the Mavericks just decided to trade Luka Doncic without him making a demand, which sounds positively insane but is in fact supported by this quote from Mavericks GM Nico Harrison, via ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. 

“I believe that defense wins championships,” Mavs GM Nico Harrison told ESPN regarding his motivation to trade Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis. “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.”

MacMahon further reported that the Mavericks had “major concerns” about partnering with Doncic on another max contract “due to his constant conditioning issues.” 

So this is the context we need, or at least as much as we can hope for in the immediacy of a trade of this magnitude. The Mavericks don’t trust Luka to stay in shape and they don’t trust him to play defense and they believe defense is a must to win a championship, and I don’t think you would find very many people who would disagree with any of those things. 

I also don’t think you would find very many people, all those things notwithstanding, who would’ve made this trade. There’s a chance Nico Harrison is the only GM in history who would’ve done it. It’s Luka, man. He’s a once-in-a-generation player even when he’s out of shape and not playing defense. I’m sorry. He’s just too great and too young to trade, even if the concerns are reasonable and even if you’re possibly in a better spot to win a title in the short term, which I do believe is the case for the Mavericks. 

Luka was a defensive mess in last year’s Finals. The Celtics feasted on him. Dallas had no chance to win that series even with Luka being Luka offensively. Davis can play alongside Daniel Gafford or Derek Lively and give the Mavericks a massive defensive front line, and he’s an absolutely perfect two-man pairing with Kyrie Irving, whom the Mavericks are clearly comfortable turning their offense over to, with shooting around them.

If Davis is healthy in the playoffs, Dallas is going to be nasty. Just watch. But I’ll tell you what, even if they actually do win the title, it will still be hard to justify this deal. It will be a lot easier than if they don’t, but it still is going to sting for a long time letting Luka Doncic go on your own accord. 

In two years, when Davis is 34 and and Kyrie is 35 and Doncic is off winning MVPs, they are going to wake up some morning in a cold sweat wondering what the hell they did, the same way the Hawks, for as good as Trae Young has been and for as justifiable as that draft-day trade looked on paper at the time, will never get over giving up Luka. 

See, that’s the thing. Davis is going to be out of his prime in the blink of an eye. The Mavericks, if they really wanted to do this, could’ve gone out and gotten so many future draft picks they wouldn’t have known what to do with them. But they chose the best team they could put together right now. Its’s short-sighted, but it is what they chose to do. I can’t see any way they won’t end up regretting it once enough time passes — however these next few seasons shake out. 

Well, OK. If they win back-to-back titles, I’ll give it to Nico. 

But until them, I mean, I don’t know what else to say. This is ludicrous. I may have entirely different thoughts on all this in a week, or a month, or a year, or in five years, but right now, this is how it shakes out in my head. The Mavericks are better positioned to win a title with Davis this season than they would’ve been with Doncic, and yet the still made a massive mistake.