Let’s stipulate up front: Former Mavericks GM Nico Harrison wasn’t right when he traded Luka Doncic. He could have gotten a better return than he did. He should have had conversations with more than one or two teams as he investigated trade possibilities. He was bizarrely tone deaf in his messaging to Mavericks fans. And even last February, before it all went awry in a heap of injuries and fan protests, the plan to build a championship team around Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving didn’t make much sense to anyone who had watched either of those players attempt to lead teams for the previous 10 years. So, no arguments there. Nico’s execution was a problem. However…
The Luka trade was derided first and foremost because the whole world agreed it was certifiably insane to trade a future Hall of Famer who was 25 years old, nine months removed from an NBA Finals appearance, and all set to sign a 5-year, $345 million contract extension that would have kept him in Dallas through 2031. Sure, the return was deemed insufficient, but the shock of trading a beloved prodigy in the middle of his prime, suddenly deciding that Luka was a bad bet, is why the world lost its mind. It’s why a quick Google search finds The Ringer calling Harrison an all-time embarrassment and the Wall Street Journal calling the Luka deal the worst trade in NBA history.
We’re approaching the one year anniversary of all that madness—Luka and the Lakers are also set to visit Dallas on Saturday night—and Greatest of All Talk listeners will remember that elements of the volcanic backlash to the trade annoyed me even last February. For one thing, there were lots of extremely personal attacks on Harrison and his intelligence that didn’t sit right with me. More generally, everyone was speaking and writing with so much authority and certainty on how all this will be remembered, and it set off some of my bullshit alarms.
Luka was being discussed like he was 25 year-old Michael Jordan, and there was no humility with respect to NBA history, and how much of this particular story remained unwritten. There was not much curiosity as to why people like Harrison and Jason Kidd, who were around Luka every day, might have moved on, or the many different outcomes that were—and are!—still on the board.
Consider the beginning of that Ringer column, which ran after Harrison was fired by the Mavericks in November:
And just like that, the man behind the dumbest in the history of the NBA is out of a job. Who could’ve seen this coming? Nine months after Nico Harrison decided it was time to get out of the Luka Doncic business—still such a comically unfathomable, shortsighted move—Dallas Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont finally came to the conclusion that enough was enough on Tuesday.
That lede echoes the way the NBA media has characterized the trade for the past 12 months. My guess is the story will be understood differently as time passes. Based on what we’ve seen in Los Angeles, there’s a good chance that getting out of the Luka Doncic business will not be seen as shortsighted, and that over time that decision will, in fact, become much easier for everyone to fathom.
One year later, let’s get into it.
What’s Going Wrong for Luka and the Lakers?
Statistically, Doncic is having a phenomenal season. He was a named All-Star starter in the Western Conference earlier this week, and he’s leading the league in scoring averaging 33 points-per-game, 7.5 rebounds, and nearly nine assists. After the Lakers lost in five games in the first round of last year’s playoffs, J.J. Redick challenged him to come back in “championship shape,” and Doncic did just that. A few days before he signed a three-year contract extension worth $165 million, he appeared in Men’s Health looking noticeably slimmer and more toned than last season. A month later, the PR push continued, and he was appearing in Wall Street Journal‘s magazine for a cover story headlined, “Welcome to the Luka Doncic Revenge Tour.”
The tour got off to a fantastic start. Luka looked and played great, and even without LeBron for the first month, the Lakers started 15-4. Luka looked like an MVP candidate and one of the three best players alive. All of this coincided with a Mavs season that was cratering with Kyrie Irving sidelined and Anthony Davis out of shape and playing sporadically at best; for a few weeks in late October and early November, right before Nico Harrison was fired, the deal to move Doncic absolutely did look like one of the most regrettable decisions in NBA history.
But the season didn’t end there. Since the 15-4 start for the Lakers, Austin Reaves went down with a calf strain and the Lakers have been flatlining. They’re 10-10 in games Doncic has played since December 1st, and 11-12 overall. Of the losses, 10 of 12 have come by double digits. In other words, when it breaks bad for the Lakers, it gets ugly, and lately, that happens about twice a week. They’re still sixth in the West standings, but just barely. Their point differential is worse than the Charlotte Hornets or Orlando Magic, and only slightly better than the 20-24 Los Angeles Clippers, who were, until recently, in the middle of one of the most depressing seasons in NBA history.
To be clear, what’s happening here is not primarily Luka’s fault. This is a transitional season in L.A.; the team’s paying $52 million to LeBron James, whose athleticism is gone and who can’t play defense anymore, and who was not offered a contract extension last summer. Last summer the front office wanted to keep its books clean for the 2026 offseason and beyond, so this year’s roster is full of imperfect, stop-gap gambles (Jake LaRavia, Marcus Smart, Deandre Ayton), past experiments that failed to launch (Gabe Vincent, Jaxson Hayes), one-way holdovers from a previous era (Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt), cast-off success stories (Nick Smith Jr., Drew Timme?), and Bronny James (Bronny James).
Despite the balky roster construction, the formula can work for them in the regular season if Doncic plays like an MVP candidate and either LeBron or Reaves is putting up All-NBA numbers. On the other hand, that kind of Reaves or James production is a pretty tough standard to sustain for seven months straight, let alone for multiple playoff rounds. More pertinent for this column, Luka hasn’t looked like an MVP candidate for two months.
His numbers are a bit misleading. Watch the Lakers, and Doncic is not only not a one-man solution, but he’s often part of the problem for a team that can’t defend, lacks athleticism, and seems to check out when things get hard. His body language isn’t great, and despite the Men’s Health photoshoot from August and all the revenge tour talk, he seems to be out of shape again. This isn’t a surprise to longtime Luka watchers—contrary to some peers who play themselves into shape, Luka’s conditioning often gets worse during the NBA season, while playing a full slate of games. There are various theories as to how that happens and why Luka’s conditioning is such a struggle, and the Mavs reportedly had concerns about his drinking. Whatever the cause, this has always been a question of basic professionalism for a star basketball player, and we’re sort of back to square one.
The lack of conditioning manifests as some of the softest defense in the NBA, but more concerning for the future, it’s also affecting his offense. He’s never moved off the ball when other players are initiating, and as Ben Golliver pointed out at the Washington Post this week, Doncic is now taking only seven percent of his shots at the rim this season, down from 26 percent during his first All-Star season. Compare that number to Anthony Edwards shots at the rim (20%), Cade Cunningham (17%), Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (19%), Tyrese Maxey (24%), Donovan Mitchell (19%), or even guys like Jamal Murray and Jalen Brunson (13%).
Doncic isn’t getting downhill and creating advantages the way he used to, or the way all other superstar guards continue to. Instead, watch the Lakers and you’ll see for stepback after stepback after stepback, with some early shot-clock pull-ups and contested midrange shots sprinkled in along the way. It’s a testament to his talent that he can still lead the league in scoring that way, but the numbers mask the reality that 26 year-old Luka is playing like 36 year-old James Harden (13% of shots at the rim this year, down from 25% when he was Luka’s age). His shooting has fallen off, too, which may be another byproduct of poor conditioning—he’s taking ten threes-per-game, many of them lazy shots early in the shot clock, without probing the defense, and he’s hitting 33% on those shots.
“It’s not just physical shape,” Doncic said when he was asked about Redick’s challenge at the beginning of the season. “It’s mental shape, too.” Well, mentally, in some these losses Luka looks preoccupied with the officials, making this at least the fifth straight season that he’s more dedicated more energy to complaining about calls than he does playing defense.
Luka is still unbelievably good. He’s a perennial All-Star, and when he’s rolling, there’s nothing a defense can do. He’s terrifying to criticize in print or on podcasts, because on any given night he can look like one of the greatest players of all time and make you look like an idiot. That’s all still true. But none of the concerns above are particularly subjective. It’s just a fact that Doncic is a heliocentric scorer who doesn’t move off the ball, doesn’t play defense, and doesn’t attack the rim anymore, making him heavily reliant on a jumper that comes and goes. His shot selection can be lazy and frustrating, and where a 26 year-old LeBron James would be dominant enough in every phase of the game to make the Lakers quasi-contenders despite the roster’s flaws, Luka is dominant enough to get his numbers despite those flaws. Quasi-contention is looking less likely.
What Do the Next Five Years Look Like?
To understand where this may go over the next several years, let’s go back to the 2024 Finals. After leading the Mavs through the West and making it to his first NBA Finals, Doncic was humiliated by the Celtics. Playing through nagging injuries, Luka was exploited over and over again on defense. Rather than a coronation for the player of a generation, that series became a lesson in what championship basketball actually requires. And here again, the loss wasn’t strictly on Luka—Kyrie was terrible—but he was more of a problem than a solution in that series.
All of this was memorialized by ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, in a bracing and frank answer to Scott Van Pelt after the Mavs lost a decisive Game 3 at home:
I’m standing here in the Mavericks tunnel, over there is the Celtics tunnel. That’s where the winners are. If Luka’s ever going to be a winner, coming out of this tunnel here, he’s going to have to use what’s happened in this Finals as a learning experience. His defensive performance is unacceptable. He is a hole on the court. The Celtics are attacking him. They are ahead in this series because they have attacked him defensively.
And you’ve got a situation here where Luka’s complaining about the officiating… [the Mavericks] have begged him. They have talked with him. They have pleaded with him. He is costing his team because of how he treats the officials. He’s a brilliant player, he does so many things well. They are here because of how he did. His performance in this game is unacceptable, and the reason why the Mavericks are not going to win.
He’s got to get over this. And the fact that he came out after the game and blamed the officials, showed me he’s nowhere close yet. So maybe over the summer, somebody will get to him. Because nobody with the Mavericks, or anybody else in his life, has.
Rewatching that clip this week, one aspect that I’d forgotten about is that as soon Luka fouled out, he yelled at the ref and begins to make a money gesture with his hands (implying the NBA Finals refs are on the take) before catching himself, at which point he redirected his energy and screamed at the Mavericks coaching staff to “challenge the fucking call!” (which was a pretty clear blocking foul). That split-second is one data point to consider when future generations wonder how in the world the Mavs could have moved on from their franchise player.
In any event, not much has changed in the 18 months since that clip. Moreover, everything the Celtics did to Luka, the Golden State Warriors also did to Luka during the 2022 Western Conference Finals—targeting him on defense, exploiting his lapses, and annihilating his team across five games.
That Warriors series wasn’t a turning point, and despite Windhorst’s best efforts, neither was the Celtics series. Luka followed his Finals reality check by showing up out of shape the following year in Dallas, and beginning the season with more awful defense, a Mavs team that sputtered out of the gate, and what was reported to be an 11-day leave of absence from the team to get in shape (followed by Luka’s fourth calf strain in three years).
The trade last February was supposed to be a turning point, too, and so was a five-game playoff loss to the Timberwolves and a public conditioning challenge from J.J. Redick. In the interest of fairness, we can say the jury is still out as to whether any corners have or will be turned this year. But while we wait, I’d suggest more basketball fans make room for the possibility that this is just who Doncic is going to be. And going forward for the Lakers, building a championship team around him is going to be harder than people realize.
There are ultimately three big red flags for the future:
- The roster. Conventional wisdom says the answer to this year’s defensive struggles is to move on from LeBron and then surround Doncic with athletic defenders who can cover for his weaknesses, but those players are hard to find! LaRavia has been fine as a fifth starter, but someone like Ayton’s not good enough to contend with. So, for example, where is the path to a center who can anchor a championship team? And how are you filling the other five rotation spots in a league where Desmond Bane and Mikal Bridges went for a combined nine first round picks? Mark Williams nearly cost two first round picks, and would that investment have made any difference to this year’s Lakers? Clean cap sheet or not, the role players who are going to be available to replace Rui Hachimura and Deandre Ayton aren’t likely to be that much better than Hachimura or Ayton.
- The window. Winning a title with a roster built around Luka will require luck and skill on the margins, but it will also require Luka to be one of the three best players in the NBA at the center of that mix. And how much longer can the Lakers be certain he’ll be at that level? Because of Luka’s body and how he’s likely to age—and how he’s already aging—the window to capitalize on his talent is now, and within the next few years. For example, it’s already debatable as to whether Cade Cunningham and Anthony Edwards are better than Luka today, but how might those debates look in three years? While Cunningham looks like an All-NBA mainstay, and Edwards has incrementally improved every year he’s been in the NBA, nothing Doncic has shown over the past few years should make the Lakers especially confident in his ability to adapt, improve, take care of his body, and arrive at his 30th birthday playing better than he did at 25. This means that on top of a roster building challenge that looks pretty tricky on any timeline, there may less runway than you’d think to put the pieces in place that make this work at a championship level.
- The contract. Doncic is under contract for two more seasons after this one, at which point he can opt-out and sign a 5-year, $418 million contract extension that begins in 2028. And as soon as he signs that deal, it becomes even harder for the Lakers to build around him. This particular red flag isn’t really even a reflection on Luka (although I do wonder what $418 million would mean for his conditioning adventures). Building around any player who makes $80 million per year is going to be very difficult, and there are only a handful of players dominant enough to anchor a title contender in that context. The league’s new CBA handicaps teams trying to build around its most bankable stars; this is flat out stupid for the NBA’s interests as a whole, but that’s a separate conversation. What matters here is that it’s a dynamic that’s real and not going away, and it will likely complicate the second half of Luka’s career, particularly if he’s not quite at the peak of his powers.
The final two concerns there—Luka’s lack of professionalism and what that portends for durability and longevity, coupled with a massive price tag that constrains long term flexibility and leaves no room for error—were why Harrison made the move last February. For everyone else: consider the lack of progress on the court (on defense, dealing with the refs, shot selection that’s getting lazier), and couple that with conditioning that continues to be a problem even at 26 years old. Can anyone really say the decision to not pay him $345 million is “unfathomable”? Shocking, risky, arguably heartless. Sure. But the logic wasn’t particularly revolutionary. Betting on the second half of Luka’s career to be more successful than the first is beginning to look like a losing proposition. Dallas pivoted before the story got there.
The Legacy of the Worst Trade in NBA History
Let me reiterate that there’s no version of this story that ends with Nico Harrison vindicated. Landing Cooper Flagg last June was NOT part of the plan, or the vision, and aside from my stipulations at the top, “getting out of the Luka business” is only a reasonable idea if you confine that business strictly to basketball. The problem for Nico and Mavs owner Patrick Dumont is that professional sports teams are on some level a public trust, and decision making has to account for more than just cap sheets and championship odds. The emotional connections Luka had to Dallas and its fans were real, and the investments they’d made in Luka’s story were literal. The pre-trade Mavs had a genuine title contender assembled in Dallas and they owed it to their paying customers to give it a few more shots with Doncic before evaluating what made the most sense for the organization. Trading Luka when they did was actually sort of sociopathic when considered alongside the human connections that make basketball profitable in any local context. Harrison never quite acknowledged those connections, or how wrenching the trade must have been for people who love the Mavs. Repairing that relationship with fans is why he ultimately had to be fired, and destroying it in the first place is why his legacy as crazed GM villain is understandable, if a bit overstated.
As for the Lakers, regardless of the concerns outlined above, they still make the Luka trade 100 times out of 100. The deal provided an off-ramp from the current era and a bridge to something new. Whether any of this works or not, the possibilities of an era built around Doncic are better than a guaranteed two or three more years of fake contention built around LeBron and AD, particularly since the Mavericks allowed the Lakers to sidestep a 5-7 year journey into the rebuilding wilderness. Also, in the middle of all this, the team was sold at a $1o billion valuation. Thanks Nico!
As for the trade itself? We’ll see. History is often weirder and more absurd than we can predict, which is why I was annoyed by the hivemind insistence that this deal was an inexplicable disaster destined to be mocked for generations to come. For now, we can say for certain that Nico Harrison was wrong to discount what Luka meant to Dallas. He was wrong to bet that Kyrie Irving could be a proto-Kobe in a post-Luka era. He was wrong to bet on Anthony Davis, who was technically injured when Harrison traded for him and has proceeded to get re-injured in several new ways since last February. Harrison was even wrong, if we’re being comprehensive, to follow the AD acquisition with a bizarre deal to add Caleb Martin, another player who was injured at the time he arrived in Dallas and never moved the needle for the Mavs. Harrison also failed to replace Doncic with another guard, putting a huge burden on Kyrie, who tore his ACL a month after the trade.
Indeed, Nico was wrong about basically everything. But he might have been right about Luka.
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