I’m sitting here at my desk just 24 hours removed from the most shocking sports moment of my life. I don’t know what to say about the trade. So I’m going to ramble.
And before I go any further – just know this one is for me. In all these blogs, which I admittedly do not do a good enough job of posting, I pay attention to structure, SEO suitability, section length, and so much other junk that can distract from just sitting down and getting words onto the page.
So tonight, I’m just going to write. I’m going to write until I feel better. I’m going to write to try and make some sort of sense about what just happened.
The Dallas Mavericks, the NBA team I have rooted for and loved as long as I can remember, made the worst trade in the history of the league. Luka Doncic, a once-in-a-generation talent, a top three player in the league before even entering his prime, a clear heir to Dirk Nowitzki’s throne, and an era-defining face of sports in the DFW Metroplex…
is a Los Angeles Laker.
It is a transaction so dumbfounding, so unnecessary, so cruel, so devastating, that nobody came close to thinking it was real at first. The bomb had already gone off and the fallout was well underway before I was able to fall asleep, and I still woke up with some sliver of hope that it was all a horribly bad dream.
Nope.
Nico Harrison and the Mavericks looked at Luka Doncic, who just carried the team to the finals last year, who was averaging 29/8/8, who has been selected to the All-NBA First Team five years in a row, ALL before his 26th birthday… and said no, thank you.
Not only did they say no, thank you. They actively made a bet against Doncic and the rest of his career. They went out of their way to get rid of him.
Nico Harrison made the biggest short in the history of sports. That’s all there is to it.
Nico Harrison, the one man with more insight into Luka than anyone else on the planet besides Luka himself, saw the whole package and said, “nope, not for me.” It will likely go down as the worst decision anybody running any professional sports franchise has ever made.
And from my perspective, it’s all an effort by Harrison to shore up his own ego. The trade is a massive power trip akin to Daenerys Targaryen blowtorching King’s Landing, except at least some would argue she did it for a cause. This is just an aimless, pointless abuse of power.
So, what now?
Luka Doncic will likely win MVPs and championships in LA. Good for him. I’ll be rooting heavily for him to do so.
While the path may have been harder in Dallas, doing it here is what mattered. Clearly, it mattered to Luka. It mattered to the community. It mattered to the other players who have gone out of their way to come here. And that’s what Nico Harrison is missing, and it’s why he’ll never be forgiven by this city.
Was Luka out of shape? Sure. Was he a serial complainer? Yep. Was he as useful as a traffic cone on the defensive end? Probably.
But he was our out of shape, whining traffic cone. Luka was our guy. And in the eyes of this community and the fans within it, that was something nobody could take away.
We learned the hard way last night that one man actually could take it away, and he did. He traded it away. And he did it seemingly without any consideration for what this would mean for a community and fanbase that has spent years putting everything into this guy and everything that comes with him.
Why would any of us continue to support an organization that rationalizes this level of rash recklessness? It’s certainly something I’m struggling with, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to return to the levels of fanhood and adoration I felt for the team not even weeks ago.
This feels like buying Enron stock in August 2000 right before it collapsed. Like selling Apple shares in 2005 when analysts had concerns about iPhone demand. Like taking a solid gold bar and exchanging it for a meme coin (take your pick).
It’s a nonsensical, destructive, negligent wrecking ball of a move that tears down an entire basketball community.
We can get into all the basketball reasons why this doesn’t make sense. Why you don’t ever trade a top five player for any reason unless he asks out. Why you don’t build your team around an aging big with serious injury liabilities. Why handing an inter-conference rival a superstar is bad business.
Right now, all I feel is sadness. Devastation. I don’t know if I can go back to being a Mavs fan after this. In real life, when a job treats you like this, you leave. When a significant other tosses you aside like this, you break up.
In what world would any sane person choose to willingly support this.
Perhaps I’ll just transition to a perspective from which many NBA fans have thrived of late. They seem to gravitate toward players rather than teams nowadays, closely resembling reality TV fandom versus traditional tribalism.
And I love reality TV.
Or maybe I’ll put my personal fandom up for sale. The highest bidder gets to choose my next favorite team. It could even be an annual charity fundraiser where I have to change teams every year based on the winner’s choice.
I don’t know. I’m grasping at straws. My head is mired in nonsense. This is a nonsensical trade in a nonsensical league operating within the context of a nonsensical world. Nothing going on anymore makes any sense. So it’s really not that crazy to consider anything being a possibility at this point.
There is one thing I do know. I’ll always be rooting for Luka Doncic. It’s hard not to when he was treated so unfairly and so brutally by an organization he gave everything to. I hope he wins everything. MVPs. Championships. All-NBAs. All of it.
Because one thing DFW knows is that the guy is special. He’s one-of-a-kind, and he’s never done anything to prove he wasn’t incredibly committed not just to our basketball team, but to our community at large.
That’s why this move is unforgivable for me. Unforgivable. Just in writing this in the last few minutes, I’m more and more convinced I’ll never be able to go back to the Mavs as a fan. What they have done is indefensible. No amount of winning will change that.
Luka was our guy, and the Mavericks gave him away for relative peanuts.
I don’t really feel better, but at least I got the word vomit out. I can’t believe it. Luka Doncic is no longer a Dallas Maverick.
At least in terms of fandom, I don’t think I am either.