ESPN’s Shams Charania seems like the kind of guy that should have seven-factor authentication (if that’s a thing), let alone two, and even then there was no way.
He had to be hacked.
Charania tweeted late Saturday night that Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic, along with Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris, was headed to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick.
“Why would Dallas ever trade Luka? Did he ask out? Did he force his way to the Lakers? How is that all the Mavericks got? No swaps? No additional firsts? No Austin Reaves? You couldn’t even get Dalton Knecht? Make L.A. eat a salary for you?”
All of that made it seem incredibly improbable in the moment. Even after a half-dozen highly reputable reporters confirmed Charania’s report, it felt like this was a well-executed scheme to troll the trade deadline. Someone get on video with today’s newspaper!
And yet. It’s real. Both teams made it official the next morning.
The short story is Dallas had concerns about Doncic’s conditioning and ability to defend with his $345 supermax extension looming, per ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison told The Dallas Morning News’ Brad Townsend he foresaw a “tumultuous summer” and was attempting to get ahead of that.
Harrison, who has a relationship with Davis, wanted the big that did not play on the 28 other NBA teams that would have had overflowing interest in Doncic. Harrison confirmed on Sunday afternoon that Doncic gave no indication he wanted out or was unwilling to sign the extension.
Now, regardless of if Harrison is right about Doncic or not, he still royally screwed this up by getting hilariously bad value for a 25-year-old megastar not even in his prime yet coming off five straight First Team All-NBA campaign ever since he won Rookie of the Year. Even if there are fears behind the scenes of Doncic testing free agency in the summer of 2026, the return if Dallas had shopped him would have been at least five times more valuable than what Dallas ended up getting.
Deals of much less statue around the trade deadline have ripple effects across the league, so it’s fair to ask how this potentially affects what the Phoenix Suns want to get done before Thursday at 1 p.m. local time.
Let’s roll through a few possibilities.
No market corrections coming
It is understandable to look at what Doncic went for and ask if that means stars can be acquired for far less than previously imagined, a dream for Suns fans that want Jimmy Butler.
But given the amount of disbelief from executives, that is not what is happening here. Instead, the weekend has now turned the Mavericks into the league’s newest laughing stock. Harrison’s press conference on Sunday did him no favors, in which he admitted the team’s owner laughed when he first suggested the deal, among many other unreal sentences he went on to say out loud.
And if anyone is not going to allow that type of shift in value to happen, it’s Miami Heat president Pat Riley.
So I see you need a center!
The Lakers should have done this with zero hesitation even if it took every pick, swap and player on their roster.
That has to be said because their roster is a bit clunky right now. The fit of Doncic and LeBron James as two fairly similar high-usage playmakers will take time to assemble cohesively. Once it happens, which it will, watch out. For now, that’s enough on-ball equity as it is.
That leaves Austin Reaves out to dry on one of the best contracts in the NBA that is ultra tradeable. Los Angeles, who apparently was able to keep this under wraps for a full month, has surely spent this time figuring out the follow-up moves that have to come. That will include potentially moving Reaves to balance out the roster.
At center, the Lakers now have Jaxson Hayes, Christian Wood and in-season signings Christian Koloko and Trey Jemison II. Dangling Reaves for a center makes a lot of sense.
So, could L.A. be interested in the Suns’ Jusuf Nurkic?
It’s highly unlikely. There are several 5s that have buzz on the trade market, including and not limited to names like Nic Claxton, Myles Turner, Jonas Valanciunas, Nikola Vucevic and Robert Williams III. The Lakers shouldn’t have trouble finding one and will probably be able to without even having to trade Reaves, given how they inexplicably still have two more first-round picks they can trade.
Either way, Phoenix surely called the Lakers as soon as all this was made official to see if there was any interest. The best 1-for-1 salary match is Rui Hachimura, who played 28 minutes a game in January, so that’s not great.
I also see you have an extra center!
How about the Suns looking for another center from Dallas?
The Mavericks have now got Davis alongside Daniel Gafford and Dereck Lively II. That’s too many bigs.
Unless you’re Davis and want to play the 4 again. Which is what he wants (*sigh*).
Davis, though, will still spend time playing center. The problem is that Lively is injured and could miss the rest of the season, so Gafford is not going anywhere at the deadline.
The interesting wrinkle is if Dallas explores trading Lively, who has so much promise that teams would be OK with him missing the rest of the year under certain circumstances. Even if the Suns had enough to give up in exchange for Lively, which they do not, they also need a 5 who can play this year.
So we’re 0-for-2 there.
Short-term pecking order in West remains fluid
This more depends on where you land on the spectrum between trade box-score watcher and basketball purist, but if you place yourself more toward the latter, a move of this magnitude will require lots of patience and time for both sides to figure out on the court. As a recent example, look at what the Minnesota Timberwolves are battling through after the Karl-Anthony Towns deal.
That is good news for the Suns, who are very much operating in the present and might need some help to get a top-six spot for automatic playoff positioning.
Dallas understandably limited the ball-handlers around Kyrie Irving and Doncic, so it’s suddenly in need of more on-ball juice. That offensive reinvention, as well as how Davis now moves back to the 4 and has to become the hub of the offense, is going to be a process. The Mavericks will field a terrific defense in the meantime.
Los Angeles, as previously mentioned, desperately needs these two months of the regular season left to let Doncic and James click together. It no longer has any source of offense on the interior, at least for the time being,
The Mavericks are 26-23 entering play on Sunday while the Lakers are 28-19. They join the Suns on the outside-looking-in perspective fighting for the leftover spots after Oklahoma City, Houston, Memphis and Denver. Both squads will attempt to experiment and tinker while fighting like hell to avoid the play-in tournament.
Inspiration for roster devastation (or desperation)?
Let’s hand this one off to the guy that knows far more about basketball than us.
“You start seeing stuff like that, as an organization, you might get a little more courage to do some stuff,” Suns forward Kevin Durant told azcentral’s Duane Rankin. “You see another team trade away somebody like that. This got to be the biggest trade I’ve seen since I’ve been in the league or since I’ve been watching the sport. This is insane. So yeah, every other team might get confidence and say [expletive] it, I’ll trade a few of my top players if this ain’t working.”
To his excellent point, perhaps this shifts thought processes across the league. Trades front offices would never have a meeting on because it felt so inconceivable can no longer come to that conclusion because of what just happened.
And in another wrinkle of this, the era of max and supermax extensions for teams had a strange unintentional effect of almost forcing teams to re-sign players even if they didn’t want to. But Dallas just rejected that notion entirely.
Does this make the Suns think differently with their two star players, considering other previously unthought of alternatives?
Or what if it’s the opposite? What if the inspiration here creates even more desperation for Jimmy Butler, making the Suns willing to include more in the trade than they were before?
It’s going to be a fascinating week of conversations across the league.
What’s next for LeBron?
Ah, yes. We should cover this before we go.
Speaking of conversations across the league, in a “You Realize You Are Doing The Bit Right?” special, the majority of reactions to this once shock value wore off was what this means for LeBron James (‘ legacy).
Los Angeles had no clue what was going to come next after James and Davis. It now does with someone better right now at what James does on the floor and is still approaching his peak years. To be clear, Doncic and James have each expressed a desire to one day play with each other and will surely be thrilled to be teammates the next few months.
What about after that?
James has a $52.6 million player option for next year. While he’s having another fantastic season, there might be mutual interest in a split here, maybe more so from the Lakers’ side. Their desire to get an immediate jump on building the best possible team around Doncic should be palpable. Given the proclivity both Doncic and James have for taking defensive possessions off, as well as the aforementioned duplicative skill-set, L.A. could lofically see downsides.
The safe bet should be just riding it out with those two, but again, we’re in the wild west right now. If you’re one of those NBA fans that loves to suggest wildly outlandish transactions, now is your time to cook.
And remember, James is going to control where he goes. If it’s free agency, that’s obvious. He also has a no-trade clause.
So does Suns guard Bradley Beal, who surely would welcome living in L.A. and playing alongside Doncic. James in Phoenix could remain close to his own home base in L.A. like Chris Paul did while also being a 90-minute drive away from his son Bryce’s freshman season for the Arizona Wildcats in Tucson.
We know the Suns love to get stars. Beal conveniently makes just a smidge over $1 million more than James to make the second apron mechanics work.
Get ready for endless speculation on this over the next handful of months if Beal stays put past Thursday afternoon.
