There may not be a sports trade in history that was more dead on arrival for one team than when the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis. Mavs fans revolted and analysts and insiders wondered incredulously what could have possessed general manager Nico Harrison to make such a move.
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Harrison is no longer GM of the Mavs, and now after Wednesday’s trade that sent Davis to the Wizards, the franchise has turned the page on the two biggest pieces of one of the most disastrous trades of all time.
Davis is an NBA champion and a member of the league’s 75th Anniversary Team, but his age and injury history, especially relative to Luka’s, just made the trade imbalanced to the point that any fantasy league manager worth his or her salt would have vetoed it on the spot.
Predictably, the swap hasn’t been even close to even. Davis has been plagued by injuries and the Mavs are careening towards the lottery, while Luka currently leads the league in scoring for the Lakers, who are in the thick of the playoff race at 31-19.
The one silver lining for Dallas, and it’s a big one, is that flopping so hard last year allowed them to defy the odds, land the No. 1 overall pick and draft Cooper Flagg, who has already shown himself to be worthy of all the hype.
Flagg’s readiness probably only made the Mavs’ front office more comfortable with the idea of shipping Davis out and trying to erase the bad taste from the Luka deal.
After last night’s loss to the Spurs (the Mavs’ sixth in a row), head coach Jason Kidd lamented that Mavs fans never got to see the roster fully intact. “It was unfortunate, just health,” he said.
“We never got to see everyone together, so not just AD, but [Kyrie Irving] with Coop. So unfortunately we didn’t have that opportunity, but AD is an incredible basketball player and a great human being, so we wish him the best in DC,” Kidd added.
Kidd mentioned Kyrie, who has been out all year since tearing his ACL in March, just over a month after AD arrived. He didn’t even mention Dereck Lively II, who isn’t a star on that level but still an integral piece on the team. Lively has been out since before Thanksgiving and will miss the rest of the season with a foot injury.
With Davis gone, the Mavs can reset their timeline to align with Flagg. Kyrie will return either later this season or at the beginning of the next one, and if Dallas can get the ping pong balls to bounce their way again, they’ll have another good young pieces to add to their core.
Mavericks fans will never forget the trade that sent their beloved Luka away, but now that both Harrison and Davis are gone, they can begin to move on and heal again.
