The NBA All-Star break ends tonight with the Los Angeles Lakers taking on the Charlotte Hornets. The game will mark Luka Doncic's third with the Lakers and he will no longer be on a minutes restriction according to coach JJ Redick.
As we continue to get used to Lakers Luka, The Athletic's David Aldridge joined The Rich Eisen Show to discuss the trade that sent him to Los Angeles. While much of the ire in Dallas has been focused on general manager Nico Harrison who negotiated the deal with Rob Pelinka in shadows and coffee shops, the veteran NBA reporter wants people to remember that this was ultimately the decision of the team's owners.
"What I'm not going to do is absolve Mavs' ownership of their responsibility in this," said Aldridge. "Which people seem to want to just blithely ignore. General managers recommend at that level. They do not decide to trade Luka Doncic. They recommend to ownership that we trade luka Doncic. And the owner decides if they're going to do it or not. And that's what I want to see more of in terms of how this trade is being evaluated. I want to see more people holding ownership accountable because owners decide to trade a guy like Luka Doncic, not Nico Harrison. That's an owner decision. So they have to take the responsibility for this as well and not just leave him out there to take all the proverbial bullets on this one."
Aldridge is talking about Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Mavericks team governor Patrick Dumont. With Dumont running things, he had the final say in shipping Doncic out and with Adelson, the team clearly had the resources to pay him a max deal, no matter how big it was.
Aldridge simply wants them to explain why they decided to trade Doncic. Apparently not having Shaq's work ethic isn't a good enough excuse.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as David Aldridge Points Finger at Mavericks Owners for Luka Doncic Trade.
