In the aftermath of the trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers and Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks, many are wondering why Dallas chose to keep talks with Los Angeles a secret instead of making its intentions to move Doncic clear to obtain as many competing offers as possible.
Speaking with DLLS Sports, Marc Stein suggested only four people knew of the trade, two executive decision-makers in Dallas and two in Los Angeles, no players or coaches. Why not open for bids?
"As far as why didn't they take this to auction so to speak, they clearly didn't want this to get out, that they were even considering trading Luka Doncic, fearing what his reaction might be, fearing that at that point he wants to force his way out," Stein said.
So, the logic here is that Dallas did not hold an all-out bidding war—one that presumably could have involved tens of teams and earned Dallas one of the strongest returns in trade value—because it could have bothered Doncic, potentially turning him against the franchise in the fashion of the often-leveraged public trade request.
The outcome to both scenarios—to hold an auction or not—is that Doncic is no longer a Maverick. But, to apply a statistician's lens to the scenario, the expected value of the auction is higher than what the Mavs were able to extract from the Lakers.
And if the bids didn't raise the price, one would think Dallas could have gone back to the Lakers for the offer that became official anyway, considering the Lakers liked the idea so much they thought it was a joke at first.
There was one report indicating the Mavs approached one other team about Doncic, but nothing in the shape of an "open for bids" posture emerged from Dallas at any point based on what has been reported thus far. Given the league-wide shock to the news, it's safe to say most teams weren't aware that the All-NBA player was even remotely available.
Plus, there's a ton of downside going the secrecy route in that the Mavericks have now blindsided a star player with a trade, which will surely do it no favors in attempts to court players in free agency in the future. One reporter described this way of approaching the trade as the, "ultimate insult." Had they gone the auction route, Doncic would have been in the know, and potentially Dallas could send him on his way more favorably, perhaps even weighing his preferences in location to the trade calculus.
There's still plenty of history to be written that could make Nico Harrison and the Mavericks look good here, but it's hard to see the vision at this point in the process.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Mavs Had a Truly Head-Scratching Reason for Not Staging Bidding War for Luka Doncic.
