The Dallas Mavericks have shocked everyone by proactively parting with 25-year-old Luka Doncic for a perplexing return and giving LeBron James a generational talent to mold.
There is a chance this will look like a brilliant gamble by the Mavericks front office should Anthony Davis spearhead a defensive-focused side and make a deep playoff run. There is a chance the Lakers don't, in fact, get any better and this turns out to be a blockbuster that was all star power and light on actual meaningful substance.
But that will take some time to sort out, and for now the Mavericks just have to live in a world where no one really understands their vision and Nick Wright can go on First Things First to figure out just how bad of an idea this looks like for them on paper in the here and now.
"This is one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in modern sports history," Wright proclaimed.
“This is one of the biggest self-inflicted wounds in modern sports history.”@getnickwright reacts to Dallas sending Luka Doncic to the Lakers: pic.twitter.com/pLkXvbWESa
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) February 3, 2025
"The only self-inflicted thing close to this is the San Francisco Warriors trading Wilt Chamberlain and he then immediately ripped off three straight MVPs and won a title a couple of years later."
That Chamberlain swap took place in 1965, and whenever someone has to go back 60 years to find something comparable, that's not a great sign.
Again, it's been less than four days since Shams Charania announced this league-altering news, and there are still lots of actual basketball games to be played before we can fully judge how the deal worked out for both sides. But suffice to say, life's not going to be great for Dallas unless they hit the ground running and look like a better team.
The upside of it all, though, is that they'll have so many old takes to expose should this all work out.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Nick Wright: Trading Luka Doncic Is One of Biggest Self-Inflicted Wounds in History.
