Even though it has been more than a year since the Los Angeles Lakers acquired star guard Luka Doncic from the Dallas Mavericks near the 2025 trade deadline, some people still have a hard time wrapping their minds around the deal.
Former Mavs executive Nico Harrison shocked the NBA world with the trade, and the move might’ve ultimately cost him his job.
During a recent podcast appearance, Mavs part-owner Mark Cuban shared some more insight about the saga.
“I was out of town in Florida and got a text or he (Harrison) left me a message,” Cuban began. “I forget which it was. ‘Give me a call.’ And boom. I hollered back at him, and I was like, ‘You’re thinking about trading him.’ And he’s like, ‘No, we traded him. We committed.’
“And then I’m like, okay, well, if it’s done, okay, at least we’ll have two of the best bigs in the league and we’ll be able to compete there, but I don’t get it. I don’t get it. And then when I talked to Patrick [Dumont] about it, you could just tell that Nico just s— on Luka, just s— on him bad ’cause some of the stuff that Patrick was telling me was not true.”
The trade was headlined by Doncic and star big Anthony Davis swapping teams. It gave the Lakers a new franchise cornerstone, and it gave Harrison a big man that he certainly thought he could win with.
But injury woes — including to Davis — kept the Mavs from ever having a normal season with the 2020 NBA champion, who ended up appearing in just 29 games in his Dallas tenure before he was traded again.
The Mavs failed to make the playoffs in the 2024-25 season following the Doncic trade, and after they got off to a slow start this season, Harrison was fired.
The one silver lining for Dallas is that its struggles following the Doncic trade led to a miracle victory in the draft lottery, which allowed the franchise to select top prospect Cooper Flagg, a great young player who just took home Rookie of the Year honors.
Doncic, meanwhile, is trying to help the Lakers reach the promised land. In the 2024-25 season, L.A. was eliminated in the first round of the playoffs, but the team was able to win a series this season and reach the second round before bowing out. Doncic, unfortunately, was sidelined for the entire postseason due to injury.
The Lakers are now looking to build a roster around Doncic that will put them in championship contention in a Western Conference that has no shortage of top teams. With a number of Lakers players set to hit or potentially hit free agency this summer, L.A. is going to have a lot of key decisions to make.
