Blockbuster Luka Doncic-Anthony Davis NBA deal all about dollars and not as much sense

You’re shocked and you’re not alone. A middle-of-the-Saturday night trade that seemed to come out of the middle of nowhere and superstar players are shifting cities and resetting expectations maybe for the entire NBA.

But maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised that Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis were the centerpieces of a deal just days ahead of the Feb. 6 trade deadline, that a face of the franchise like Doncic — who Mark Cuban once joked if choosing between moving Doncic or losing his wife, you can find him at his divorce lawyer’s office — was moved before even hitting the prime years of his career.

And when I say you’re not alone, I include those like Kevin Durant, who told reporters late Saturday night, “Insane. It’s crazy. Crazy. I would have never thought Luka Doncic gets traded at his age, midseason. NBA is a wild place, man. If he can get traded then anybody is up for grabs.”

Durant, who has shifted through four franchises despite arguably being a top 10 player all-time, should know better. And he does. Listen to what else Durant said as he processed the news.

“It’s a transactional game,” Durant said. “There’s a lot of money involved, lot of business involved. We shouldn’t be too shocked about trades and guys moving to different teams, coaches moving to different teams. It’s the nature of playing basketball and us making this much money, too. It’s a pretty wild time, for the NBA, especially about trade deadline time.”

The thing is that the game is, maybe always has been but not to this extent, about money. The contracts have gotten so huge and the collective bargaining agreement so restrictive that a decision even on a generational talent will make or break a franchise.

When you consider trading a player like Doncic, at 25 with an NBA resume that includes five straight seasons of first-team All-NBA status, never finishing lower than eighth in MVP balloting in those seasons — which came after winning Rookie of the Year in a landslide — and leading the Mavs to the NBA Finals last season, it isn’t about performance. It’s about money and the future, and the future for Doncic and the Mavs was a pricey one. Next year he would have been eligible for a super-max extension of five years and $346 million.

Forget about the numbers on the extension he can sign now with the Lakers that will cost him about $115 million because, like Jalen Brunson last summer, expect a shorter-term extension that will allow him to opt out and then sign as a 10-year veteran at top dollar. The Lakers will have their showtime piece in place as the LeBron James era comes to an end

For Dallas, it allows them to slip under the luxury tax and avoid handing out that huge contract to a player who they are now leaking they had doubts about conditioning and commitment. Fair point, perhaps, and one that teams like Philadelphia are likely wishing they’d considered before handing out a huge deal to Joel Embiid. Both Davis and Doncic are sidelined right now with injuries.

And the Knicks can understand, having pulled off their own shocking deal on the eve of training camp when they sent Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns. That deal had as much to do with dollars as sense — Minnesota is in an ownership battle and was committed to building around Anthony Edwards and not paying KAT’s massive contract extension. The Knicks had become a contender with Randle but were hesitant to give him the pricey contract extension he was seeking, and already there have been rumblings that the Timberwolves are ready to move on from Randle, who can become an unrestricted free agent at season’s end.

For the Mavs, the hardest part to understand may be why they didn’t reach out to every team in the league that held a young star whom they’d never deal — unless someone called offering Doncic. But it’s not just a game of dollars; it’s also a game of connections. Mavericks GM Nico Harrison has a long relationship with Davis dating to his days as a Nike executive, and in that same role he developed a friendship with Lakers GM Rob Pelinka, who was the agent for Kobe Bryant at the time. Mavs coach Jason Kidd was an assistant coach with the Lakers and Davis.

Could Davis help right now on a Mavs squad that hasn’t lived up to expectations with just a 26-23 record ? Could their be some truth to the leaks that Doncic wasn’t committed to conditioning and he won’t age well in the game? Maybe on both counts.

The only certainty is that the Mavs, who shifted ownership recently, are saving millions in the long term. But it’s a risk, handing the franchise to aging stars Kyrie Irving and Davis, maybe one that is worth taking in the win-now window that coaches and executives live under.

And it’s certainly a move that could portend an interesting next few days leading up to Thursday’s trade deadline, one that shows that even in the restrictive era of cap rules anything is possible.

“You start seeing stuff like that, as an organization, you might get a little bit more courage to do some stuff,” Durant said. “You see another team trade away somebody like that. This got to be the biggest trade I’ve seen since I’ve been in the league or since I’ve been watching the sport. This is insane. So yeah, every other team might get confidence and say [expletive] it, I’ll trade a few of my top players if this ain’t working.”

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