The Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks find themselves in vastly different circumstances more than two months after they agreed to one of the more significant trades in recent NBA history. The trade saw guard Luka Doncic get moved to the storied Lakers franchise, and big man Anthony Davis landed with Dallas.
The Lakers are on the heels of their first season with 50-plus wins in years, and they knotted up their series with the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first-round of the playoffs after Doncic dropped 31 points on Tuesday in Game 2.
Meanwhile, the Mavericks didn’t even get a chance to defend their Western Conference title in the 2025 NBA Playoffs, as they lost to the Memphis Grizzlies in the play-in tournament.
At least one anonymous NBA player thinks that the Doncic trade was a horrible move from the Mavericks’ side of the coin, according to The Athletic.
“Probably the worst decision in modern basketball history,” he said. “Terrible.”
Another unidentified player in the league called the move “psychotic” as well.
“Psychotic,” he said. “It didn’t make sense. I don’t know how you make it make sense.”
The rationale for the Mavericks parting ways with Doncic becomes murky when factoring in all of the success that the team enjoyed in the Slovenian’s final full season with the franchise. Dallas won 50 games in the 2023-24 regular season and then reached the 2024 NBA Finals as the No. 5 seed in the West.
Last year marked just Dallas’ third appearance in the championship series in franchise history and the first since 2011.
Davis was the highlight of the trade package that the Mavericks received for Doncic, and while he’s one of the premier talents at the big man spot in the league, he’s also significantly older than Doncic as well as an injury-prone player. Doncic is just 26 years old while Davis is 32, and the latter has played in 70-plus games in a season just once since the start of the 2018-19 campaign.
It doesn’t seem as if folks are going to let Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison off the hook for trading away Doncic anytime soon, and the reactions to the trade from anonymous players highlight just how controversial the move was. The Lakers going on a deep playoff run this year would seemingly only rub salt in the wound for Dallas.
