Even two months later, no one can explain why Luka Doncic left Dallas.
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Luka Doncic could no longer hold back his tears.
Sitting alone on the court at a packed American Airlines Center in Dallas on Wednesday night, the Slovenian basketball wizard was struggling to process a pregame video retrospective of his best moments as a Dallas Maverick. During the tense Jumbotron viewing of Doncic, he repeatedly wiped his watery eyes with a white towel while much of Dallas cried along with him.
Things weren’t supposed to end this way between Doncic and the Mavs. The team Doncic had played for his entire NBA career, and which he had led to an unlikely NBA Finals just a year earlier, parted ways with him without warning in a deal no one saw coming. When ESPN’s Shams Charania reported the news just after midnight (ET) on Feb. 2, many on X immediately began wondering if his account had been hacked. It hadn’t.
Doncic, with no notice and at the peak of his career, was sent to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for an aging, oft-injured Anthony Davis, role player Max Christie, a 2029 draft pick, and less than $100,000 in cash. The deal made no sense to anyone but the Lakers. Conspiracy theories immediately began to proliferate. Every other NBA front office not associated with the Lakers wanted to understand why they hadn’t heard the Mavericks’ complaints or been given the opportunity to offer terms that would likely have been more favorable than what the Lakers had offered.
Everyone agrees on one thing: Doncic was worth far more than Davis, shooting guard Christie, and cash. Many organizations would have paid a lot for the chance to land Doncic; the Lakers got him for a bargain. For a league that has historically benefited from the Lakers’ success, the deal seemed too good to be true, and that alone has led many to question the reasons and circumstances surrounding the deal. More on that later.
In the big business of the NBA, Doncic is making money—lots of it. The deal with one of the NBA’s most valuable franchises has had an immediate impact on every financial market tied to Doncic and the Lakers. Lakers ticket prices have increased more than 20 percent since Doncic’s arrival, the Lakers can barely keep his $80 jerseys in stock, and in the collectibles market, where Doncic’s value has stagnated somewhat over the past year, trading cards for the standout guard have nearly doubled overnight, with eBay reporting that Doncic’s name is being searched for nearly 80 times per minute.
Former Mavericks executive and now minority owner Mark Cuban, who acquired the team at the turn of the century and built it into one of the league’s most popular and successful franchises, was largely sidelined and as shocked as everyone else when news of the deal spread quickly. Video from the arena on Wednesday showed Cuban with his head in his hands as angry fans chanted, “Fire Nico,” the first name of the man responsible for the deal: Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison. Harrison has been heavily criticized for his role in the decision to part ways with the city’s most beloved athlete. So much anger was directed at Harrison that the organization decided to escort protesters who were focused on his role in the decision out of the arena.
While Dallas is best known for its Cowboys football team, it is Doncic who has had the most success on and off the court over the past decade. Indeed, clips of Doncic interacting
Sourse: theamericanconservative.com
