What About Us?

With the passage of time since the Dallas Mavericks traded their cornerstone player, Luka Doncic, to the Lakers, the deal remains universally incomprehensible. Sure, justifications have been offered such as Doncic’s defensive limitations, as well as his diet and conditioning habits that were thought to get in the way of his defensive abilities as well as to make him more vulnerable to injury. But the guy is a singular talent who, at age 25, led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals last year, was in consideration for league MVP, and is a generational force offensively.

He is also the face of the franchise and has been since he took the baton from Dirk Nowitzki after playing together with Dirk for a year. Luka viewed Dirk as a role model — a player who stayed with the same team for 21 years and led that team out of the NBA rubble to an NBA championship. A generation of Mavericks fans appreciated Dirk’s loyalty, and for kids who started their fandom at age 5, they would have never known a Dirk-less Mavericks team until they were 26. Luka would have taken them to age 46. There was a reason that Luka signed with the Mavericks at age 19. He hoped to emulate Dirk’s career arc. Luka was as popular a player as you could have (though yes, we sometimes had to overlook the whining to referees). If you are going to antagonize a fan base, you’d better be right. So far, you would be hard-pressed to find someone who agrees with the Mavericks move.

And that’s what saddens me about the whole deal — it seems that no value was put on Luka’s loyalty to the team and desire to be a lifer. Rather, it was something to be feared — that he would soon be eligible for a “supermax” contract extension that would have averaged about $69 million per year. It’s worth noting that Anthony Davis, the primary player for whom Luka was traded and who is 6 years older, is locked into a contract that averages $62 million per year. Davis is a superb player but with his own history of missing games due to injury.

I don’t know how you value the sort of mutual loyalty that kept Dirk and the Mavericks together for two decades and that most Mavericks fans were hoping would be the same for Luka. But the fans’ desires in that regard do not appear to be something that was valued by the Mavs’ front office. Jerry Seinfeld once observed that with the player movement in sports, what you are really rooting for is “laundry.” It’s the jersey that counts, and who is wearing it is interchangeable. As an aside, the Mavericks have been so cursed after the trade that they really may just be playing jerseys since they are hurting for healthy players to wear them.

I would have put a premium on a potential lifer rather than a shiny new, or in this case older, object. And I would have found ways to address Luka’s alleged conditioning liabilities. For instance, I might have brought in Colonel Nathan Jessup from “A Few Good Men” (played by Lakers’ fan Jack Nicholson) who rejected a suggestion from his subordinate officers that a sub-par Marine, Private Santiago, be transferred off the base at Guantanamo Bay. “Transfer Santiago? Yes, that’s the thing to do. Wait, I’ve got a better idea. Let’s transfer the whole squad. No, let’s transfer the whole division off the base. … Wait a minute. Maybe we should consider this for a second. Maybe it’s our responsibility to train Santiago! I think I read that somewhere once. And I’m thinking, Colonel, that your idea of transferring Santiago, while expeditious and painless, might not be quite the American way. Santiago stays where he is. We’re going to train the lad.” It will be interesting to see what Luka looks like in about six months if he follows the Lebron James fitness regimen.

If the training/reshaping of Luka by the Mavericks did not work, they could have resorted to the insight of the eloquent NFL coach Bum Phillips, who faced criticism of running back Earl Campbell’s fitness late in his career. When the press learned that Campbell could not finish the 1 mile run in training camp, Phillips was asked if he was concerned about it. “No,” he replied. “When it’s first down and a mile to go, we won’t give him the ball.”

The sad fact is that Luka was on his way to a statue someday being erected outside whatever Mavericks’ arena exists in the future. That seemed to be his preference, and it was certainly the preference of the fans — he would have complimented the Dirk statue very well. Instead, Mavs fans will have to adjust to the rotating cast of characters that fill the jerseys over the next 15 years.

Bob Latham is a partner at the law firm Jackson Walker, L.L.P., and a World Rugby board member. A compilation of his best columns titled “Winners & Losers: Rants, Riffs and Reflections on the World of Sports,” is available for purchase at amazon.com.