Full details haven’t come out yet, but there are reports that De’Aaron Fox is being traded from Sacramento to San Antonio in a multi-team trade that will also bring Chicago’s Zach LaVine to Sacramento.
Seems like the excuse they are going with for the horrible Luka deal is “he’s really fat and out of shape and we are afraid he will end up injury prone”. Which… completely ignores that Davis is exactly what they are afraid of.
I…can’t think of a worse trade. This is like the Herschel Walker trade in reverse but even worse.
Too late to edit: Even if the Mavs wanted to trade Doncic, they should have made it known within the NBA and started a bidding war. A lot of teams would have been willing to give Dallas a lot more for Luka than what the Lakers gave.
This ESPN story, incredibly free, goes into the thinking about not publicizing the deal. Going public scuppered some past potential dealings. Story also details the relationship between the GMs involved.
We’ll know in a few years how it works out.
Doncic sounds like a coaching nightmare to me. I’ve always disliked his incessant bitching at the refs like a 250 pound baby.
What a moron the Dallas GM is. This is professional malpractice. You have a 25 year old five-time all-NBA player who just led you to the Finals, and you’re going to dump him because you don’t like his commitment to conditioning and you’re afraid he’s an injury risk…so, without even bothering to shop him around, you replace him with an injury-prone 31 year old who was never anywhere near as good as the guy you’re trading, even in his prime? I’m seriously wondering if the Lakers just straight up bribed this guy.
Well, I can certainly understand their being worried about “crippling fan backlash”, let alone the horrifying possibility of “Doncic exerting his own leverage”. 
But what, they were afraid if this particular deal fell through, there would be no other team in the league willing to swap an All-Star and some pocket lint for an all-NBA player in his prime? Just ridiculous.
If it wasn’t the Lakers, the whole thing wouldn’t stink so bad. But it is the Lakers and we can count on a long playoff run now and higher ratings for the playoffs
That trade made all kinds of sense by comparison. Dallas were crap, so they wanted draft picks, and Minnesota thought they were one great player away from the championship, so they were willing to give up draft picks. Trades like that happen all the time; sometimes they blow up, but you can at least see what each team hoped to acheive.
I’m wracking my brain to think of another case in any sport where a title-contending team suddenly made a trade which clearly made it much worse, and older, for no apparent reason.
Even if they think Doncic is going to eat his way out of the league, he’s still a great player RIGHT NOW, so why not make a couple more title runs with him and worry about the future when it comes? The chance that Doncic starts taking conditioning and defense more seriously as he matures has got to be greater than the chance of the Mavericks somehow lucking into another Doncic-level talent in the next decade.
One can’t help but wonder if the league somehow made this happen behind the scenes. It’s remarkable how the most popular franchise in the league always seems to get the best players, one way or another.
But, on the bright side, there will be no long playoff run for Kyrie Irving this year.
I’ve pretty much given up on NBA games since they’re almost all pay-per-view now, which I won’t pony up for.
Nah, this would be looked as the worst trade in history no matter the team involved.
The history of the NBA or all sports?
I think this one still wins. Not surprisingly it also benefited LA.
Lots of games, and all the late-round playoff games, are on basic cable. But if you want to follow your particular team, some of them make you pay through the nose.
The Bulls recently moved their broadcasts from a basic cable channel to their own streaming network. $20 a month to watch this terrible team; for another $10 I could also watch the terrible Blackhawks and White Sox. And yet, I decided to grit my teeth and do it.
Then I realized that, unlike any other sports streaming service I’ve ever encountered, you have to watch it live. At some point after the game a replay is posted, but if the game started at 7 and you want to watch it from the beginning starting at 9, you are SOL. I canceled my subscription immediately, and the Bulls will have to make their run for 10th place without me, while I watch actually good teams on TNT and ESPN.
This franchise sucks on every level.
In other weird NBA news, Barry Bonds will be coaching a team in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game, in which “celebrities from all walks of entertainment and sports including music, film, Disney, Marvel, NFL and WWE will compete”. (I like how “Disney” and “Marvel” are now apparently recognized as entities distinct from “music” and “film”)
I’m not necessarily waiting or hoping for Jerry Reinsdorf to die, but I WILL relish reading his obituary, if only for the hope for Chicago sports.
On second thought, just the Bulls. Screw the other ones.
This one smacks of desperation to “do something.” Middleton is loaded with significant injuries and has rarely seen the court the past few years. Kuzma isn’t an upgrade beyond availability. His stats are in decline and, at 29, is not part of a youth movement for the Bucks (heck, they gave up on their 1st round pick - included him in the deal). Kuzma does offer something in the cryptic NBA salary/trade game if you can follow the machinations. Bucks not going anywhere with this that I can see.
It’s not game changing, but Kuzma is an upgrade over someone who can’t even stay healthy enough to play and is long past his glory days any way. It does make the team slightly better.