Dallas Mavericks fans have been in shock over the last 10 days as they traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis at around midnight on February 1, and the shock factor of this move increased last night as Doncic made his Lakers debut.
Doncic ended up finishing with 14 points, five rebounds, and four assists while shooting 5-14 from the field and 1-7 from downtown, and fans thought they'd never see him wearing a jersey that wasn't a Mavericks jersey. Neither did he, as he made it clear in his letter to Dallas that he wanted to retire a Maverick and bring the city a championship, and now the world may never know if Doncic could have won the Mavericks an NBA championship.
While the Lakers were able to win 132-113 in Doncic's debut, the Mavericks fell 129-128 to the Sacramento Kings on their home floor and dropped to 2-3 since they made the trade. Dallas was without Davis in this game as he is dealing with a left adductor strain, and he could miss multiple weeks with this injury.
Mavericks are not better with Davis instead of Doncic
The Doncic-Davis trade couldn't be going worse for Dallas, regardless of how dominant Davis looked in his debut, and one of the Mavericks' biggest reasons for this move truly doesn't make sense.
Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont believes that the Mavericks got better by trading Doncic for Davis, and even though the Mavs made the NBA Finals last season with Doncic leading the charge, they stopped believing in him.
"I do," Dumont exclusively told Brad Townsend (subscription required) of the Dallas Morning News when asked if he thought the Mavericks are better now than before the Doncic trade. "We looked at this season to see, ‘Did we get better since The Finals last year?’ And we’d play this season to see where we were. If you look at our record up until the trade deadline, we were not there."
While Dumont is right that the Mavericks' record before making the Doncic-Davis trade was not great, this can almost entirely be blamed on the fact that the team has been battling the most bizarre bad injury luck in NBA history. Almost the entire roster has missed time with an injury or an illness, and the Mavericks were playing outstandingly when everyone was healthy.
Before Doncic went down with a calf strain on Christmas Day, the Mavericks were 14-3 in their previous 17 games. Doncic was playing his best basketball of the season, and Dallas' five-man wrecking crew of Doncic, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, P.J. Washington, and Dereck Lively II was finally healthy at the same time. This five-man unit posted the fourth-best net rating in the NBA (23.5) in the 119 minutes and 14 games they played together (100 minutes played minimum), and the team was truly hitting its stride at the perfect time.
After Doncic went down, things got bad as they lost 12 of their next 19 games until they traded him on February 1, and Dumont thinking that the Mavericks are better with Davis in the lineup rather than Doncic just doesn't make sense. Doncic had been the center of the offense ever since he was drafted in 2018, and the Mavericks showed how deadly they could be when everyone was healthy before he got injured.
They looked like the second-best team in the Western Conference behind the Oklahoma City Thunder when they were at full strength, and rather than getting to see the Mavericks' loaded roster compete for a title with Doncic at the core, they traded for Davis and started the process over. Good teams take time to come together and form chemistry, and they may not have enough time to mesh and truly emerge as one of the top teams in the NBA on both ends of the floor.
While the Mavericks' defense looked excellent with Davis on the floor on Saturday, their defense has also been great at times with Doncic in the lineup. Dallas' defense last season was elite down the stretch of last season, even with Doncic, and fans barely ever got to see this year's team play fully healthy.
Anyone who watched a game when they were fully healthy this season could tell that they were true contenders, and rather than getting to watch them compete for a title with the face of the city, they moved on and traded for Davis and now he's out with an injury.
The Mavericks were better off rolling with the roster they had rather than making a gamble and trading one of the best young superstars in the NBA, and Mavericks fans may never get over this one.
