Basketball World Rocked by Luka Doncic Trade to Lakers: ‘WOWWWWW NO F WAY’

The basketball world was rocked Saturday night when the Dallas Mavericks — fresh off an NBA Finals appearance last season — traded their 25-year-old Slovenian star Luka Doncic, a franchise cornerstone and one of the best young players in the league, to the Los Angeles Lakers in a three-team deal without warning.

Prior to next week’s NBA trade deadline, stars like Jimmy Butler, De’Aaron Fox, and Zach Lavine were oft-mentioned on the marketplace, but no one — front-office execs, beat writers, and fans — could have fathomed that a player with the magnitude of Doncic would be available to the highest bidder. (Alas, the Mavericks reportedly didn’t even auction off their prized asset, instead covertly approaching only the Lakers with a proposed swap of foundational pieces.)

The first “Shams bomb” — the NBA Twitter term for breaking news delivered by now-ESPN writer Shams Charania — detonated at 9:12 p.m. PST, or 12 minutes after midnight in New York, where the Lakers were following a victory earlier in the night against the Knicks. 

“BREAKING: The Dallas Mavericks are trading Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick, sources tell ESPN. Three-team deal that includes Utah,” Charania tweeted.

The trade appeared so out-of-nowhere and incredulous that even NBA players questioned whether Charania’s account was compromised. “I can’t tell what’s real and fake anymore on these apps. Luka really going to the lakers or nah?,” tweeted CJ McCollum, Pelicans shooting guard and the president of the NBA Players Association.

In the aftershock of the first Shams bomb, Charania returned with a follow-up tweet: “Yes, this is real… The Mavericks approached the Lakers recently and offered Luka Doncic, sources tell ESPN. Lakers brass met and believed the 25-year-old Doncic has the ability to be the face of their franchise for the next decade while giving Anthony Davis a win-now move in Dallas.”

Editor’s picks

Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid summarized the sentiment of the entire NBA community: “WOWWWWW NO F WAY”

News of the blockbuster — the “most stunning trade in NBA history,” one league exec told The Athletic — trickled out during the Phoenix Suns and Portland Trail Blazers game, leaving members of the Suns dumbfounded on the bench. “Insane. It’s crazy, crazy,” the Suns’ Kevin Durant said postgame. “I never thought Luka Doncic would be traded ’cause of age… the NBA is a wild place. If he can get traded, then anybody is up for grabs.”

The Suns’ Devin Booker, who mocked the trade on social media, said in the locker room Saturday, “It’s crazy man. I really don’t know what to say about it. Luka being a guy that everybody has claimed is untouchable and untradeable. The NBA shows you again.”

The main piece going to the Mavericks is Anthony Davis, a future Hall of Famer in his own right, but also a player on the wrong side of 30 with his own extensive history of injury issues and a potentially onerous max contract. Dallas also received one (1) first-round pick in the deal, despite a precedent of recent headline-grabbing trades where players like Kevin Durant, Rudy Gobert, and Mikal Bridges were swapped for handfuls of picks.

Well-connected NBA writer Zach Lowe wrote Sunday morning, “Sample texts from NBA team execs: ‘This is the first time I’ve been legitimately shocked and could not move’; ‘What a terrible deal’ (no further clarification);  and my favorite (among dozens in a similar vein) ‘What the f-ckity f-ck?????'”

LeBron James, Doncic’s now-teammate, has not yet commented on the trade itself, but he emphatically denied a report about an alleged rift between himself and Davis on Sunday morning.

As for why the Mavericks traded a franchise-altering top-five player without even canvassing the rest of the league for better packages, that story will likely emerge in the coming days.