The Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers stunned the NBA overnight Saturday with a swap of All-Stars that has massive implications for this season and beyond.
A year after leading the NBA in scoring and finishing third in MVP voting en route to his first NBA Finals appearance, Luka Doncic is headed to the Lakers as their next superstar. In exchange, Dallas acquired All-Star center Anthony Davis, the Lakers' leader in points, rebounds and blocks per game, as well as promising guard Max Christie and the Lakers' 2029 first-round pick.
Because of the NBA's salary cap rules, the trade also required the Utah Jazz as a third team, which acquired guard Jalen Hood-Schifino from the Lakers and 2025 second-round picks from the Clippers and Mavs.
Let's try to wrap our heads around a trade that truly came out of nowhere to understand what it means for all three teams, including the new directions for the Lakers and Mavs, plus an early look at the LeBron-Luka dynamic in L.A.
Jump to a section:
Grades: Who flunked and who passed?
The post-LeBron Lakers and other winners, losers
The deal: Luka joins Lakers; Davis to Mavs
Los Angeles Lakers get:
G Luka Doncic
F Maxi Kleber
F Markieff Morris
Dallas Mavericks get:
C Anthony Davis
G Max Christie
2029 first-round pick (via Lakers)
Utah Jazz get:
G Jalen Hood-Schifino
2025 second-round pick (via LA Clippers)
2025 second-round pick (via Dallas)
Grades
Los Angeles Lakers: A
If we put every NBA player into a draft today with their current contracts, Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs would undoubtedly be the No. 1 pick. Three-time MVP Nikola Jokic of the Denver Nuggets probably would go second despite being nearly 30. And then we'd have a tough choice between Doncic and MVP front-runner Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder for the third spot.
Given that Doncic will turn 26 later this month and has a full season on his contract before a 2026-27 player option, there's a reasonable argument that he is the most valuable player at the time of being traded in modern NBA history. For the Lakers to land Doncic without even exhausting their supply of draft picks is an incredible coup that sets up the next generation of success for one of the league's most storied franchises.
In the short term, getting Doncic might not catapult the Lakers into legitimate title contention. After all, he is currently sidelined by a calf strain sustained on Christmas Day, and frankly hadn't been as effective as Davis when healthy. Although the Lakers still have moves they can make before Thursday's trade deadline, dealing their starting center for a 6-foot-6 player in return leaves them woefully thin in the middle. And there will undoubtedly be a learning curve when Doncic does join the lineup, displacing LeBron James and Austin Reaves as the Lakers' primary ballhandler.
Given all those issues, it's plausible the Lakers' chances of winning a playoff series this season diminished with the trade. That's unimportant by comparison to bringing Doncic to L.A. for what could be years to come.
As ESPN's Bobby Marks noted, Doncic will be eligible for a four-year extension worth nearly $229 million this summer. Alternatively, Doncic could sign a shorter bridge extension of three years and $165 million with a player option for 2028-29 that would allow him to push his salary up to 35% of the cap once he has attained the 10 necessary seasons of experience.
A Doncic extension would surely take him beyond James' career, at which point the Lakers will have to find a championship-caliber co-star for him. That process will be much easier because of the deal the Lakers negotiated.
Contrast this return with the Davis trade, where the Lakers gave up three promising young players (Lonzo Ball, Josh Hart and Brandon Ingram, who all developed into quality starters or better), the No. 4 pick of the draft, two unprotected first-round picks and a swap. Here, the Lakers gave up one young player (Christie, whose outlook is not as bright as either Ball or Ingram at the time of the Davis trade) and one unprotected draft pick, set to convey when Doncic is age 30.
Remarkably, that leaves the Lakers with their 2031 first-round pick to offer in a future trade for a star, plus swaps in 2026, 2028 and 2030 as well as 2024 first-round pick Dalton Knecht. By this summer, they'll also be able to swap their 2032 first-round pick. The Lakers will have to be judicious in how they manage those picks, but the cupboard is hardly bare.
The Lakers deserve credit for not overreacting to their recent success. Part of what made the timing of the late Saturday night blockbuster so shocking was the Lakers just finished an impressive win on ABC over the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, bringing them to 8-2 in their past 10 games. At 28-19, the Lakers are only a game out of fourth in the Western Conference.
Despite their recent success, the Lakers have still been outscored on the season. Among the four teams ahead of them in the West standings, they've beaten only the Memphis Grizzlies (twice) this season, with a minus-43 point differential in their six games against that group. This team wasn't a serious contender.
The Lakers might not be this April, either, but adding Doncic gives them a far more realistic path to the next great Lakers team.
MORE: The betting and fantasy implications of the Luka-AD trade
Dallas Mavericks: F
First, let's acknowledge I've made a habit of betting against Mavericks trades to my detriment. I disliked the risk of bringing in Kyrie Irving months before he would become an unrestricted free agent, but Irving re-signed with Dallas rather than join the Lakers -- now an even more remarkable sliding-doors moment -- and has been terrific for the Mavericks.
At last year's trade deadline, I thought Dallas took too much risk for too little benefit by dealing a first-round pick and a swap to get Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington. Adding those two starters ultimately helped the Mavericks reach the NBA Finals.
Of course, the whole reason those risks were worthwhile for Dallas was improving the chances of extending Doncic beyond his current contract. Now that the Mavericks have traded him for a player nearly six years older, they're willingly putting themselves on the high wire yet again.
Don't take my grade as a dismissal of Davis, who earned one of my votes to start the All-Star Game in the Western Conference frontcourt this season. Although Davis hasn't been quite as dominant defensively as when he finished second in Defensive Player of the Year voting in 2019-20 and the Lakers won the championship, his 30% usage rate is his highest with the Lakers and has come with only modest decline in terms of efficiency.
The biggest issue here is simply the aging curve. As he approaches his mid-30s, Davis is likely to see his production decline just as Doncic is reaching his peak years. By 2027, when Dallas will send a top-2 protected pick to the Charlotte Hornets from the Washington deal, Davis will be 34. By 2030, when the last of the Mavericks' pick obligations (a swap with the San Antonio Spurs) conveys, Davis will be 37. It's probable Davis will still be a good player by then, perhaps even an All-Star. It's unrealistic to expect he'll be as good as Doncic.
Secondarily, Davis' fit in Dallas is questionable. For all his comments about wanting to play with a center (including in a recent interview with ESPN's Shams Charania), Davis no longer spaces the floor well enough to be maximized alongside a non-shooting big man. Since making 38% of his 3s en route to the Lakers' title in 2020, Davis is at 26% beyond the arc.
When healthy, the Mavericks already boasted a pair of strong centers in 2023 lottery pick Dereck Lively II and Gafford, who has excelled as a starter in Lively's absence because of an ankle stress fracture. Davis probably will go from almost exclusively playing center for the Lakers to almost never doing so in Dallas.
That, in turn, affects Washington. He's effective driving against slower defenders as a power forward, but now will presumably slide to the wing to make room for Davis. Washington will have an advantage against smaller opponents in the post, but it's unclear if the Mavericks will have enough spacing in their starting lineup to benefit from it.
Down the road, Dallas can reshape the roster around Davis to a degree, but there's urgency to win now given the ages of Davis and Irving (33 in March). The Mavericks need things to click quickly.
Adding Davis should help as soon as he returns from an abdominal strain, particularly with Lively and Kleber (now traded) sidelined. As well as the Lakers had played lately, Dallas had been trending in the opposite direction. Fourth in the West at the time Doncic went down on Christmas Day, the Mavericks have fallen to eighth by going 7-14 since, including 5-8 in the 13 games Irving has played. This trade can help Dallas stabilize and have a realistic shot at avoiding the play-in tournament. Still, such a move requires thinking beyond the next four months.
Let's stipulate the Mavericks were right to be concerned about Doncic's conditioning, as ESPN's Tim MacMahon reported, or even that his impressive stats overstated his impact. (That case is getting harder to make with each loss, particularly in the wake of last year's Finals run.)
If all that is true, Dallas still should have gotten more in return for Doncic. I suppose I can understand wanting to avoid the distraction of open bidding for Doncic -- and the Mavericks did manage to keep their negotiations historically quiet -- but the only way that works is to use the threat of hanging up the phone to get the best package possible.
It's inconceivable Dallas didn't end up with everything of value the Lakers had to offer in this trade, including the 2031 first-rounder, Knecht and pick swaps. Given Doncic's desirability, the Mavericks should have operated with maximum leverage instead of making a deal short of perfect. Even if things work out perfectly, in an analogy befitting the team's ownership, Dallas left money on the table.
Utah Jazz: B
The Jazz were needed for this deal, their second of the day, because the Lakers can't take back more salary in a trade than they send out without triggering a hard cap at the lower luxury tax apron. The Lakers are currently $9.2 million over that apron and just $1.6 million away from the second apron, which is now a hard cap because they had to aggregate salaries in this trade.
Hood-Schifino was expendable after the Lakers declined his third-year option, an atypical outcome for the No. 17 pick of the 2023 draft. Hood-Schifino struggled in limited action as a rookie and had played only two NBA games this season before sustaining a hamstring strain that has him sidelined.
As part of a rebuild, Utah can look at Hood-Schifino the rest of the season with no obligation beyond that. The Jazz, who will take Hood-Schifino into a trade exception, acquired a couple of picks likely to land in the back half of the 2025 second round for their trouble.
Winners and losers: What this trade means for others
Although my grades make it clear I consider the Lakers winners and Mavericks losers of their trade, the ripple effects of this deal extend far beyond the three teams involved. Let's look at some of the players and other teams who benefited from the deal -- and those who would have been better off without it.
Winner: The post-LeBron Lakers
When the Lakers dealt for Davis nearly six years ago, the idea was he would take the torch from James as the next face of the franchise. That's happened this season, to a degree, with Davis overtaking James as the Lakers' clear No. 1 option on offense.
The problem is how far we still might be from the post-James era. With James still playing at a high level at age 40, we've now gotten to the point where Davis (who will turn 32 in March) is also in the back half of his NBA career. Turning 26 later this month, Doncic can keep the Lakers competitive throughout the remainder of the decade and beyond.
But the era now feels one step closer. Aside from backup guard Gabe Vincent, the Lakers have just two players older than 27 in their rotation: James and forward Dorian Finney-Smith.
Loser: Max Christie
On Saturday night, Christie started and scored 15 points as the Lakers won at Madison Square Garden. The 2022 second-round pick, who will turn 22 next week, had every reason to think he was a key part of the Lakers' future as an emerging 3-and-D role player. Instead, he's headed to Dallas.
The Mavericks have a crowd at shooting guard. Presumably, veteran Klay Thompson will slide to that spot full time after starting at small forward for much of the campaign. Dallas also has veteran Spencer Dinwiddie, who had been starting alongside Kyrie Irving in Doncic's absence, plus younger Quentin Grimes averaging double-digit points off the bench. The Mavericks even got Dante Exum back in the lineup Friday after he missed the season's first 48 games following right wrist surgery.
If Christie continues shooting 37% from 3, Mavs coach Jason Kidd surely will find a spot for him in the rotation. It's unlikely, however, that Christie will see nearly as much playing time as he had with the Lakers.
Winner: Future picks owned by Charlotte -- and three West rivals
Part of the reason teams were eager to acquire first-round picks or swaps from the Mavericks between the 2023 and 2024 trade deadlines was the possibility Doncic could play elsewhere by the time they convey.
When Dallas coalesced around deadline pickups Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington and reached the 2024 Finals, that hope surely faded. Doncic appeared headed toward signing a supermax extension this summer, which would have kept him with the Mavericks or given him considerable trade value if he did want out.
Now that Dallas has swapped Doncic for Davis, those teams might yet reap the benefit of better Mavericks picks -- perhaps not in time for 2027, when the Hornets own Dallas' first-round pick with top-two protection, but more likely by 2029, when the Houston Rockets likely will get the Mavericks' first-rounder.
Sandwiched around that 2029 pick, Dallas owes swap rights to two of the NBA's most promising young teams: the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2028 and the San Antonio Spurs in 2030. That could keep the Mavericks picking late in the first round even if they've entered a rebuild by the end of the decade.
Loser: Jazz's draft stockpile
Not because of the Jazz's role in this trade, mind you, but because they had made a bet in the opposite direction of the teams shorting Dallas' first-rounders. The Jazz own the Lakers' 2027 first-round pick, which is top-four protected. When the Lakers sent that pick to Utah while hovering around .500 at the 2023 trade deadline, it appeared to have considerable upside. Now, the Lakers are less likely to send a lottery pick to the Jazz.
Winner: The Lakers' next center
After trading Davis, the Lakers have a gaping hole in the middle. They did manage to beat the Knicks on Saturday without him, starting Jaxson Hayes at center and finishing the game with a small frontcourt of James, Finney-Smith and 6-foot-8 Rui Hachimura. Still, the Lakers surely will be on the hunt for a center before Thursday's trade deadline.
Whoever that player is will walk into an incredible opportunity. The Lakers can put sufficient shooting around pick-and-rolls with Doncic at the controls. Mavericks' roll men shot 70% this season out of pick-and-rolls with Doncic, per Second Spectrum tracking, second best among all players who had set up at least 50 attempts for those players, behind Scoot Henderson of the Portland Trail Blazers.
Better yet, James also ranks in the top five in that category, with roll men shooting 65% off his passes. If the Lakers can find an above-the-rim finisher anywhere in the ballpark of Davis (or Mavs centers Gafford or Dereck Lively II), they'll enjoy plentiful opportunities.