Fifteen years ago, best-selling author Michael Lewis wrote "The Big Short," a book that became the defining tome of the financial crisis of the late aughts.
Saturday night, Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison authored the NBA's version of "The Big Short," when he agreed to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for a package led by Anthony Davis. It was a deal so shocking that after ESPN's Shams Charania broke the news, dozens of people instantly reached out to ask whether his social media account had been hacked.
As Shams confirmed, it hadn't been. The Mavericks chose to make a stunning bet against the future of a player who, at 25 years old, has one of the most decorated résumés in basketball history.
Doncic has been an All-NBA First Team selection each of the past five seasons. While he's not eligible to make the team this season because of the calf strain that has sidelined him since Dec. 25, he is one of only five active players to have at least that many First Team selections (and one of only 28 in NBA history).
The other four? Giannis Antetokounmpo, James Harden, Kevin Durant and Doncic's new teammate, LeBron James.
Antetokounmpo turned 30 in early December. Harden is 35. Durant is 36. James is 40.
Doncic doesn't even turn 26 until Feb. 28.
Doncic is an elite offensive talent who led Dallas to the NBA Finals last season. He entered this season ranked second only to Nikola Jokic in ESPN's NBA Rank and was a co-favorite alongside Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to win his first MVP award. He has also had remarkable success internationally playing for his native Slovenia.
As a result, the unanimous reaction from anyone outside of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex in the early hours of Saturday morning was that the Lakers had won the trade -- and that they couldn't understand it.
"What the f--- is happening," said an assistant coach.
"I feel like I'm dreaming," said an agent.
"The confusion around the league is quite high," said an executive.
This is a moment that will live on in the memory of the league for a long time. It's similar to when Paul George was dealt to the LA Clippers in the middle of the night six years ago, ensuring Kawhi Leonard would also sign with the Clippers. Or when Durant declared he was going to the Golden State Warriors on July 4, 2016. Or when James sat across from Jim Gray and said he was taking his talents to South Beach in 2010.
The Mavericks' bet against Doncic due to what sources told ESPN's Tim MacMahon were concerns over his conditioning and the potential supermax contract he'd be eligible to sign this summer is the biggest takeaway from as big of a trade as the NBA has seen in quite some time. Doncic has been limited to 22 games this season and hasn't played more than 70 in a season since his rookie year.
"You better be sure his body is going to fall apart," said an Eastern Conference executive. "That's all I'm going to say."
That's just one of the big storylines as the league wraps its collective mind around what the deal means for Davis, Doncic, the Mavericks, the Lakers and everyone else moving forward.
Dallas clearly coveted Davis
Not only is this a massive bet against Doncic, but it is also a truly gigantic bet on Davis. Several sources who spoke to ESPN wondered why Dallas wouldn't have canvassed the league to see how much it could get for Doncic if they wanted to move him; many thought the Mavs clearly would've been able to get more in return.
"Nico must really love Anthony Davis," said a Western Conference executive.
Harrison clearly targeted Davis, someone he has a longstanding relationship with going back to his prior job as a high-ranking Nike executive. Davis, in the middle of possibly the best season of his career (averaging 25.7 PPG and 11.9 RPG and shooting 52.8% from the field), showed he was more than happy to go to Dallas when, according to ESPN's Bobby Marks, he waived his trade bonus to get the deal done and also keep Dallas under the luxury tax for the time being.
This isn't the first time Harrison has gone after a player with whom he had a preexisting relationship. Recent examples include his acquisitions of P.J. Washington (from the Charlotte Hornets) last year and Kyrie Irving (from the Brooklyn Nets) two years ago.
Both the Irving and Washington trades were questioned moments after they were made, but they helped power Dallas to the Finals last season. Time will tell whether Harrison's latest gamble will pay off, too.
This is the trade that will define Harrison's career, particularly given he has already traded away control of the Mavericks' first-round picks from 2027 to 2030.
No pressure.
Lakers exceptionalism is back
There's a reason the Lakers have spent the past 60-plus years as the NBA's most glamorous franchise. One star after another -- from Jerry West to Wilt Chamberlain to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Magic Johnson to Shaquille O'Neal to Kobe Bryant to LeBron James to Anthony Davis -- has found his way to the Purple and Gold.
All eight of those players, by the way, were among the 75 honored as the greatest in NBA history for the league's 75th anniversary team in 2021, and only West was acquired with a draft pick that originally belonged to the Lakers.
Now, Los Angeles has Doncic -- who feels destined to be on the 100th anniversary team in a few decades -- and it acquired him without sacrificing its 2031 first-round pick. Several sources expressed shock to learn that Dallas acquired only the Lakers' 2029 first-round pick and didn't get the 2031 pick as well. Many couldn't believe the Lakers once again fell into a generational talent, or the fact that Dallas was willing to give up Doncic in the first place.
The best comparison for this trade is Abdul-Jabbar's arrival in Los Angeles in 1975. That Lakers team, like this one, wasn't good enough to win a championship. And it took another four years -- until Los Angeles landed Magic Johnson in the 1979 draft -- for the Lakers to return to that stratosphere.
But just as the Lakers landed Abdul-Jabbar 50 years ago, they have now acquired an MVP-level talent in his prime. Abdul-Jabbar arrived in L.A. two seasons after the end of the Chamberlain era. Now Doncic is arriving as the LeBron era nears its end. And while Dallas is banking on the big short, the Lakers are betting they'll see the best years of Doncic's career in the seasons to come.
Now ... what about on the court?
The Mavericks made this deal believing that the combination of Irving and Davis can be the fulcrum of a championship run, as Harrison told ESPN's Tim MacMahon.
Harrison said that after this trade, Dallas is "built to win both now and in the future." Multiple executives believe the "future" part of that answer is really the next 18 months, because Irving (who turns 33 next month) and Davis (who turns 32 next month) can't be expected to remain a championship-level core for a significant period of time.
But whatever limit you want to put on the Mavericks' window for title contention, what isn't in dispute is this is a trade a team makes if it's trying to win today, not tomorrow. And after making it, Dallas now has a roster with one high-level ball handler on it: Irving, who is also dealing with a bulging disc in his back.
As a result, it feels like this is going to be a busy week in Dallas, as it seems highly unlikely the Mavs will stand pat by the time the trade deadline passes at 3 p.m. Thursday. It also makes one wonder about whether Dereck Lively could be a possible option in trades this week. Not only does Dallas have Daniel Gafford to play alongside Davis, but Lively is out for months with a foot injury. He might not be able to play again this season and could be a valuable trade chip to strengthen the roster.
Beyond that, it's going to be quite interesting to see how all the current pieces in Dallas fit together. Yes, Davis will be happy to play at power forward, where he wants to be, but he has had success as a full-time center the past few years (and especially this season) for a reason: his lack of shooting. He's shooting 29.8% from 3-point range this season, which is actually an improvement on the 24.8% mark he posted over the previous four seasons.
Washington is a power forward who now likely will have to spend time at small forward. Can he hold up there? Klay Thompson, who turns 35 on Saturday, has been starting at small forward but should really be guarding power forwards now. Now he might not even be in the starting lineup anymore. Instead, you can make a good argument that Max Christie, who was also acquired in the trade and has quickly blossomed into a quality 3-and-D wing over the past couple of months, should start alongside Irving in the backcourt, with Davis, Gafford and Washington up front.
Overall, the Mavericks believe their size and defense give them a legitimate shot to repeat last year's run. They are a massive team across the board now, and we've seen positional size help both the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics win the past two titles.
But the bottom line is that it seems there's an awful lot of work left to be done in Dallas this week.
"I'm still stunned," an Eastern Conference executive told ESPN on Sunday morning.
How will the Lakers make Luka, LeBron and Austin Reaves work?
The Lakers, meanwhile, find themselves in the reverse situation, with a logjam on the perimeter and a hole in the middle. Just last week, Davis sat down with Charania and declared the Lakers should trade for a center. Now they have only one healthy center (Jaxson Hayes) on the 15-man roster, plus Trey Jemison and Christian Koloko on two-way contracts.
That's not a tenable situation if it remains that way past Thursday's deadline.
Meanwhile, even though Doncic, James and Austin Reaves should be a fabulous offensive troika, trying to play the three of them together defensively would be a challenge -- and that's being kind. It's fair to wonder whether Reaves could be used to balance the Lakers' roster over the next few days. Reaves has blossomed into a very good role player in Los Angeles, averaging 18.2 points and 6.1 assists per game. His salary -- at $12.9 million this year and $13.9 million next year -- makes him more valuable right now than he probably will be at any point in his career, given his ability to be traded to virtually any team.
If the Lakers were to make him available, perhaps he could bring them back the kind of frontcourt depth they need to give them some defensive heft behind James and Doncic and better balance the roster.
This blockbuster could create more trades
Up until the moment this trade was consummated Saturday night, the expectation around the league was that we were heading toward a fairly quiet trade deadline. Jimmy Butler and De'Aaron Fox have both generated plenty of speculation, but both of those situations were contained in scope. The expectation was that whether or not they happen, they weren't holding up anyone else's business.
This move, however, will undoubtedly have ripple effects. No one was looking at either the Lakers or Mavericks as teams likely to do much.
"In my conversations with Dallas this week," one executive joked, "I was told they were looking for a backup center."
A move this unexpected is bound to shake things up. It seems Dallas and Los Angeles both have further moves to make. The Butler and Fox situations remain in flux. It seems like the league could easily go a record eighth straight season without seeing a team claiming back-to-back titles (the last was Golden State in 2018), and that vacuum at the top could create even more movement.
A move of this magnitude has long-lasting aftershocks. We'll see how many of them ripple out across the league, and how much movement they cause this week.