Even though the Dallas Mavericks’ Luka Doncic trade happened over a month and a half ago, it’s still the talk of the town in DFW. You can’t step foot anywhere without overhearing someone discussing Dallas’ trade with the Los Angeles Lakers, and the metroplex is truly heartbroken as it fully supported Doncic through thick and thin over the last seven years and still does.
Fans can’t believe that the team traded Doncic in the middle of the night out of nowhere, but as fans go on, fans are learning more and more about why Nico Harrison and the front office decided to make this decision. They didn’t think Doncic had a great work ethic, doubted his leadership, and had issues with his off-court habits, so they decided to trade him.
Some of Doncic’s off-court habits that the Mavericks took issue with was him drinking beer and smoking hookah. Both of these habits never affected Doncic’s play on the floor, as he made the All-NBA First Team for five years in a row, but Dallas clearly didn’t think he was locked in on becoming the best player he possibly could.
While the entire NBA world was shocked when Doncic got traded, there had been little signs over the time leading up to the trade that signaled his time in Dallas could be more limited than anyone realized.
Former NBA forward Marcus Morris recently talked about the Doncic trade and how the organization treated him, and Morris took exception to one event that happened after the Mavs clinched the NBA Finals last season. Doncic had a beer in his hand, and assistant general manager Michael Finley took it out away from him, leaving Doncic confused.
“As a player, I didn’t like how that looked,” Morris said about Doncic’s beer incident. “We just won, we celebrating, I have a beer, there’s cameras, and you kind of take that away from me. It’s like you’re almost trying to hint at something, right?”
Morris then continued to talk about how he didn’t agree with how Finley did this and shed some negative light on Doncic by taking his beer, and he said that this happening somewhat foreshadowed what’s going on now, saying “you kind of painting that picture the entire time that he has a drinking problem, that he’s overweight.”
Morris then talked about how Doncic’s production never dropped despite the Mavericks having issues with his off-court lifestyle, and how it didn’t make any sense to trade him. His feeling on the situation echoes how Mavs fans feel, and Dallas was silently painting a picture that they didn’t like certain things that he was doing.
There were several instances during Doncic’s Mavs tenure in which they were concerned with his conditioning, which was fair at times, but Dallas didn’t do themselves any favors when it came to keeping Doncic happy. They also got rid of several members within the organization that he cherished, including Casey Smith, and rather than doing whatever they could to keep Doncic happy, they fired people that he liked despite the negative consequences that inevitably came with that.
As Morris pointed out, there were little signs coming out of Dallas that reflected the Mavericks doing Doncic wrong in a way, and although no one expected this to lead to Doncic being traded, the signs were undoubtedly there for some time. The Lakers are already going out of their way to keep Doncic happy by bringing on his body team, and they are setting themselves up for an outstanding partnership for years to come. Doncic is loyal to whoever is loyal to him, and it sounds like he could be showing this loyalty to the Lakers for years to come.
