The 2024-2025 season will be one never forgotten by Mavericks fans — and trading this franchise star is the reason why. Late February 1, general manager Nico Harrison shipped Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers for a package including Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick.
Here at mavsmoneyball.com, we often don’t do season-in-review pieces for players traded in the middle of a season, as you’ll notice we don’t have one posted for Maxi Kleber or Markieff Morris. But with a trade this historic, we felt it was justified to submit one final retrospective piece on his career in Dallas, this time purely focusing on his final season with the Mavericks.
Let’s look at Dončić’s numbers in the regular season in his 22 games in a Maverick uniform. We see a decline in almost every major statistical category — points, rebounds, assists, blocks, field goal percentage, three-point percentage, and free-throw percentage — although as Dončić was quick to ask reporters to do after a stellar defensive game, when we look at his steals per game, we see an increase from 1.4 to 2.0.
That paragraph may sound some alarms for most players, such a decline in their age-26 season…until you realize he was still averaging 28-8-8 on league average efficiency. Despite dealing with nagging injuries and, as we know now, a toxic front office, Dončić was still putting up staggering numbers and Dallas was 11-3 with their starting lineup of Dončić, Kyrie Irving, Klay Thompson, PJ Washington, and Dereck Lively II all healthy.
Not for nothing, but that lineup had a defensive rating of 107.3, which would’ve been the best defense in basketball for the “defense wins championships” crowd.
Best Performance
Though we didn’t see any otherworldly performances like his 60-point, 20-rebound, 10-assist game in 2022-2023 or his 73-point explosion (T-4th most in NBA history) in 2023-2024, Dončić’s greatness was on full display in his third-to-last game as a Maverick — a 143-133 December 15 win over the Golden State Warriors.
Dončić’s 80th career triple-double — tied for seventh most in NBA history despite being just 25 years old at the start of this game — had a little bit of everything. No-look passes, bruising defensive rebounds, and lights out shooting were a few items on the menu for Dončić on that warm December California night.
He finished the game with a season-high 45 points, 13 assists, 11 rebounds, three steals and two blocks. Dallas was 17-9 after the game, tied for the 3rd-best record in the Western Conference.
10 days later, he played his last game as a Maverick.
Less than two months later, he was traded.
Final Thoughts
This trade will never make sense. Conspiracies can fly and people can debate it for days on end, but at some point, the pain has to end. Dončić’s greatness as a Maverick will be remembered in Dallas sports fans’ hearts forever, but the 2024-2025 season will be the last time we see him in a Dallas uniform. His 22-game mini-season was the last chance for Mavericks fans to see the second-greatest player in franchise history don the blue and white.
And in typical Luka fashion, he gave us one final show in California for us to enjoy and a chilling 45-point dominating performance on April 9 in American Airlines Center, his first game back, to remind Dallas fans that it will never stop hurting.
