It’s been two weeks since the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers got together for one of the most stunning trades in history, but it’s important to remember that Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis never could’ve swapped teams were it not for the cooperation of the Utah Jazz. The Jazz were the third team in the deal and wound up with Jalen Hood-Schifino and a couple second-round picks.
When the trade initially went down, nobody could believe it. But speaking for myself, I at least tried to look at it from every possible Dallas angle to try to make some sense of what seemed like a nonsensical move. But as time has passed, no acceptable rationale has emerged. It was a ridiculous trade on the part of the Mavericks. Even Jazz GM Justin Zanik knows it.
“Look, I mean obviously, [Lakers GM] Rob Pelinka even said it in his press conference introducing Luka that it was a gift,” Zanik recently said. “And I think that’s how a lot of my colleagues … I don’t want to speak for them … but how we call kind of felt.
“But, [Mavs GM] Nico [Harrison] and Dallas do a great job. They obviously had their reasons, and wanting to improve the defense, and obviously getting a top-15 player [Davis] in their own right, they’ve decided that was in their best interest.
“Obviously it kind of reshaped the Western Conference,” Zanik continued. “When we are up there [in the standings] with those guys here very soon, then maybe I’d care a little bit more about being the third team [to help the deal get done]. … If we were in the playoff [hunt] right now, I’d be asking both of them [Harrison and Pelinka] like, ‘what is going on here, and I’m not doing it.'”
In other words, Zanik, like everyone else, thought the trade was certifiably crazy, to the point that he never would’ve agreed to be a part of it if the Jazz weren’t completely out of the competitive picture. But, being that Utah was basically able to pick up Hood-Schifino and a couple second-round picks for free, hell, why not?
Even though he qualified it by saying he didn’t want to speak for his colleagues, Zanik confirmed that all his fellow NBA executives had the same reaction to the trade as everyone else. Dallas gave the Lakers a gift in a 25-year-old generational superstar whom they’ve since tried to paint as an injury risk, only they did it for one of the most oft-injured superstars in the league who is also seven years old than Doncic.
Zanik is being polite here, but you can tell exactly what he was and still is thinking about the trade. Harrison and the Mavericks lost their collective mind, and that organization, whether Harrison sticks around for long or not, is going to have to live with a enormous level of regret.
