Something was amiss. Devin Booker could sense it when the Phoenix Suns’ team plane, en route to a nationally televised game last month in Dallas, was just making contact with the runway.
“You can feel it,” Booker told me. “You can feel it when you land.”
It is the atmospheric change in Mavsland ever since what many around the league — all the way up to NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s office — refer to simply as The Trade. Booker’s Suns had numerous battles with the Luka Dončić-led Mavericks … some of them in the playoffs, few that were friendly and a majority of them memorable. Most of all, if the schedule called for a game at the American Airlines Center, Booker understood exactly whose city it was. Even as a visiting star.
Not that the subject likely would have been broached were Dončić still a Maverick. It came up because Booker had just played in Dallas for the first time since the home team had stunningly traded Dončić away, casting him aside without warning in what is frequently billed as the most surprising trade in NBA history.
On Wednesday night, Dončić will walk into the AAC as a visiting player for the first time … and no one is quite sure how the experience will feel or go. The last time Dončić played there, on Christmas Day, he was forced to exit the building on crutches after a calf strain that helped set in motion trade negotiations with the Los Angeles Lakers that resulted in a blockbuster deal almost no one saw coming. Now Dončić is poised to return as a Los Angeles Laker, side by side with LeBron James, in one of the most anticipated regular-season games in league annals.
And with the Mavericks in the uncomfortable position as the hosts who initiated the dumping of Dončić. After building the best roster to surround the Slovenian that the franchise had ever assembled, Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison led the abrupt pivot away from the 26-year-old as their centerpiece.
How did we get here?
This is Part 6 in an ongoing series of FAQ-style deep dives designed to examine the numerous layers and angles stemming from that question and supplement Sunday’s extensive entry:
