NBA fans remain flabbergasted by the Dallas Mavericks trading Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers over the weekend. The rest of the league didn’t love how the shocking blockbuster unfolded.
On late Saturday night, the Lakers sent Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and their 2029 first-round pick to Dallas for Doncic, Maxi Kleber, and Markieff Morris in a three-team deal involving the Utah Jazz. Baffled onlookers scratched their heads even more when Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison confirmed only speaking to Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka about trading Doncic.
“It started out as a coffee,” Harrison said on Sunday. “It was more of a ‘Hey, would you ever?’ … ‘Uh, I don’t know. Would I?’ … We kept it between us. We had to.”
Unsurprisingly, this did not sit well with other teams that would have loved the chance to pursue a 25-year-old superstar who has made five All-NBA teams in his first six seasons.
“Executives from around the league were both furious and jealous that the glitzy, star-driven Lakers had been the only team given an opportunity to bid for Doncic’s services,” ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and Tim MacMahon reported on Monday.
One Western Conference executive called the chain of events “unfathomable,” and an Eastern Conference exec told ESPN they were “stunned.”
Sources called negotiations between Harrison and Pelinka a “rather direct process.” They have a “long history of trust” dating back to their days as Nike employees who helped recruit Kobe Bryant in 2003.
For various reasons, neither side wanted news of their trade talks to leak. The Lakers harbored memories of a failed Chris Paul trade in 2011, and Harrison didn’t want to lose control of a delicate situation.
“Harrison decided early on, team sources said, that the best way to trade a player of Doncic’s caliber was to pick the trade that he wanted, rather than open up the process, to avoid Doncic and his agent exerting their own leverage,” ESPN wrote. “It would also avoid the crippling fan backlash that might influence the deal.”
That crippling fan backlash came Sunday when fans protested outside American Airlines Center. Some even brought a coffin to hold a symbolic funeral for the franchise.
Doncic was eligible to sign a five-year, $345 million supermax deal with Dallas this offseason. According to ESPN, the Mavericks “were as afraid of Doncic signing the deal as they were of him not” because of conditioning concerns.
Related: Mavs GM Reveals How Many Teams He Talked To About Trading Luka