The Luka Doncic trade will always have us thinking — What Could Have Been?

As the continued gaslighting of the fanbase keeps raging in the aftermath of the shocking trade, I looked outside of basketball to help.

It’s been a confusing time for most fans of the Dallas Mavericks.

As we come up on a week since our world was rocked with the news of the team’s wonder boy being shipped away to the Los Angeles Lakers in the dark of the night, I’ve been spending most of my time alternating between bouts of rage and cold acceptance, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this.

Usually, when I get into a funk like this, I tend to immerse myself in work and turn up the volume around me. The speakers go to 11 and while I’m sure my neighbors don’t appreciate the volume, I haven’t heard any major complaints so far. It helps me calm myself and focus on the reality in front of me.

I’m a little old school in my musical tastes. As a child of the 90s, I grew up with a lot of metal, classic, and hard rock — The Who, Guns N Roses, Metallica, and later the Foo Fighters were things that blared around the house. My father played a big part in my musical education by introducing me to a lot of these bands. One of our major bonds, while I was growing up, has been our musical taste.

He’s also been a huge classical music fan with a lot of Beethoven, Mozart, and later on artists like Yanni. While I’ve never really taken to these with the fervor that he consumed them, it did impart a healthy love for grand orchestral pieces. A large portion of my musical collection consists of soundtracks from my favorite movies or even TV shows. Great music, regardless of its origin is the ultimate calming influence.

Why have I gone into a sermon about my musical history and interests in a piece on a basketball blog you ask?

It was the music that I was listening to at the time that kind of inspired me to write this.

The best part of being part of the Mavs Moneyball community is that our Slack channel functions like a giant WhatsApp group of sorts. While the Dallas Mavericks and the NBA dominate most of the conversation (as it should!), there’s a lot of chatter about music, movies, TV shows and the larger pop culture paradigm as a whole.

This leads me to Arcane — the League of Legends animated series on Netflix. Kirk Henderson is responsible for my love of the show. He was effusive about how wild it is and I can’t help but agree wholeheartedly. For those who haven’t seen it, the animation is great – Fortiche Studios and Riot Games made the tag of the most expensive animated series of all time worth it and the fact that the plot is so riveting makes it all the better.

What is most impressive to me though, apart from the animation and the gripping storyline, is the music. It’s such a smorgasbord of different sounds, from different genres and it’s utterly mesmerizing. I’ve spent hours listening to the soundtracks on loop and I would recommend it to anyone who asks.

One of my favorite pieces from both seasons is a song written by Alexander Seaver (also known as Mako) and performed by Sting – What Could Have Been.

A gripping, haunting ballad that is a reflection of all the confusion and rage felt by Jinx/Powder as she reconciles the deterioration of her relationship with her sister who she feels doesn’t understand her. So, she seeks to move on and make her sister hurt like she feels like she’s been hurt herself.

All we’ve been asking for in the past week is some acknowledgment of the hurt and confusion that we, as a fanbase, are going through. We want the organization to see us for what we are and to show some measure of empathy. For an entire generation, all we’ve known is what we consider the ‘Dallas Mavericks’ way. For all of it to change so suddenly, it’s shocking and painful.

So, when I see the posts up on social media about Nico Harrison being a bit shocked at the backlash from the move and the constant gaslighting of our reaction from the talking heads on sports TV, I can’t help but shake my head in disappointment.

Our fandom and obsession with our sports team is what fuels this outpouring of derision. The team should be happy that fans are this invested in our team that we take this dereliction of duty personally. Of course, we don’t condone the more violent reactions out there — that’s unacceptable.

We all want answers from the organization about the rationale behind the move — ones beyond the meaningless platitudes and insulting cliches that have been thrown at us so far. In what is probably more reprehensible than the move itself, the Mavericks have cowardly hidden behind the players and even announcer Mark Followill while using various media outlets to attempt to silence the outrage.

The privilege of being a contributor on this website is that it allows me to vent my frustrations constructively at least (Thanks Kirk, Josh, and the extended Mavs Moneyball team for that). So here’s my 2 cents on this entire debacle through the voice of Sting and the music of Mako:

I am the monster you created

You ripped out all my parts

And worst of all, for me to live, I gotta kill the part of me that saw

That I needed you more

You, Nico Harrison, are the custodian of that which all of us as Mavericks fans love most. You are in charge as General Manager and President of Basketball Operations. Post-Mark Cuban selling a majority stake in the franchise and being relegated to a spectator as a minority owner, you are the face of the organization. The buck stops with you.

So when you pull off a move like this in the dead of the night, with dubious reasoning, and then follow that up with a trainwreck of a press conference, where you nervously reenact your negotiations with your longtime friend, Rob Pelinka, it infuriates the fanbase.

The Dallas Mavericks, to me, aren’t like most of the other NBA franchises out there. It’s not win-at-all-costs. Despite its success over the past two decades, it’s not even a destination franchise. The Mavericks’ culture is unique and mostly stems from the loyalty and greatness of Dirk Nowitzki and the values he and Mark Cuban brought to the Mavericks over their tenure. Saad Yousuf captures this brilliantly in his piece on The Athletic (Subscription required).

We’ve spent seven years adoring and celebrating Luka Doncic — the heir to Dirk Nowitzki. In a lot of ways, he’s even better than Dirk. A savant on the court in every sense of the word. All of us, at some point, have sat back and marveled at our fortune in transitioning from the end of Dirk to the wonder of Luka. In a moment of sheer insanity, you have taken a flamethrower to something and someone we hold most dear. Now, we have root against him?

We now must bury our love for him without getting a real chance to mourn and move on with our lives as Mavericks fans. You might think me dramatic, but it kills me. One of my favorite pieces of clothing is my Luka Doncic number 77 hoodie which I bought when I came to Dallas late last year for the game against Phoenix. I adore it. And now I can’t bring myself to wear it because it causes me pain when I think about all of this.

So, yes Nico. We are the monster you created. You ripped out all our hearts. You are now making us choose between supporting the team, which we will, and rooting against Luka. You and the organization have trashed him on his way out unnecessarily and then you’ve made it seem like we’re overreacting for no reason. Well, we were fans of this team while you were still ensuring Kobe Bryant’s happiness back at Nike, and we will remain fans long after you’re gone. (Hopefully soon)

I hope you know we had everything

And you broke me and left these pieces

I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and

I want you to lose like I lose when I play what could have been

Oh, what could have been

When you were hired Nico, you were supposed to be the fresh start after all the organizational malpractice that had happened under the previous regime. The so-called “Relationships Guy” from Nike had fostered great connections and was responsible for maintaining a sense of togetherness within the team because he had a better clue of the players’ needs than Cuban, who had grown increasingly out of touch with the realities of the modern NBA.

You made solid decisions and small, smart moves to pivot the team so that it could be more than one that could make a surprise playoff run — shrewd acquisitions from non-contenders that complemented our superstar and raised the floor. We weren’t just a flash in the pan. We were here to stay. All of it paid off with a memorable Finals run and all of us fans couldn’t be happier.

A positive offseason of tweaking around the edges had all of us buzzing. While the injuries during the season dimmed enthusiasm, the fanbase was more or less united in one thought — this will work. Just get into the playoffs no matter what and the Mavericks will make some noise. This wasn’t some dark horse. We were contenders regardless of our injury record.

You threw that away for some vague notion of “Defense wins Championships”. Newsflash buddy – This isn’t an organization that’s always been built around some mythic defensive identity. The Dallas Mavericks have always built around a singular offensive mastermind with supporting pieces that contributed towards a solid defense. That’s balance.

You hurt all of us with your and the organizations’ leaks to the media with your concerns about Luka’s conditioning. You and the team started a misinformation campaign about his intentions to stay long-term and whether he fit into the “Culture”. As Mette Robertson pointed out in her piece last week, Luka IS THE CULTURE for the Dallas Mavericks. Or was at least. None of that matters anymore.

So now that you’ve shown your true colors, we rebel. You no longer qualify to be the face of OUR team. You’ve shaken the faith that all of us collectively placed on you. You let your ego get in the way of everything and threw away one of the best things about being a Mavericks fan.

We’re only left wondering in all of this – What Could Have Been?

Why don’t you love who I am?

What we could have been

I am your ghost, a fallen angel

You ripped out all my parts

I couldn’t care what invention you made me

‘Cause I, I was meant to be yours

Why? Why would you do this?

Why did you give up so abruptly on the dream that we were all building towards?

After 3 seasons of careful transactions meant to build a contender around Luka and help him achieve the storybook ending, you pulled the plug almost overnight. What pushed you over the edge?

Sure the media have given us plenty of information about how you slowly isolated Luka by getting rid of his supporters within the organization and how his lack of seriousness about his conditioning grated on you and your supposed devotion to the “Mamba Mentality.” It doesn’t mean that you nuke the guy into outer space. It just means that you have to work harder to get him to see the path.

As the senior-most person in the room, you have to remove your ego from the equation and see the person for their strengths and not hyperfocus on their inadequacies. You took every inaction on his part as a slight and then built that up in your head. So much so that you didn’t even do your job as a GM to get the maximum value for him while shipping him out.

We, as Mavericks fans, don’t care for your platitudes. We don’t care about YOUR ideas of a Championship window. The point of having someone as transcendent as Luka — a 25-year-old wunderkind entering his prime — is that your window is 10-15 years long as long as he stays healthy. If your idea of a window is only three to four years because you want out, then why wait? Go now and save us the trouble.

Maybe all of these moves lead to a title. Maybe two. It won’t matter to us fans as much though. As someone who followed the Mavericks for 25 years, I’ve seen the value and joy of watching Dirk’s struggle to the top. That title in 2011 means the world to us because it was the culmination of everything that the fanbase and players alike had endured over the decade before.

We wanted that with Luka. It was so close. We could almost taste it. Now you can throw in a bunch of mercenaries — go and get Kevin Durant and watch this team implode. The fanbase isn’t going to be as invested in this as we would have been with Luka involved. You’ve removed the soul of this team and it has all of us feeling disconnected and detached.

I hope you know we had everything

And you broke me and left these pieces

I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and

I want you to lose like I lose when I play

I want you to hurt like you hurt me today and

I want you to lose like I lose when I play

What could have been

So it’s time to put a bow on all of this.

You’ve failed as the leader of this organization. You’ve failed as the face of the front office. You’ve failed as the “Relationships Guy”. You’ve failed as a GM. You’ve failed as the custodian of our beloved Mavericks.

It’s time to go. I don’t think we can continue tolerating the systematic dismantling of what we hold dear because you can’t think beyond yourself. We want you to hurt (Not violently, never that) because you hurt us so deeply with your neglect.

Because, at the end of all of this, all that we’re left with at this point is What Could Have Been?