Dallas Mavericks take bad spotlight from Dallas Cowboys with Luka Doncic trade

The Mavericks have outdone the Cowboys and lately that is not a good thing.

It has been a very long year and change for the Dallas Cowboys. From the moment the Cowboys lost to the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card Round of last season’s playoffs, just about anything and everything they have done has been met with disaster and chaos. The hope is certainly that the new head coach in Brian Schottenheimer can change that, although the process that led to him was hardly peaceful and universally agreed upon.

We are gathered here today to discuss the horrible decision-making of a Dallas professional sports franchise, but today it is the Mavericks who are the subject of worldwide ridicule. Late Saturday night, the Mavericks traded Luka Doncic – one of the best players in the world – to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis.

ESPN’s Shams Charania had to say “yes, this is real” because in the moment the trade seemed so outlandish that the entire internet assumed his account had been hacked. When that is the response to the trade that you made, looking at you Nico Harrison, it doesn’t exactly suggest that you are on the right side of things.

Maybe you are a Cowboys fan who is not a Mavericks fan. The Cowboys have a worldwide fandom and we all have different interests outside of our favorite football team. Personally I am a San Antonio Spurs fan so I get it, maybe you are even a Lakers fan so this is an incredible thing for you.

But Mavericks fans, and particularly those who are DFW strong with all of the teams that they root for, are really going through it. The trade seems like s slap in the face to Mavs loyalists, so much so that our friends at Mavs Moneyball called this one of the worst moments in DFW sports history.

This makes zero basketball sense, zero cultural sense, and zero fanbase goodwill sense. Then as if on queue, the Mavs via Tim MacMahon of ESPN relay some organizational justification that is downright bizarre. If Doncic’s conditioning was a major issue for the Dallas brain trust, you ride out the storm and find ways to help make it better given that the top 5 players in the league who are smack dab in their 20s do not grow on trees. Instead, they originate a trade that if pushed through on NBA 2K would rightfully cause your PlayStation to instantly combust.

…

Tonight, I pulled my “Opening Night” coin from the first Maverick game ever in 1980 out of its original plush drawstring pouch and looked at it. Zales Jewelry sponsored that opening night promotion and my grandmother worked for them at the time. For some reason, she thought her five-year-old grandson should have it.

I held that coin and thought about all the bad basketball I watched as a teenager in the ‘90s when Mike Iuzzolino started at point guard and Dallas spent first-round picks on guys like Doug Smith and Cherokee Parks. The era when winning that night’s game was a remote fantasy, let alone the playoffs, to say nothing of a championship. Then Mark Cuban (who has no decision-making power as a minority owner to prevent this travesty) saved us, Dirk redeemed us, and Luka prevented a trip to the basketball wilderness. In one fell swoop, Nico Harrison must have said to himself…ya know, the Sahara desert in a couple of years sounds lovely. A team, a future, and an era undone for naught.

It has been a very tough few weeks, months and year at large for the Cowboys as previously noted. Jerry Jones and Stephen Jones should send Nico Harrison and the Mavericks an edible arrangement for taking the heat off of them, particularly in the run-up to Super Bowl week where the Schottenheimer hire will be discussed all over the place.

Sorry, Mavs fans.