The Lakers understand what it takes to keep star players happy.
Lakers allowing Luka Doncic to operate in ways he never could with Mavericks originally appeared on The Sporting News
Everything that's come out about the Dallas Mavericks after the Luka Doncic trade to the Los Angeles Lakers hasn't been positive. Whether it's Nico Harrison and others trying to rip on Doncic, the team making one of the worst trades the NBA has ever seen, if not the worst, or many other factors, it's clear the Mavericks made a mistake.
That doesn't take away from who Anthony Davis is as a player, but Doncic is much more than that at this stage of his career.
And according to a recent report, it also sounds like the Mavericks weren't allowing him to be himself.
That was seemingly obvious with some of his comments, but the latest report suggests that it was even worse than it might’ve sounded.
“Luka is operating in a way in conjunction with the Lakers front office in ways that he never did in Dallas, even though it was fully his intent to be in Dallas for his entire career,” said ESPN’s Tim MacMahon. “I think the shock of the trade has kind of woken Luka up to the importance of being business savvy in the NBA. Again, he had never been this active in recruiting players like he was with DeAndre Ayton and with Marcus Smart. He had never been as active.”
In some sense, one could argue that getting traded might be a good thing for Doncic’s career.
On the other side of that, it's also fair to suggest that he never needed a trade, considering he was one of the best players in the NBA, if not a top-three player, before being traded.
He also took the Mavericks to the NBA Finals the year before that, so it wasn't like he was losing games because of reasons the Mavericks wanted to cite.
Category: Basketball
