this still would have happened if the mavs had won the nba finals last year. what bs would the gm have come up instead of "defense wins championships?"
I hate the Mavs, even so they don't deserve this. This is theoretically the worst trade in decades and it always happen the Lakers to be the beneficiary.
"Did you do your due diligence as a GM to get the best possible return for Luka?" "Nah I just called up the Lakers and handed him over for whatever"
actually I wasn’t thinking that through considering his past history with the Heat. Maybe LeBron for Beal?
I didn't pay attention to this at the time, but Nico Harrison getting a job as President of Basketball Ops & GM of the Mavs is one of the weirdest hires ever. Sure he had been a player international, but he never had any NBA experience as a player, scout, FO exec, etc. On top of that he was most notable at NIke for being friendly with players and botching a presentation with Steph Curry resulting in him switching to Under Armour in 2013 -- right before he blew up the league. How did a guy who failed that spectacularly at Nike keep his job there and parlay that into being GM of an NBA team? Given that background, I could totally see him doing a trade this stupidly.
How is this not some form of collusion or underhanded, corrupt dealmaking? Why wouldn't you want a bidding war for a top five 25-year-old star? Even if he coveted Davis, he's 31. Drive up the cost and get better draft picks included or something, man.
Seriously, I don't understand all the corruption allegations. Silver works for all the teams. not just the Lakers. As good as the profit sharing is, it is not that good that putting Luka/Lebron on the same team will boost the rest of the leagues viewership numbers and TV profits. If anything most general sports/NBA fans are pissed off by the trade and are more likely to tune off the NBA. If Silver and the NBA office were truly stacking the deck, the other owners could fire him for cause and sue him. Especially since franchises like Denver, OKC, Cleveland, etc would dramatically increase in value if they were to win a title. There is some of an argument that Silver "should have blocked the trade". But there have been so many trades in the past 10-15 years that were supposed to create a juggernaut super team and nearly none of them worked. Most blew up.
The corruption with Silver are silly, but Dallas owners and GM ties to Vegas, Nike and gambling definitely has legs.
