Do you think Mark Cuban is trying to sell his minority stake? Must be embarrassed by this move. Weird that he'd be such a hands-on, passionate owner for over two decades, then just become a powerless spectator. Also odd that when he sold the majority share, he seemed to suggest he'd still be in charge or heavily involved/nfluential on decisions made, but obviously isn't.
Well sometimes a person inherits billions from their parents, but is half clueless and a buffoon. Look at Cal McNair. I'm just saying in general, I don't know anything about the Adelsons.
Hopefully the other teams blackball the Lakers and Mavs at least through the deadline. Not even getting the chance to bid is a major slap in the face. If I were them, I'd be calling Nico every day offering 2nds for Kyrie.
There’s no way Cuban knew or signed off on this. If anything it’s one of the reasons he got out. througbout his tenure 2+ decades they never did anything like this and in fact valued their stars. dirk could’ve been traded many times over but cubes stuck with him.
It’s wild to think the Hawks won the Trae Luka draft day trade. I never would have thought the Mavs would unload Luka for a walking injury.
Makes a lot more sense than the guy who just rebuilt Dallas into a contender around Luka with minimal player assets and draft capitol over the last threeish years suddenly changing course on the player he built the roster for. I mean new owner Fertita wouldn’t open the pocket book for Ariza after the Rockets were a CP hamstring away from knocking off the Warriors. New owners aren’t always on board with the last regime’s plans - even if your team was a top 2 team in the league.
The way I look at it is that Nico basically didnt see anyway that they could win championship with Luka and his lack of defensive effort in the short term. Luka's fitness concern didnt help either. He tried to forsee few years ahead where once Kyrie and Klay are gone he will not be able keep Luka given that they already used their picks up to try to build contender. He believed that the ultimate goal is to win championship and the only way to win with current roster in the next few year is with AD. It is a bold move but I think where he miscalculated is the asset he received from Lakers. He cornered himself by only having 1 option which provided leverage to Lakers in the negotiation. He needed at least 1 more bidder to extract maximum asset from Lakers to prevent this from being so lopsided trade. Also, fixating on AD is a bit crazy given his health issues over the year. Ultimately, this is going to get him fired sooner or later.
The lunacy is that if your goal is to win a title over the next 4 years, is there ANYONE in the nba you would rather have over Luka besides Jokic? I'd take him over Shai, and EASILY over giannis considering how much better Luka is in the playoffs. That's the madness of it
There really isn't any reason to trade away a franchise player no matter how you spin it. My thoughts is that Nico is a power hungry guy that is going to lose his job in the next few years because of ego and he will never be able to shake off the stench of trading a franchise player.
An actual Lakers fan quote from reddit: This is not unreal for anyone old enough to remember. It’s called Lakers Exceptionalism for a reason. We do this once every decade and the rest of the league’s fans scratch their head and wonder why. Happy we snagged Luka. He’ll make a fine addition to our collection. Wilt, Kareem, Shaq, Pau, Dwight, LeBron, Davis, Luka. None of them were drafted by us. they were All NBA players when we got them and most are primarily known for their time with us. This is just what we do to the rest of the league. In 20 years nobody will even remember Luka was with the Mavs. This is why I don't like the Lakers or reddit. Insufferable.
[Windhorst] Because the Los Angeles Lakers cannot give Luka Dončić the $345M supermax, it is not a forgone conclusion that he will extend with the Lakers this offseason and he may explore other options.
