Hey, the Lakers stole the Warriors’ Two Timelines plan!
Just kidding. Warriors fans don’t need to be screaming any more than they already are about Luka Doncic arriving in Los Angeles over the weekend in a trade with the Dallas Mavericks and tilting the future of the league once again in the Lakers’ favor.
Really, the Lakers are just being the Lakers. Their shocking trade for Doncic from the seriously uncurious Dallas Mavericks (they called only the Lakers about a Doncic deal and got a pretty pedestrian return for a 25-year-old superstar) follows the L.A. team’s dramatic line of acquisitions, from Wilt Chamberlain to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Shaquille O’Neal to Pau Gasol to LeBron James, just seven years ago. (They also drafted Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant, and others, let’s not forget.)
Other teams make plans. The Lakers just collect generational players, oh, every generation or so. I don’t know why other teams continue to serve up these players to the Lakers — or let them escape via free agency — the way Dallas general manager Nico Harrison delivered Doncic. They just do.
The Lakers now have dual superstars — 40-year-old LeBron and Doncic — who have fairly similar styles but entirely different career timelines. It’s what the Warriors tried to do a few years ago with James Wiseman and Jonathan Kuminga coming up behind Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, and Klay Thompson, but it’s much more heightened.
Will Doncic and LeBron flourish together or fight over the ball? If Doncic becomes hugely popular in L.A., will LeBron happily take a secondary role, not just on the basketball court but in the court of public opinion? Probably not. I’m sure the Lakers don’t know yet, either, but they had to do this trade — it guarantees them a very relevant post-LeBron future. And if it messes around with the LeBron present, well, they’ll worry about that as it happens.
How should the rest of the league, specifically the Warriors, digest this move, coupled with Sacramento trading De’Aaron Fox to San Antonio in a three-team trade that sent Zach LaVine to the Kings? Here’s an early list.
1. The Warriors aren’t trading for LeBron, at least not by this week
If LeBron and the Lakers ever look to end their relationship, the Warriors are an obvious candidate to be his next team. He and Curry seem like natural partners in a superstar-sunset scenario, and, of course, the Warriors called the Lakers about a LeBron trade just a year ago.
But it was easier for the Warriors to put together an offer last year with Klay Thompson’s and Chris Paul’s expiring salaries. The Warriors don’t have that kind of financial flexibility anymore. More important, reports have surfaced that LeBron, who has a no-trade clause, intends to stick with the Lakers through this season. Why wouldn’t LeBron and the Lakers both see how it works with Doncic the rest of this season and into the playoffs?
Beyond that, it should get interesting. LeBron has a $52.6 million player option for next season. He can exercise it and ask for a trade, decline it and become a free agent, or decide he wants to stay with the Lakers. At that point, the Warriors might become an interesting possibility, though, once again, they don’t quite have the salary ballast on the roster they had last season.
2. The deal, while shocking, might not cause additional big trades
In the short term, this deal probably didn’t aggressively boost the playoff chances of either the Lakers or Mavericks. Doncic is still out with a calf injury, and now the Lakers don’t have a center. And the Mavericks just traded away the best overall player in last year’s postseason, and it’s uncertain if Kyrie Irving is going to be enough to initiate the entire Mavericks offense, all game long, especially in a seven-game series.
So none of the other West contenders necessarily have to race to put together a trade to fortify themselves in reaction to either team. And though the Lakers really could use a center and the Mavericks could use a ball handler, I’m not sure either will be ready to make more trades immediately in the wake of what they just did.
There will be trades around the league, of course. Fox-LaVine was one of them. But they’ll just be in the normal run of NBA business.
3. This is exactly the kind of acquisition the Warriors have been seeking for years
Yes, the Warriors need another star alongside Curry and have for a few years now. Yes, they’re a bit stuck trying to decide whether to put assets into a deal for a lesser star or save up and try again for a whopper in July. Yes, Mike Dunleavy Jr. — along with general managers for 27 other teams — would’ve loved a chance to put everything into an offer to the Mavericks for Doncic.
But that didn’t mean anything when Dallas called the Lakers and made the deal.
This trade, it turns out, was about relationships — particularly Harrison’s long friendship with Davis. If he was going to trade Doncic, it seems clear, it was going to be for Davis. And the Lakers happened to have Davis.
4. This trade should not affect the Warriors’ decision to trade for Jimmy Butler or Nicola Vucevic
You don’t make deadline trades based on what other teams do. You make the best moves you can. If you get pressured into making shaky moves because you’re anxious about what other teams are doing, you’re just weakening your own position. So the Warriors shouldn’t offer crazy packages for Butler, Vucevic, or some other star just because Doncic got traded to the Lakers. They just have to make smart deals — or avoid dumb ones.
NBA reporter Marc Stein reported on X and his Substack that the Warriors were ready to make a huge offer to Chicago for both LaVine and Vucevic but pulled out when they changed their focus to other trades. Could that be Butler? I’d think that’s a top focus now, but the Warriors will do themselves very little good if they get in auction mode just because they’ve seen other teams make huge moves ahead of them.
5. But the Warriors likely were ready to make a move before the Doncic and LaVine trades, and they’ll still ready
Is Chicago more motivated to move Vucevic now that it has traded LaVine? Maybe. I can’t imagine the Warriors are totally out on Vucevic — what if the cost for Butler is too high? What if the Bulls’ asking price drops as the deadline approaches?
I think Dunleavy and Joe Lacob want to make a trade. I also think they don’t want to mess up their chance to make a larger deal in July. The Lakers just sitting around and getting called about Doncic out of the blue is an example of why you don’t want to be reckless about burning assets. You want to be loaded with trade pieces and ready to deal when you get that magic call.
6. It’s another line of delineation between Curry and LeBron
I can’t imagine the Warriors ever surprising Curry with a trade of one of his closest teammates the way LeBron reportedly was surprised by this one. I guess the comparable would be if the Warriors seriously thought about moving on from Draymond Green. There is no way they would think about doing it without checking with Curry, and they’d never, ever trade Draymond without Curry being fully briefed.
LeBron might be the greatest player ever, but he hasn’t had the cleanest exits from each of his four stops — at Cleveland, Miami, back to Cleveland, and now with the Lakers. I think there might be some weird dynamics with Doncic, who could quickly become the focal point of the Lakers organization. Will LeBron be happy as No. 2? We shall see.
The grace and value of Curry is that he and the Warriors have never gone through this awkward dance and probably never will. When it’s time for Curry to be No. 2, he’ll be fine with it, because he’ll be in on that decision. Heck, he already kind of went through it when he totally embraced the Warriors going after Kevin Durant — and that was when Curry was coming off back-to-back MVP seasons.
Curry just isn’t anxious about any of this stuff. A huge piece of the Warriors’ foundation is that he isn’t insecure and isn’t always looking for an easy escape or people to blame. He accepted being drafted here when others wanted no part of this franchise. He stuck it out through some bad times. He won. The Warriors aren’t winning much now, but Curry won’t ever passive-aggressively make things worse. It’s not who he is. And it’s how the Warriors always should operate.