The Los Angeles Lakers swapped Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a 2029 first-round pick for Luka Doncic, Maxi Kleber, and Markieff Morris in the wee hours of Sunday morning. It will go down as one of the most consequential and befuddling trades of all time.

Let’s not beat around the bush. The Dallas Mavericks made an awful trade, one rooted in the delusions of Nico Harrison more than anything resembling basketball logic. This Mavs team made the NBA Finals last season. The roster was built very explicitly with Doncic in mind. All of a sudden, Dallas goes from a West frontrunner with a clear identity and offensive balance to an open-ended question mark. Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving is a tremendous duo on paper, but their fit on the Mavs’ current roster is up for debate. The supporting cast is totally out of whack with what a Davis-led team needs. It’s bad.

The Mavs are hoping to translate the ‘defense wins championship‘ motto into divine results. The Lakers, meanwhile, have a new face of the franchise to build their next decade around. This kind of thing always seems to happen in Los Angeles, doesn’t it? Rob Pelinka has done a downright terrible job navigating the waning years of LeBron James’ career, but now he gets Doncic, a future MVP on the Hall of Fame track, gift-wrapped and hand-delivered by a former business associate. You can’t make this stuff up.

The 2025 NBA Draft takes on new meaning with this trade, particularly for the Mavs and their first-round pick, which is currently situated 18th overall. Here’s an updated projection after the most shocking trade in recent memory.

In keeping with tradition, we simulated the lottery via Tankathon.

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Suddenly the Mavericks have a glaring void in the backcourt with Luka Doncic out of the equation. Anthony Davis is incredible, but he’s not exactly a self-creator — he’s at his best with a perimeter star to set the table and spoon-feed easy looks around the basket. Kyrie Irving can scale up into a more robust role for Dallas, but who else can create advantages and set up teammates? Spencer Dinwiddie? Jaden Hardy?

Egor Demin might be the most polarizing prospect in this draft class, but he’s worth a swing for Dallas. Listed at 6-foot-9 and 190 pounds, the Russian 19-year-old is a miraculous passer. His creativity and vision on live-dribble dimes consistently leaves scouts with jaws agape. The only problem is, Demin has struggled to score, really at all, against quality competition. He’s too thin to absorb contact around the rim and he doesn’t have outlier athleticism or touch to offset the strength deficiency. He’s averaging 10.7 points and 5.9 assists on .432/.291/.679 splits.

The Mavs would need to be patient with Demin’s development as a scorer, but his size and passing combo would help paper over the gaping void left by Doncic’s sudden departure. The Mavs will never find another talent of Doncic’s caliber, but Demin presents considerable upside if all the pieces come together.