Luka Doncic trade to Lakers highlights Cavs’ biggest advantage over rest of Looney Tunes NBA

Luka Doncic trade to Lakers highlights Cavs’ biggest advantage over rest of Looney Tunes NBA — Jimmy Watkins

Posted by author February 3, 2025 NBA

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CLEVELAND, Ohio — Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison should stop talking. He’s telling reporters he traded Luka Doncic, at worst a top five player in basketball, to the Lakers of Harrison’s own volition. No trade request, no threat to leave in free agency 17 months from now. He’s saying he did not consult coach Jason Kidd, who’s sitting to Harrison’s left wearing a backward Mavericks baseball cap — probably not a hat day, Jason — on the move (Kidd says he learned of it during “the 11th hour.”). Nor did Harrison negotiate with any team besides the Lakers.

Asked about the future, because again, Harrison just traded a 25-year-old superstar for 31-year-old Anthony Davis, a star so injury prone that Charles Barkley nicknamed him “street clothes,” Harrison says this:

“I think the long term is the timeframe. I think (Davis) fits our timeframe. If you pair him with Kyrie (Irving) and the rest of the guys, he fits right along with our timeframe to win now and win in the future. And the future to me is three, four years from now. The future, 10 years from now, I don’t know. … They’ll probably bury me and (Kidd) by then. Or we’ll bury ourselves.”

He knows we’re recording him, right?

By now you’ve heard, and thought it was fake, and frantically punched the closest basketball buddy’s arm when you realized it wasn’t: Doncic is moving to Los Angeles. All the Mavericks received in return was Davis, third year forward Max Christie and one (1) first-round draft pick. Unbelievable. Unthinkable. Unreal to everybody besides Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson, who’s witnessed too many mind-blowing roster moves to be caught off guard.

“I’m just used to it,” Atkinson said before the Cavs incinerated Dallas 141-95 on Saturday. “I don’t think I was as surprised (as I would be) if I was two years in the league. … Nothing surprises me anymore and yeah, really wasn’t that surprised, just to be honest.”

I believe him. In the last month alone, three franchises have been set ablaze. Harrison lit his own fire, but ESPN reported Tuesday that Kings guard De’Aaron Fox won’t sign a long-term extension in Sacramento, which led to Sunday’s trade to the Spurs. And Heat forward Jimmy Butler has been pouring gasoline in Pat Riley’s hair gel for several weeks.

Point being: Change abounds across the NBA. Whether that’s good or bad, I don’t know. Trades are fun to tweet about. ESPN’s trade machine is fun to play with. Burning things can be cathartic.

But the best team in basketball practices fire safety. And I’m wondering if, as commissioner Adam Silver’s world spins and blazes and trades and trades again, the Cavs have found a perfect counterbalance to basketball’s commerce-obsessed culture.

“Coaches yearn for (stability), especially when you’re good,” Atkinson said. “And I think it takes real, real belief, like (Cavs general manager Koby Altman) has said about this team — and not only the talent, but the character. Because we all know, you guys (media members) especially, you’re always saying, ‘man, it didn’t work.’ You didn’t win the championship, so you have to change.

“Sometimes teams are too quick to change, too quick to change something or change a roster. This (team) is kind of proof that it can work if you stick with it. Obviously, we’ve got to confirm that in the playoffs, but everybody always screams for change if it doesn’t work out exactly like it should.”

Stability. Something to chew on. When Cavs general manager Koby Altman changed coaches — and only coaches — last summer, he told us the same thing: Cleveland had the talent to win. It just needed a new direction.

Low and behold, the Cavs are 40-9 with 13 returning players from last season and nine who’ve played together since at least 2022. In the two-plus seasons since acquiring star guard Donovan Mitchell, they’ve added one player — forward Max Strus — via trade (technically sign and trade) and three more — Ty Jerome, Georges Niang, Tristan Thompson — via free agency. They’ve ignored calls to break up their core despite winning just one playoff series in two years. And their patience has been rewarded so thoroughly that another team traded a 25-year-old perennial MVP candidate to try and duplicate Cleveland’s blueprint.

When Harrison envisions the new Mavericks, he wants Davis and Daniel Gafford or Dereck Lively to look like Jarrett Allen and Evan Mobley.

“I think if you look at the Cleveland Cavaliers, that’s what you’re going to see,” Harrison told the Dallas Morning News. “(Davis is) probably going to finish games at the five, but you’re going to see those guys play together. And when Lakers won (a title), he played the four.”

First, please stop, Nico. For your own sake. But second, it’s amazing how much change stasis can bring. Basketball fans (myself included) have spent significant oxygen wondering why Cleveland hasn’t split up Mobley and Allen, or Mitchell and Darius Garland, the last two seasons. Remember the talking points? Two bigs cramp spacing. The two guards don’t accentuate each other. This team can’t win big until the front office realizes these realities.

But something changed while Altman did nothing. Mitchell and Garland have improved their on-court cooperation after two years spent working through their kinks. Mobley has increased his 3-point volume (2.7 per game, up from 1.2 last year) and accuracy (39.1%, up from 21.6% two years back). He and Allen look more comfortable making plays as pick-and-roll outlets. Mobley says the Cavs have a better feel for spacing, too. When to stay, when to cut, that sort of thing.

Wonder how that happened.

“You see the way we move the ball,” Atkinson said. “You say, ‘Oh, that’s this new offense Kenny put in,’ but it’s not that. It’s continuity and skill. These guys do things like, Sam goes back door, and we hit him for a layup. That’s just — these guys have been together. They’ve played together for a long time. They have confidence in each other, and that’s a big part of this story I think.”

Continuity. What a concept. What’s more fun: playing basketball with strangers, or playing with your four closest friends? No contest, right? Nothing better than diagramming the perfect back cut based on a blink of eye contact. Nothing worse than playing with teammates who don’t trust you.

Why not run a franchise that way? Every coach believes chemistry is a cause of winning. And every NBA champion since 2020-21 has counted at least seven shared seasons between its top two scorers. But disgruntled stars and trigger-happy general managers keep changing plans like a moody teen changes hair colors.

It doesn’t make sense, and it doesn’t usually work. But the Cavs don’t mind. Because somehow, over the last several years, staying the course became a secret weapon. The Cavs resisted the urge to sustain ESPN insider Shams Charania’s social media followers. Now they’re reaping the benefits.

Meanwhile, Fox is on a flight to San Antonio. Butler is waiting for his boss to blink (again). And Harrison is still talking.

He’s telling us Davis adds to Dallas’s culture, whereas Doncic merely fit it. He’s saying Kidd supports this decision even though the coach had no say in it (Kidd echoes this sentiment, but what’s he supposed to say). He’s saying that both Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka and Mavs governor Patrick Dumont thought Harrison was kidding when he first raised the trade idea. And he’s telling fans that, actually, trading a 25-year-old superstar who has played in at least 60 games every season for a 31-year-old who has done that once since 2020 is the best plan for the Mavericks’ future.

The microphone is on.

“I’m sorry they’re frustrated, but it’s something that we believe in as an organization it’s going to make us better,” Harrison said. “We believe that it sets us up to win, not only now, but also in the future. And when we win, I believe the frustration will go away.”