Luka Dončić trade is ‘business of basketball' — and Jason Kidd can relate

New York Times

24-02-2025

On the day he was introduced as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers, Luka Dončić sounded like someone still stinging from a breakup.
'It was hard moments for me,' Dončić said on Feb. 4, two days after the trade between the Lakers and the Dallas Mavericks became official. '(Dallas) was home.'
Dončić said he saw himself spending his entire career with the Mavericks, a team he led to the NBA Finals only eight months earlier. The business of basketball had left one of the NBA's brightest young stars shellshocked.
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It was a feeling Jason Kidd — Dončić's coach in Dallas — knew well. On Dec. 26, 1996, the Mavericks traded Kidd, then an All-Star point guard on the rise, to the Phoenix Suns for Michael Finley, Sam Cassell and A.C. Green.
'It shocks you because you don't know about that side of the business,' Kidd said. 'But you have to grow up fast. It is a business.'
Kidd was in his third year with the Mavericks when the trade happened. At 23, he already had an NBA Co-Rookie of the Year award and an All-Star appearance on his résumé.
The Mavericks chose Kidd with the No. 2 selection in the 1994 NBA Draft. He was supposed to lead the organization back to prominence alongside the two other 'Js,' Jamal Mashburn and Jim Jackson. Instead, Kidd was traded 10 months after serving as one of the Western Conference's All-Star starters in San Antonio.
As talented as Kidd was at the time of his trade, Dončić was significantly more accomplished when Dallas dealt him. The 25-year-old Slovenian has been named an All-Star five times and has earned five All-NBA First Team selections in his first six years.
More crucially, Dončić proved he could carry his team to deep playoff runs. In 2022, he torched Phoenix with 35 points in Dallas' Game 7 road win in the Western Conference semifinals. Last spring, Dončić averaged 28.9 points, 9.5 rebounds and 8.1 assists in postseason play and led Dallas' march to the NBA Finals.
No matter how this season ended, Dončić said he planned to sign a supermax contract with the Mavericks in July, which would have paid him $346 million over five years. But as The Athletic previously reported, the Mavericks weren't going to offer him that deal. Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison cited cultural concerns when asked about the decision to part ways. Dončić wasn't always diligent about his diet or conditioning, and like many stars, he had a lot of say over when his team practiced.
In Dončić's first three games with the Lakers, he averaged 14.7 points on 35.6 percent shooting and four turnovers. In Saturday's game against the Denver Nuggets, he looked more like his dominant self, notching 32 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists in just 31 minutes.
"Hard. Different. … I'm happy for the new journey."
—Luka Doncic tells @saltersl what the last few weeks have been like after his best game with the Lakers. pic.twitter.com/jdDUChI2Xk
— ESPN (@espn) February 23, 2025
Post-trade in 1996, Kidd went on to become one of the most accomplished point guards in NBA history. He made the All-NBA First Team for the first time as a 25-year-old, the same age Dončić is now. He guided the New Jersey Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals appearances in 2002 and 2003, and he later won a ring in 2011 in his second stint with the Mavericks.
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'You believe you are going to be with the franchise forever,' Kidd said. 'But the business of basketball sometimes gets in the way. Teams change. I've been involved in quite a few sales of the team. Any time there is a sale, there could be change. It just happens.'
The Dončić trade likely wouldn't have happened if Mark Cuban hadn't sold his majority stake in the Mavericks to the Adelson family in December 2023. Before Dončić's third season, Cuban once joked that if he was forced to pick between Dončić staying in Dallas and keeping his marriage intact, he would choose the former over the latter. Then, earlier this month, Cuban likened the Dončić-for-Anthony-Davis-swap to Bill Gates trading for an older, inferior operating system in an event with the former Microsoft CEO.
Dončić has made it clear he intended to be in Dallas long-term, and his actions backed it up. He was close to closing on an expensive home before the deal went through.
'Loyalty is a big word for me, and I was trying to stay by that,' Dončić said on Feb. 4. 'But this for me is a fresh start.'
A fresh start, just like it was for Kidd nearly three decades earlier.
'You see yourself playing for an organization for a long time,' Kidd said, 'until you get called back to the locker room and told that you've been traded to Phoenix.'
(Photo of Dereck Lively II, Jason Kidd and Luka Dončić: Ethan Miller / Getty Images)