The biggest move at this year's NBA trade deadline was undoubtedly the three-way deal between the Los Angeles Lakers, Dallas Mavericks, and Utah Jazz that sent Luka Doncic to the Lakers and Anthony Davis to the Mavericks. Given that Doncic is one of the brightest young stars in the NBA, it was a shocker to the basketball world to see the Mavericks willingly trade him to a Western Conference foe. Davis will be turning 32 years old later this season and being as injury prone as he is, it's far from a guarantee that he'll produce to the level that the Mavericks want him to. Actually, on that note, Davis reportedly might need to undergo surgery to address an injury, so there ya go.
Doncic in contrast is turning 26 years old later this season and is only in his seventh NBA season. He's arguably not even in the prime of his career yet. At least he shouldn't be. Most guys peak at the ages of 28-30. To trade one of the brightest young stars in the league before he's hit his prime can only signal one thing: The Mavericks gave up on Doncic.
Now the obvious question is why? Why did they give up on him? They were faced with either having to give him a max deal this summer or trade him at the deadline and they chose to move him. Why?
The word on the street is the Mavericks were worried about Doncic's conditioning and durability. When looking at his career stats, you'll see that in four of his seven seasons, he's played 61-66 regular season games. He's barely cracked 70 games once as a rookie with 71 games played and in a league that plays 82 games per regular season, you need guys who can play at least 75 games per season with a good deal of regularity. Doncic hasn't hit that mark once. And if he's not able to hit that mark, it's hard to have faith in him being able to play deep into May and June during the playoffs. Though I should note, Doncic did play in all 22 playoff games for the Mavericks last season in which they lost to the Boston Celtics in the NBA Finals in five games.
Still, the questions about durability and conditioning appear valid when you look at Doncic's body of work. He's getting a lot of money to play in the NBA and when he's missing 20% of the regular season, that makes him cost a good deal amount more per game played. Of course, the irony of this trade is what I mentioned earlier which is that Anthony Davis is injured all the time. He's at least played in 75+ regular season games three times in his NBA career, but he too is frequently playing around 65 games per season if not fewer.
Obviously, as I said, the Mavericks really didn't want to pay Doncic a max deal and just didn't have the faith that they could build a consistent title contender around him. That's pretty amazing considering that they were in the NBA Finals last season. For Doncic, this could prove to be a wake up call for him to get in better shape and take his conditioning more seriously. Or it could just plant even more seeds of doubt in his mind. It'll be interesting to see how he responds.
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