NBA Rewind: Does trading a superstar ever work? It didn’t for the Mavs with Luka

Every Monday, we catch you up on the happenings in the NBA. This week is the first anniversary of the shocking Luka Dončić trade. We had no idea it was coming, and it still doesn’t totally feel real. Just ask Dallas Mavericks fans. Also, does trading away a superstar ever work out for teams? It’s rare, but you can come back bigger and better than ever before.

We also have the extended version of the NBA Stock Report, a Monday staple in The Bounce. That’s our free NBA newsletter that you can sign up for and receive every day in your inbox.

The Big Rewind: The Luka trade, one year later

“Did Shams get hacked?”

That was the main question being asked on the night of Feb. 1, 2025. It was unbelievable that Dončić, fresh off an NBA Finals appearance, would be traded away at 25 years old. There were no rumblings of a deal. There were no signs that Dallas general manager Nico Harrison and the Mavs were so unhappy with Dončić that they’d give up on an MVP candidate entering the prime of his career. And for many fans, the idea that the polarizing Los Angeles Lakers were getting Luka was a gut punch.

ESPN’s Shams Charania electrocuted us on a Saturday night out by reporting the trade. Group chats vibrated in confusion, anger and disbelief. People wondered if the Mavs were drunk. People wondered if the Lakers had blackmail material on Dallas to force the trade. There had to be some reasonable explanation that would calm Mavs fans and explain it to the basketball world. Because the next question was …

“Wait, that’s all they got?”

The full trade: Anthony Davis, Max Christie and a 2029 first-round pick for Luka, Markieff Morris and Maxi Kleber. Harrison had a long-standing relationship with Davis from his time as a Nike official. He loved AD’s game and hated how little Dončić gave defensively. The Mavericks had reshaped their roster at the previous trade deadline by acquiring Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington. It transformed Dallas from a middle-of-the-road Western Conference squad to a team that made the finals. Harrison doubled down on that defensive mentality.

The Lakers didn’t have to give up Austin Reaves or extra picks or anything. Just a star in his 30s, one first-round pick and a solid young, role player.

“Is Nico Harrison trying to get fired?”

It’s the most flabbergasting trade in league history, especially given its out-of-nowhere nature. If your gast wasn’t flabbered by the deal, then you needed your pulse checked. The trade had an immediate effect on Harrison’s reputation. He went from being one of the most highly respected executives in the league to being completely untrustworthy. Immediately, Mavs fans were thrashing for his unemployment. “Fire Nico!” chants followed him everywhere he went. Harrison acknowledged that he was on a ticking clock to prove this massive shift in roster construction was the right move.

“The future to me is three, four years from now,” Harrison said at the news conference following the trade. “Ten years from now, I don’t know. They probably bury me and (Mavs coach Jason Kidd) by then. Or we bury ourselves.”

That wasn’t quite the case. The turn on Harrison and this already failed experiment was much quicker than 10 years and much quicker than three to four years. It didn’t even last through the end of 2025, despite some help from the draft lottery gods.

So what has happened since? 

We’ve seen massive changes to the Mavericks and a realization by its relatively new ownership that you actually have to give a bleep about what your customers want. You can slice the blame up a few different ways, but ultimately Harrison held a grudge against Dončić’s approach, and ownership didn’t respect its fans enough to overrule such a horrendous idea. Tough lessons for the Mavericks to learn while completely derailing their franchise’s trajectory.

Here’s what’s gone down with the Mavs since the trade:

• Dallas was 26-23 at the time of the trade and eighth in the West. It was tied for seventh in offensive rating (115.2), ranked 12th in defensive rating (112.4) and was 10th in net rating (plus-2.8).

• The Mavericks went 13-20 after the trade, finishing 10th in the West. They went 1-1 in the Play-In Tournament, failing to make the playoffs.

• Davis played nine of the final 33 games.

• Kyrie Irving tore his ACL with 20 games left in the season.

• Dončić had a tearful and emotional return to Dallas.

• Davis and Irving played one game together, totaling 25 minutes on the court.

• The Mavericks won the No. 1 pick in the draft lottery with a 1.8 percent chance. They drafted Cooper Flagg. Harrison claimed fans could “see the vision” of his plan after the draft. It didn’t go over well.

• After starting 3-8 in the 2025-26 season, the Mavericks fired Harrison.

• The Mavs are 19-30, in 11th place in the West.

• Davis has played in 20 of the team’s 49 games this season. Irving has not played yet this season.

• Flagg is the leading candidate for Rookie of the Year and became the first teenager in NBA history to post back-to-back 30-point double-doubles.

Here’s what’s happened with the Lakers:

• Los Angeles was 28-19 at the time of the trade, in fifth place in the West.

• The Lakers went 22-13 after the trade and finished tied with the Denver Nuggets and LA Clippers for third in the West. They were eliminated in five games by the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the playoffs.

• Dončić played in 33 of their 40 games after the trade, including the playoffs. He averaged 28.2 points, 8.1 rebounds and 7.5 assists with 43.8/37.9/79.1 shooting splits for a 59.0 true shooting percentage.

• The Lakers are 29-19 this season and are sixth in the West.

• Dončić is averaging 33.6 points, 8.0 rebounds and 8.8 assists with 47.6/34.8/78.0 shooting splits for a 61.6 true shooting percentage.

The Lakers still have a lot to figure out this season and how to build a roster around Dončić, likely post-LeBron James, this summer. Still, it might be the worst trade in NBA history, and the only saving grace for Dallas was a 1.8 percent hit on lottery night. That vision, though!

Does trading a superstar ever work out?

It’s never easy having to trade away a superstar player. It’s also extremely difficult to recover and be a successful team after losing one of the league’s top players. After the Milwaukee Bucks traded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 1975, they had a losing record in three of the next four seasons. The Houston Rockets had a combined record of 43-121 in the two seasons after they traded Moses Malone to the Philadelphia 76ers in 1982. Then they drafted Hakeem Olajuwon. For the most part, teams fall apart after trading a superstar, as you would expect.

Philadelphia endured six straight losing seasons after trading Charles Barkley to the Phoenix Suns in 1992. Minnesota became a joke after sending Kevin Garnett to the Boston Celtics in 2007. The Lakers could barely keep it together after they sent Shaquille O’Neal to the Miami Heat in 2004, and they still had prime Kobe Bryant.

But there are two examples from this century of these sort of trades working out, relatively speaking.

Nuggets trade Carmelo Anthony to the Knicks

Everybody knew Melo was headed to the New York Knicks, either in free agency or in a trade before the deadline. It came down to how patient the Knicks would be. Spoiler alert: James Dolan had zero interest in patience. Here’s a refresher on the three-team trade between the Knicks, Denver Nuggets and Timberwolves on Feb. 22, 2011.

• Knicks received: Carmelo Anthony, Chauncey Billups, Renaldo Balkman, Anthony Carter, Shelden Williams and Corey Brewer.
• Nuggets received: Wilson Chandler, Raymond Felton, Danilo Gallinari, Kosta Koufos, Timofey Mozgov, a first-round pick (later moved for Andre Iguodala), a draft pick swap (resulted in Jamal Murray) and two second-round picks.
• Wolves received: Anthony Randolph, Eddy Curry, a second-round pick and cash.

The Nuggets sent out Melo and actually got better, at least from a competitive standpoint. Denver was 32-25 before the trade. After the deal, it finished the season 18-7. The Nuggets lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder in the first round, but their culture seemed better. Or at least, they rallied around the group of role players they had and George Karl’s battle cry of hating everything about Melo as a player and star.

They went 38-28 in the lockout-shortened season the next season, which was the equivalent of 47 wins in a full season. The following year, the Nuggets won 57 games and finished second in the West. The majority of the online basketball conversation tried to claim that superstars didn’t matter as much as a team, shoehorning this Nuggets situation into ill feelings about the LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh team-up in Miami. Player empowerment was under attack, and the Nuggets were an example of everybody playing as a team.

Unfortunately for them, the fun stopped in the 2013 playoffs. Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors burned down that 57-win Nuggets team in the first round, and then came a mass exodus. Masai Ujiri resigned as the general manager and took the same job with the Toronto Raptors. Karl was fired. Iguodala joined the Warriors in a sign-and-trade. But for 2 1/2 seasons following the Melo trade, the Nuggets represented a collective middle finger to star power in the NBA.

Thunder trade Paul George and Russell Westbrook in the same week

Following the 2018-19 season, the post-Kevin Durant run in Oklahoma City had pretty much run its course. Russell Westbrook had won his MVP and averaged his triple-doubles. Sam Presti brought in Paul George to pair with Westbrook. George finished third in MVP voting in his final season in OKC, but the Thunder still couldn’t get out of the first round. It was time to move on and rebuild, something Presti was so brilliant at doing. These were the two big trades he executed in the summer of 2019:

• Thunder received: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, five first-round picks and two pick swaps.
• LA Clippers received: Paul George.

Then the Thunder traded Westbrook less than a week later:

• Thunder received: Chris Paul, two pick swaps and two first-round picks.
• Rockets received: Russell Westbrook.

The Thunder were good the following season with CP3, SGA and company, going 44-28 in the pandemic-shortened campaign. Then they decided to tank the next two seasons, utilizing their own draft capital and the picks owed to them from the Clippers trade. That allowed Oklahoma City to land Chet Holmgren and Jalen Williams in the 2022 draft, and the rest was history. The Thunder quickly built a contender and won the 2025 championship in one of the most dominant seasons we’ve ever seen. This one was a little more of a roller coaster to bounce back from trading their superstar(s). But that bounce brought them higher than they’d ever been.

NBA Stock Report Extended

📈 New York Knicks (31-8). Remember when the sky was falling in New York about two weeks ago? The sky is back up! The Knicks have won six straight, and five of those have been double-digit victories. They’re plus-142 in the six wins. Yes, some of that is skewed by a 54-point win over the Brooklyn Nets, but remove that outlier and they’re still plus-88 in their last five wins. And they’re not just scoring a lot, either. The Knicks have held opponents under 100 points four times in these six games — and the Lakers scored exactly 100 on Sunday in Madison Square Garden. So that problematic defense has come around, thanks to whatever Mike Brown, his coaching staff and the players have devised or re-emphasized together.

The Knicks are shooting 41 percent on 3s during this stretch. They’re allowing just 27.1 percent from deep at the same time. They’ve outscored opponents by 114 points at the 3-point line. In just six games! They’ve allowed 57 makes and have 38 more makes from 3 than their opponents. That’s an impressive edge at the 3-point line, no matter how small the sample size. They’ll be tested later this week when they face Denver, the Detroit Pistons and Boston.

📉 Milwaukee Bucks (18-29). We pretty much know the Giannis Antetokounmpo era is coming to an end in Milwaukee. It’s going to get pretty bleak from here, which is saying something about a Bucks team already rocking a five-game losing streak. Giannis will either be traded before the deadline, or he’ll (more likely) be moved in the summer. He’s expected to miss roughly a month with a right calf strain, according to his own diagnosis. There’s no official timetable yet. The Bucks are horrendous without Giannis on the floor. They’re only 15-15 when he has played this season, and they’re getting outscored by 9.9 points per 100 possessions when he’s off the floor.

Milwaukee scores 105.4 points per 100 possessions when Giannis isn’t on the floor. To put that into context, that would be the worst offensive rating in the NBA over the last four seasons. The Bucks, who scored just 79 points in Sunday’s loss to the Celtics, are running the offense through Myles Turner, Bobby Portis, Kyle Kuzma and Ryan Rollins. Almost all of those guys would be — at best — the fourth or fifth option in any other offensive system. The good news is the Bucks will have a pretty good draft pick with the way things are going.

📈 Charlotte Hornets (22-28). Winners of 15 of their last 25 games, the Hornets are currently on a six-game win streak. They’re just 1 1/2 games behind the Atlanta Hawks for 10th place in the East. Their turnaround is nothing short of remarkable. This team was dead in the water nearly two months ago at just 7-18. That bumbling squad was 18th in offensive rating and 24th in defensive rating. Charlotte couldn’t score enough to overcome its horrendous defense.

But coach Charles Lee has found something that clicks. In their last 25 games, the Hornets have the NBA’s best offense. More importantly, they have the ninth-best defense. Brandon Miller and Kon Knueppel have been the main scorers and driving forces on offense. But the emergence of Moussa Diabaté has helped bring the defense together. Diabaté is averaging 8.6 points, 9.4 rebounds and just over a block per game in this stretch. In the last 22 games Diabaté has played, the Hornets are plus-208 with him on the floor.

📉 Portland Trail Blazers (23-27). The Blazers are losing grip of the rope a little bit. They’ve now lost five straight and have fallen to 10th in the West. They still hold a 3 1/2 game lead over the Mavericks and Memphis Grizzlies for a spot in the Play-In Tournament. But Portland needs to get its act together. The frustrating thing about this losing streak for the Blazers is that four of the games have come against playoff teams. They’ve dropped to 13-20 against teams .500 or better on the season. A big part of that is that they’re the worst 3-point shooting team in the NBA (33.6 percent).

Acquiring Vit Krejčí in a trade with the Hawks should help, but it won’t completely fix things. Portland’s shooting is an even bigger problem considering the Blazers take the fourth-highest 3-point attempts. The Blazers make 31.4 percent of their open 3-pointers and 35.8 percent of their wide-open 3-pointers. That’s the second-worst open 3-point percentage and the fifth-worst wide-open 3-point percentage. Of their top-10 3-point shooters for attempts, only Jerami Grant (36.6 percent) is above league average (35.9).

📈 Minnesota Timberwolves (31-20). The Wolves have won four straight after snapping a five-game losing streak. The highlight of this streak was the win over OKC last week, when they played the type of physical, overwhelming defense the Thunder usually deploy. That could have been a random blip on the schedule, or it could have been a sign that the Wolves — who’ve been to two straight West finals — finally understand how they need to play to get to the next level.

Minnesota ranks fourth in defensive rating. The Wolves are fifth in effective field-goal percentage allowed, ninth in 3-point percentage allowed, third in second-chance points allowed and eighth in fast-break points allowed. This team continues to build an identity on defense, but it will need more reliable offense in big moments to finally break through. Right now, it’s looking pretty good.

📉 Sacramento Kings (12-39). That’s nine straight losses for the Kings. Remember the whole “Light the Beam” gimmick? It was fun. It was beautiful. I’m not sure they even know where the beam button is at this point. Sacramento is completely lost this season. Domantas Sabonis has been back for six of the nine losses. DeMar DeRozan has played in all nine. It doesn’t seem to matter if the Kings are healthy or not. They just don’t fit together at all, and on so many nights coach Doug Christie is running out of timeouts early in the game as he tries to stop the bleeding.

This losing streak came after Sacramento had won four games in a row. That was odd, because the Kings had lost seven straight games before that win streak. They seem to have no control over what they do or how they do it. This is their longest losing streak since 2021. If they lose at home to Memphis on Wednesday, it will be their first 10-game losing streak since 1998.

The week ahead: Trade deadline looms

Oh, just one more thing … the trade deadline is 3 p.m. ET on Thursday! We’re now up to three trades for this season.

• Atlanta traded Trae Young to the Washington Wizards for CJ McCollum and Corey Kispert.

• The Cleveland Cavaliers sent De’Andre Hunter to the Kings for Dennis Schröder and Keon Ellis. The Chicago Bulls also got Dario Šarić and two second-round picks in the deal.

• The Hawks sent Krejčí to the Blazers for Duop Reath and two second-round picks.

It’s not the most active trade season we’ve ever seen, but we still expect a lot of action before Thursday’s deadline. Most people just want to know whether Giannis will be moved. Regardless, my advice for all of the trade rumors leading up to the deadline? Believe every single one you read and hear. No matter how impractical. It’s way more fun that way, even if it is reckless and almost purely speculative. You can follow all of the latest trade deadline updates and analysis all here.