There have been plenty of instances over the years where a star player gets connected in trade rumors to an NBA team and ends up on that squad not long after. But that wasn’t the case when the Los Angeles Lakers made a seismic trade for one of the better players in the league in guard Luka Doncic last month, as there were no rumors to speak of before it happened.
Lakers controlling owner Jeanie Buss explained that she took a page out of her father Jerry’s playbook by quietly trading for the Slovenian.
“You know, I learned from my dad — and I point to when the Lakers traded for Pau Gasol — people hadn’t heard about it,” the younger Buss told NPR. “Gregg Popovich in San Antonio and Mark Cuban in Dallas threw a fit that we ended up with Pau. They never got a chance to bid on him or probably talk Memphis out of trading him to us.
“You realize in our business that a lot of the rumors are planted by people in the industry who are trying to curry favor with the media. There’s kind of this ‘write good things about me as general manager and I’ll feed you my inside information. Then we both win.’
“In this particular case, I felt that if anybody heard about the trade through a rumor that there would be many parties trying to undermine it. When Pau Gasol came from Memphis to L.A., we won two championships because of it.
“And then there was the famous Chris Paul trade that was vetoed by the commissioner, that people feel somehow the Lakers have an unfair advantage. But that is not true.
“We gave up a lot to get Luka Dončić. We’re happy we have him. We have lost the last three years in a row to the Denver Nuggets in the playoffs, and we really didn’t have anything that was going to look different going into the playoffs again. Anthony Davis was complaining about where he was being played and he wasn’t happy. So I think this was a positive for both teams. They got what they were looking for; we got what we were looking for. And I didn’t realize it was going to be international news like it was, but that’s the power of the Laker brand and its ability to draw big names who want to write their own chapter in Lakers history.”
The elder Buss owned the Lakers back when they pulled off the trade for Gasol in the 2007-08 season. Gasol carved out one of the most successful tenures with the team of any big man in franchise history.
On top of helping Los Angeles to a pair of titles in 2009 and 2010, Gasol earned three All-Star nods as a member of the storied franchise as well as three All-NBA selections.
He even saw his jersey get retired at Crypto.com Arena back in March of 2023 for all of the individual and collective success he enjoyed as a member of the Lakers.
The younger Buss is certainly hoping that the Doncic trade will pay off in a similar way that the Gasol one did.
The Lakers reached the NBA Finals in Gasol’s first season with the team and seemingly have a real chance to reach that stage again this year with how the team has fared lately.
Los Angeles is on a seven-game winning streak and owns the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference at 39-21. Additionally, after a sluggish start to his stint as a Laker, Doncic has seemingly regained his rhythm. He’s scored 31, 29 and 30 points over his last three games.
So long as the Lakers win at least one championship with Doncic in the fold, fans of the team should view the deal as a major win for Los Angeles. The younger Buss was maybe smart to keep the trade under wraps for as long as possible.