March Madness is here, but the biggest story in hoops remains the Mavericks’ astonishing decision to part with its brightest young star, leaving fans in an angry search for answers. “There’s no rectifying it,” says one sports columnist. “The fallout is going to be immense.”
ByTom Kludt
March 20, 2025
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L-R: Nico Harrison, Luka Dončić, Mark Cuban, and Patrick Dumont.All from Getty Images.
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Tim MacMahon’s book was finished. After three years of extensive reporting and travel, he had managed to write the definitive story of Luka Dončić’s time with the Dallas Mavericks––his ascendance to superstardom, the fluctuations to the roster, and, ultimately, the team’s emergence as a bona fide NBA contender.
MacMahon, who covers the league for ESPN, conducted dozens of interviews and spent time in Dončić’s native Slovenia, stitching together a narrative about an organization striving to do right by a once-in-a-generation player. “It’s not a biography,” MacMahon told me. “The whole framing is there’s this pressure on a franchise to build a championship-caliber team around this sort of talent.”
By the beginning of last month, MacMahon’s work was done. His publisher had already printed 8,000 copies of the book, The Wonder Boy: Luka Dončić and the Curse of Greatness, which came with an optimistic ending. The Mavericks, after all, had just made a run to the NBA Finals last June before losing to the Boston Celtics. Dončić, meanwhile, had established himself as one of the league’s absolute best and, crucially for the Mavericks, appeared happy and settled in Dallas. He was widely expected to re-sign with the team this summer when he would have been eligible for a “supermax” extension worth $345 million over five years.
Mavericks fans, who watched Dirk Nowitzki play his entire hall-of-fame career in Dallas, believed they had landed another one-franchise legend who would lead them to a title––and who could blame them?
“The ending of the book was open-ended, but it was upbeat,” MacMahon said. “They had just gone to the Finals, and [Dončić] said he’s ecstatic to be in Dallas.”
But all of that––including MacMahon’s book––was upended just after midnight on February 2, when ESPN’s resident NBA scoop-hound Shams Charania broke the news that the Mavericks were trading Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for star big man Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a future first-round draft pick. MacMahon, like pretty much everyone else, was flabbergasted by the trade. But his shock quickly gave way to urgency. “I was like, Oh yeah, we need to add another chapter,” MacMahon said.
MacMahon spent the next two weeks working on a section that covers the blockbuster trade, ultimately filing it to his editors on Valentine’s Day. When The Wonder Boy hits shelves next week, customers who purchase one of the first 8,000 copies will have to download the final chapter. MacMahon is bummed that it won’t be in every edition of the book, but the bombshell development allowed him to tell the entire story of Dončić’s tenure with the Mavericks. He just didn’t expect it to end so soon. “You have the most precious commodity in the NBA––stability with a superstar––and they decided to move on from that,” MacMahon said in disbelief.
Dallas Mavericks fans lift a cutout of general manager Nico Harrison with a clown nose during a protest of the trade of Luka Doncic outside the American Airlines Center before the start of a NBA game between the Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks on Saturday, February 8, 2025 in Dallas, TX.by Austin McAfee/Icon Sportswire/Getty Images.
MacMahon was hardly the only one left reeling from the trade. Nearly two months after the deal, the NBA remains in collective shock, as players, executives, and beat reporters struggle with the why of it all. Why would the Mavericks willingly trade such a rarefied talent, and why would they settle for such an underwhelming return from the Lakers? Those questions continue to abound throughout the league, with virtually all of the basketball-watching public unsatisfied by the answers offered by Mavericks brass. “It’s a horrible trade,” said Tim Cowlishaw, a sports columnist for The Dallas Morning News.
Even if the Mavericks were to win a title in the next few seasons––an exceedingly unlikely scenario, as things currently stand––Cowlishaw still believes it wouldn’t vindicate the trade.
“How does anyone ever know that Luka wouldn’t have won two or three here?” he said.
Some fans and commentators have already seen enough to declare it the worst trade ever. Cowlishaw said it may even eclipse the Boston Red Sox’s infamous trade of Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1919. That deal was engineered by the Red Sox so that its owner could finance a Broadway musical, which at the time was a more lucrative enterprise than baseball. “At least there was an excuse for that one,” Cowlishaw said. “I don’t know what the excuse is here.”
The ramifications of the Dončić trade have been swift and profound for the two franchises involved. It has reinvigorated the Lakers, handing the 40-year-old LeBron James a young running mate to push for a title in the near-term, while giving Los Angeles a long-term centerpiece to build around after James retires. In Dallas, however, the situation is bleak and the mood is dour. Since dealing Dončić, the team has gone 7-14, as an injury crisis has put their postseason aspirations on life support.
“It was appallingly bad when it happened,” Cowlishaw said. “It’s only gotten worse.” The sorry state of affairs has caused Mavericks fans to revolt, with their outrage directed toward general manager Nico Harrison. There have been protests outside the Mavericks’ home arena, while chants of “fire Nico” have echoed throughout the city since the trade, even erupting at Medieval Times.
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And last week, the Dallas-based Southwest Airlines attempted to cushion the blow from its decision to end its free-checked-bags policy by reminding followers on Instagram: “It’s not like we traded Luka…”
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Getting dunked on by a major airline is probably the least of the Mavericks’ worries these days. There is a growing fear that, after losing Dončić, the team could now be in danger of losing droves of fans.
“There’s no rectifying it,” said Cowlishaw. “The fallout is going to be immense.”
Jason Gallagher was a Mavericks fan before it was cool. As a ’90s kid growing up in Dallas, Gallagher cheered on the team when it was one of the NBA’s bottom-feeders and an outcast in the local sports scene.
“When you grew up in Dallas as a Mavs fan, especially my age, it was like loving an indie band in town,” said Gallagher, a producer for the popular basketball podcast, The Young Man and the Three.
But the Mavericks’ fortunes changed around the millennium, following the acquisition of Nowitzki in the 1998 NBA Draft and Mark Cuban’s purchase of the team in 2000. Thanks to Nowitzki’s on-court brilliance and Cuban’s hands-on ownership, the Mavericks became one of the league’s healthiest franchises, a perennial playoff contender that won the NBA title in 2011 and built a following that extended beyond hipster fans like Gallagher.
“It was 20-plus years of building a relationship with fans,” said Gallagher.
But in the wake of the Dončić trade, that relationship has been ruptured and Gallagher, for one, is questioning his fandom. “I’m kind of done with this team,” he said. “Until this organization makes some sort of significant change that acknowledges their mistake, that actually offers a hand to fans, I just have no faith in them. I find them to be an extremely insulting organization.”
Gallagher has a particularly unique perspective on the matter because he also has a relationship with two of the primary beneficiaries of the trade: James and Lakers head coach JJ Redick, who cohosted a podcast together last year on which Gallagher served as director. Gallagher ran into Redick in New Orleans last month during the Super Bowl, where the two shared a commiserating embrace.
“He gave me a big hug and it felt like there was something behind it,” Gallagher told me.
“I make a ton of jokes about it,” he said. “But it really is just so damn depressing.”
In hindsight, the seeds for the trade were planted in November 2023, when Cuban sold his majority stake in the Mavericks to the family of Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont, who runs the Las Vegas Sands casino company. As a result of the sale, Dumont, Adelson’s son-in-law, replaced Cuban as the Mavericks’ governor, although Cuban said at the time that he would retain control over the team’s basketball operations. But the Dončić trade made it clear that Cuban, who kept a 27% stake in the Mavericks, no longer holds that power. It also seems clear that Harrison wouldn’t have been able to get the green light from Cuban on the trade as he was able to with Dumont. According to veteran NBA insider Marc Stein, Cuban urged Harrison not to trade Dončić. By the time Cuban found out about the trade, per Stein, “it was too late.”
In his first public comments since the deal was made, Cuban echoed the consensus view that the Mavericks didn’t maximize the return for Dončić. Davis is an excellent player, but he’s also six years older than Dončić––and highly prone to injury. In his debut for the Mavericks last month, Davis exited in the third quarter due to tightness near his groin and quadriceps and hasn’t played since.
Dallas Mavericks fans hold up a sign referring to Mavs general manager Nico Harrison during the game against the Sacramento Kings at American Airlines Center on February 10, 2025 in Dallas, Texas.by Tim Heitman/Getty Images,
“If the Mavs are going to trade Luka, that’s one thing,” Cuban told a local Dallas news station earlier this month. “Just get a better deal.” If the Mavericks had also pried four unprotected first-round picks from the Lakers, “this would be a different conversation,” he said.
Cuban declined a request for an interview, but told Vanity Fair that he had nothing to do with the move. “I wasn’t involved in the trade at all,” Cuban said in an email. “And it’s up to the Dumonts to speak to the future.”
Dumont has spoken about that, although it hasn’t gone over well. In an interview with the Dallas Morning News last month, Dumont cited both “character” and “culture” as motivations behind the trade, saying the team wants players with a strong work ethic––an apparent shot at Dončić’s off-court habits. (The Athletic reported last month that the Mavericks had grown concerned with Dončić’s “taste for beer and hookah.”)
Dumont offered examples of former NBA greats who “worked really hard, every day,” rattling off the names of Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Kobe Bryant, and Shaquille O’Neal. The inclusion of O’Neal, who has admitted that he used to play himself into shape during the regular season, drew raised eyebrows throughout the league.
“Tell me you don’t know anything about NBA history without telling me you don’t know anything about NBA history,” joked MacMahon.
Harrison’s public comments about the trade have been just as poorly received. At a press conference in the immediate aftermath of the deal, Harrison revealed that the Lakers was the only team he negotiated with—and that he did so entirely in secret, a strategy that almost certainly precluded the Mavericks from fetching a better offer. He also said that Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd was not informed of the decision until after the trade was completed.
A former Nike executive who was hired as the Mavericks’ general manager in 2021, Harrison framed the trade as a win-now move, saying that a nucleus led by Davis and all-star guard Kyrie Irving could position the team to compete for titles over the next three to four years. Dumont, however, later seemed to contradict that logic during an appearance at the Bank of Texas Speaker Series, where he said that the trade was “about the future.”
Harrison and Dumont, through a Mavericks spokesperson, declined requests for interviews.
The clumsy messaging from the Mavericks has been accompanied by other PR missteps. Multiple fans were ejected from one of the team’s home games last month for various demonstrations against Harrison, including two who held large signs that read “FIRE NICO,” which the Mavericks said violated the NBA’s code of conduct. Earlier this month came another moment of tone-deafness when the team announced an over 8% increase in season ticket prices. Gallagher believes “the most egregious part has been the organization’s reaction in the aftermath” of the trade.
“It’s like the worst characters from Veep and Succession got together to plan this out,” he said.
In the absence of a satisfactory explanation from the team, some Mavericks fans have searched for answers in the conspiratorial realm. One far-fetched theory posits that the trade was a precursor for the new owners to move the Mavericks to Las Vegas, but Dumont squashed that rumor.
That may be small comfort for Mavericks fans, who now find themselves cheering on a severely depleted roster. The 32-year-old Irving suffered a season-ending ACL tear earlier this month, an injury that also threatens to keep him out for much of the next campaign and further disrupt Harrison’s win-now timeline. The Mavericks entered a game against the Phoenix Suns this month with only 9 active players (league rules permit teams to have up to 13 active players per contest). By the fourth quarter, subsequent injuries reduced that number to 7.
“It’s been Murphy’s Law with the Mavericks ever since this trade went down,” said MacMahon.
While the trade has demoralized Mavericks fans, it has been a boon for those in NBA media––none more than MacMahon, who acknowledges that the saga could bolster his book sales. For much of the season, the league has faced criticisms about the style of play and scrutiny over its television ratings. Dončić’s move to Los Angeles has injected a fresh dose of intrigue into the NBA and provided a more compelling angle. For neutrals, anyway.
“Obviously, this sucks for the fans of Dallas,” said MacMahon. “But just from a storyline perspective, if I can’t write that I need to find another line of work. What an insane plot twist.”
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