Luka Doncic conspiracy theory erupts as star unveiled in LA
It was the shock trade no one saw coming and some of the league’s superstars say it exposed a “double standard” in the NBA.
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Back in 2023, having been eliminated from playoff contention despite trading for Kyrie Irving just a few months prior, the Dallas Mavericks entered a potentially franchise-altering summer.
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Specifically, according to ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, there was a “strong sense of urgency” at the time to build a contender around Luka Dončić before he “loses faith”.
And if that happened?
Well, MacMahon wrote at the time that team sources acknowledged a “fear” existed that Dončić “could consider requesting a trade as soon as the summer of 2024” if Dallas hadn’t made “significant progress” by then.
So, the Mavericks went about building a championship-winning roster around Dončić, drafting Dereck Lively II at 12th overall and then adding Daniel Gafford and P.J. Washington at the trade deadline.
The result? Just over a year after that report from MacMahon, which followed a dramatic conclusion to the regular season where Dallas was investigated by the NBA for intentionally tanking, the Mavericks were just four wins away from lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
That, of course, didn’t end up happening because as shrewd as those deadline moves had been and as dominant as Dončić was down the stretch, Boston had built a genuine NBA juggernaut.
And yet, the “fear” of a potential Dončić move seemed to have dissipated. He was happy. Most reports indicated he would sign the $345 million supermax contract he was eligible for this summer. He had faith.
As Dončić wrote in his emotional farewell message after the shock trade with the Lakers was confirmed: “I thought I’d spend my career here and I wanted so badly to bring you a championship”.
But he won’t have a chance to do that anymore because for all the talk about Dončić demanding a trade or asking out, as Dallas sports reporter Pat Doney put it on X, it ended up being the Mavericks organisation that “made the biggest fear of its fans come true”.
For years, Mavs fans have been terrified that Luka Doncic would eventually demand a trade out of Dallas to a team like… the Lakers.
— Pat Doney (@PatDoneyNBC5) February 2, 2025
He never did.
The Mavs organization, instead, made the biggest fear of its fans come true.
All of which begs the question: Is the NBA’s player empowerment era coming to an end?
Because as much as this was a trade like few others, with the Mavericks sending away a 25-year-old MVP candidate entering his prime, that in itself seems to signal a shift in the league’s power structure.
Sure, there were instances where superstars didn’t necessarily get what they wanted.
Damian Lillard, having remained loyal in Portland for the majority of his career, eventually asked out last year and while he did end up being traded, it was to Milwaukee and not Miami as he had hoped.
In most cases though, the league’s biggest names have continually pushed and tested the limits of player empowerment.
LeBron James’ move to Miami along with Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade gave rise to the movement.
Anthony Davis followed. He wanted to go the Lakers, and so he went to the Lakers. Kevin Durant had his heart set on Phoenix and that is where he ended up.
The same went for Bradley Beal. James Harden, meanwhile, headed to his fourth team in 22 months when he was traded to the Clippers.
Most recently, Jimmy Butler has been trying to do everything in his power to force his way to Phoenix. The Heat have suspended him — three times — but still it seems like whether it is before Friday’s deadline or during the summer, Butler will eventually get his wish.
The Dončić trade, however, changes everything. As Bucks superstar Giannis Antetokounmpo told reporters on Monday, “nobody’s safe”.
Even Anthony Edwards jokingly told reporters he was “scared”.
“Tim (Connelly), if you’re gonna trade me let me know dawg,” he said.
Anthony Edwards on Luka Doncic getting traded:
— Oh No He Didn't (@ohnohedidnt24) February 4, 2025
"I'm scared… Tim, if you're gonna trade me let me know dawg"
LMAO pic.twitter.com/gcWUjeEhYE
This, as Antetokounmpo put it, was a “five-time All-NBA first-team, a 25-year-old, a guy that just made it to the Finals seven months ago, a guy that led the league in scoring, a guy that finished second or third in MVP voting, a guy that scored 70-something points one time, a guy that had a 60-point triple double, a guy that knows how to play the game of basketball, an All-Star, not just an All-Star, an All-Star starter, a guy that averaged 34/9/10”.
In far fewer words, this was a guy who was not supposed to be traded and if he was, it was not supposed to be to one team without opening up negotiations with the rest of the league.
But that is exactly what the Mavericks did and now it has Jay Williams, a former NBA player and now ESPN analyst, questioning what it means for the league moving forward.
“I think we’re transitioning from player empowerment to ownership empowerment,” he said on ‘Get Up’.
“Over the last several months I’ve been spending a lot of time with different owners and one of the common things I continue to hear is around this affinity for the NFL and the way the NFL operates.
“Now, there are a couple of players — maybe a handful — that can dictate terms and can kind of force the issue, but for the most part you kind of know that the owners are the ones that have the power.
“... That’s a new ownership group (in Dallas) since Mark Cuban has been dwindled down a little bit, stating that: ‘Hey look, this is my organisation. This isn’t your organisation. This isn’t a situation that’s going to be forced like a Kawhi Leonard. This isn’t a situation that’s going to be forced like a Jimmy Butler. I’m going to tell you what I want to do with my franchise’ and I think that is a huge sea change because even agents feel like there is no player that is not on notice right now.
“No player cannot be moved and I think that is going to give owners a lot of confidence who may have been on that teetering line of, ‘I’m afraid of the backlash from the media’. I’m afraid of the player empowerment from other players wanting to come to my organisation’, that now they’re going to be able to make those moves or force the change they want.”
The Athletic’s Dave DuFour said on ‘NBA Daily’ that if the Karl-Anthony Towns trade and Jimmy Butler saga were the “cracks in the foundation” of the player empowerment era, the Dončić trade “might have been a bulldozer”.
“This was a team saying no to an MVP-level generational talent, which is different than just generational talent,” DuFour added.
“This is not De’Aaron Fox we’re talking about. This is Luka Dončić. He’s probably going to go down as one of the best to ever play in the NBA.
“... This is a sea change in NBA management where the Mavericks have just said, ‘No, we’re not going to tolerate the way you do business anymore’. I think for the player empowerment era, we’re going to look back in a couple of years and say, “Wow, they really told Luka, ‘No’, and now teams have learned they can tell guys no.”
Es Baraheni, meanwhile, said that it seems like player empowerment “has been shattered” and that the NBA may be “entering a new era”.
“It’s just wild that it’s happening to a player who is a perennial MVP candidate,” he added.
With that in mind, and considering the way player empowerment dominated NBA discourse in recent years, two of the league’s biggest superstars called out what they believed to be a “double standard” in the wake of the Dončić trade.
Durant, who said he was “still shocked” when asked about the move after Phoenix’s 127-108 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers on Sunday, used the opportunity to question the transactional nature of the NBA.
Of course, with Jake Fischer since reporting on Tuesday that Durant is aware the Suns have been exploring the possibility of moving him before the deadline, that additional context may now add even more weight to what he was saying.
But it is a point Durant has made before, and one that is particularly relevant now considering most of the reaction to the Dončić trade has surrounded the incompetence of Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison and not the betrayal of a homegrown superstar.
“Players are held to a different standard of loyalty and commitment to a program,” Durant said.
“But the organisations don’t get held to that same standard from the outside world, whether it’s from the media members or fans. We all should be held to that same standard.
“(Now) every other team might get the confidence to say ‘F*** it’. I’ll trade a few of my top players if this isn’t working.”
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander “learned that lesson the hard way” in his first year in the league and while he obviously wasn’t the calibre of player he is now, the superstar guard still said he “found out it was a business”.
“And no matter what, that will always stay with you,” Gilgeous-Alexander added.
Antetokounmpo, meanwhile, joked that he wants to see more European players as the face of major markets.
“I want Luka to the Lakers, I want (Nikola) Jokic to the Knicks,” he said.
“I want all the Europeans to go to all the big markets to see something incredible. This is what I want. This is my dream.”
His dream, like Dončić, was also to bring a championship to Milwaukee. He did just that. Now as Antetokounmpo weighs up the next move in his career, there may come a time where the Greek Freak’s future lies elsewhere.
But if he makes that decision, or if any other player makes a similar decision, the two-time MVP had a simple message when asked by reporters about the Dončić trade.
“You cannot have a double standard here,” Antetokounmpo said.
“When the teams make the best move for their team, they believe they can get another player to win now. When a player believes that he can go to a different team and he believes he can have a chance to win a championship, we can not crucify that person and say he’s not loyal
and he didn’t do the right thing and he let everybody down.
“Because history has shown you, you have to do what is best for you and your family. You have to do what’s best, most important to win.”
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