Dallas Mavericks basic supervisor Nico Harrison says he traded Luka Doncic to win now. Mavericks proprietor Patrick Dumont says he did it for the long run.
As a part of the Bank of Texas Speaker Series from a Dallas-area actual property group, Dumont defined his motivations for the group sending Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers.
“After the commerce deadline final yr, we really had the perfect report in basketball,” Dumont informed the group. “We received to the championship video games, and we did not win…We needed to determine how one can get higher.”
Dumont added, “This [the trade] was a choice for the long run.”
Other than betraying his unfamiliarity with basketball by referring to the NBA Finals because the “championship video games,” Dumont’s rivalry that the Mavericks made the transfer trying to the long run, as a result of different groups handed them, contrasts with Harrison, who thought of the commerce a transfer to “win now and sooner or later.”
It seems that the Mavericks weren’t completely certain why they traded Doncic, apart from their want to not give him a supermax extension this summer time. Harrison wished to win now and transfer ahead with out Doncic. Dumont appears to have already given up on the group that made the 2024 “championship video games,” even after their offseason additions of Klay Thompson, Naji Marshall and Quentin Grimes.
For those who take Dumont’s feedback at face worth, the Mavs had been trying to the long run by buying and selling 26-year-old Doncic for Anthony Davis, who just lately turned 32. They adopted up that transfer by sending the 24-year-old Grimes to the Philadelphia 76ers for 29-year-old Caleb Martin. Additionally they acquired only one future first-round choose once they traded Doncic, hardly long-term considering.
All of these plans turned moot when Davis was injured in his first recreation with the Mavericks and Kyrie Irving suffered a season-ending ACL tear. Successful now and profitable sooner or later each appear to be a problem.
Nevertheless it’s onerous to consider that Dumont is accustomed to NBA basketball, particularly if he thought of his group uncompetitive. The Mavericks made the NBA Finals a yr in the past, and the Western Convention finals two years earlier. Dumont did not assume the Mavericks might compete with the elite groups, even in a season the place they’ve gone 3-1 towards the league-leading Oklahoma Metropolis Thunder, who in addition they defeated in final yr’s playoffs.
Dumont might know the on line casino enterprise effectively. He is in line to become the CEO of Las Vegas Sands, which is the on line casino and resort firm that his late father-in-law, Sheldon Adelson, based.
To date, he hasn’t demonstrated that very same experience in terms of NBA basketball. Maybe worse, he does not appear to be on the identical web page as his GM.
