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He won’t though, or he’ll never work in the NBA again.
Hard to confirm that 100% in my opinion. I don't know for sure if he went to the Dallas FO and ignited everything, but at minimum, when they told him that he was being shipped to LA, he had no problems with it all, if he didn't know about it all along.
He won’t though, or he’ll never work in the NBA again.
He lost a huge amount of extension money by being traded away from Dallas, the team that drafted him. I doubt he was fine with it.
Sorry, I don't buy that he wasn't fine with it. I trust my instincts. There's no way to know if you're right or I'm right though, so agree to disagree. There's so many other perks and other things that will make up for the extension money he will "lose", especially after he wins a championship there after a patented Lakers' 30 4th quarter freethrows. The championship won't necessarily come this season of course. I hope it never happens, though, lol.
I'm sure you're not a young kid anymore, so you should know there can be times in life where you might be like, "Yeah, I'd rather lose some money there, then do this or that". Luka still has and will still command a f*** load of money being in LA.
Especially in Luka's position, he will not miss that money, he will easily make that up simply being in LA and especially if he wins a chip there, which is always easier to do on the Lakers because they get the calls from the refs.
I highly doubt Luka doesn't chip there in the next few years at minimum. I hope I'm wrong because I hate the Lakers, lol, but that make up money is coming for Luka.
If he doesn't, he won't work in the NBA again either, tbh.
But hey exstatic, in the end you kever know, you could be right that he could've been upset about the money lost, but I just doubt he was and indeed was happy to end up on the Lakers
Double pot roast
Yes, please let me go to a team with nearly Zero other talent, and a 90 year old star.
I get it ex, I'm a legit outsider on this forum, (as evident from the mysterious banning of my other account (even though there are posters here still posting no problem, despite many of them posting some absolute ed up in the past)) but you're still using faulty logic, imo.
You keep forgetting that he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers, not the Charlotte Hornets. Luka may eventually regret or become disgruntled in LA, if he doesn't win a chip (the refs can only do so much, they need at least a decent team to rig the game for, imo), but I have no doubts whatsoever that he was happy to be traded to, as well as is currently happy to be in LA.
Wemby was also very happy to be picked by the Spurs, despite them being a crap team with years needed to field even a playoff contender. Where they go of course will matter if they are cool with the trade, draft, etc.
While Doncic may not have a problem ending up in LA there is no way he wasn’t pissed at the timing. Missing out on SupetMax money is real kick to his fat-padded nuts. I have to go with Ex on this one.
Still disagree, but
From what I recalled Nico flat out said he talked to nobody else but pelinka because he wants to keep this under wraps. Those ant Giannis stories came out after the entire thing blew up in his face.
Doncic has stated multiple times that he didn’t want to leave Dallas and was perfectly content there. He just went to the finals, was treated like a god there and up for a super max.
He was visibly distraught after being traded and just slowly started to accept being in LA after a few months. He basically destroyed his phone after getting news that he was traded due to frustrations so that isn’t anywhere close to being ok with the trade at all.
You can stick to your gut instincts and label everything that came out contrary to that as fake, but multiple independent sources, quotes from Luka and his camp, even his body language after the trade, are consistent with him having no input in the trade and that his preference is to stay in Dallas.
Not every single superstar wants to go to the Lakers. Duncan didn’t back in the day, Dirk never did, Garnett didn’t want to be traded from the wolves but relented, curry didn’t sign there nor did he ever shown a wish to, nephew chose the clippers even he wanted to go home, Jokic didn't (not sure now that his buddy is there), Giannis, Lillard, the list goes on. Some players just want to ball and win les and the prospect of being part of a circus doesn’t appeal to them.
Luka did not anticipate a trade. Luka loves Dallas and would have played the next fifteen years there if he could.
Dallas talked to nobody else. The Giannis story is spin and came out later.
Ownership and management could possibly be so detached from the fanbase that they didn't know how much Luka is loved, but that sounds like spin as well.
If word had gotten out from Luka's people, a competing team, or even someone in the Mavs organization, public outcry would have stopped the trade in its tracks. Hard to claim you didn't know how important he was when you sacrificed so much in the name of secrecy.
The "money isn't everything" argument works for some situations. Luka lost out on 116 million dollars. This is not one of them.
Dallas has leaked to everyone that Luka is a fat, out of shape locker room cancer who never took the game of basketball seriously. I mean they went into overdrive to assassinate his character. Nico has been blasting Luka every chanxe
he can get and the organization literally said that Luka is such an out of shape diva that he won’t even last 5 years playing. If Luka wanted out, Dallas would’ve leaked that to the media in a heartbeat. They also would’ve said that they gave Luka a heads up instead of swerving away from the multiple questions if Luka knew about it. They aren’t protecting Luka at all. They’re in self preservation mode bc they and the world know they ed up.
It’s a simple case of cheap ownership getting rid of a player instead of paying that player.
It's not the ownership, it's all nico. He wanted to be in charge and overrated his role players. That's all there is to it. Ownership just didn't want to bother getting rid of a gm.
That is so completely wrong. It was all ownership not wanting to pay him.
Not just the extension money, the extra state income tax @ 14.4%. I've done the math before, don't remember exactly, but it was like 8.2% playing for one of those Cali Teams vs the Texas teams. That's a huge net difference, although he will may $10s of millions more in endorsements, maybe $100s because playing in LA vs SF greatly opens up the asian rim endorsements.
Just so people realize the magnitude-
Dallas supermax= $345M over 5 yrs, $69M avg, about $52M net after 24% Fed taxes
Lakers max= $229M over 4 yrs, $57.25M avg, about $43.51 after Fed, $39.9M after state
That trade cost him $12M/yr, although he will make up a good chunk on his next contract/assuming health, he won't make up the time value of money or the $3.5M/yr
Non sequitur- you don't buy control of an NBA team for $3.5B to avoid paying Max salaries to all-time players.
There's a salary floor. If this is your argument, you still pay Luka, you just don't pay anyone else. This isn't the 2000's Oakland A's, they're gonna have to pay someone, you'd rather that someone be a guy that generates revenue. Luka generates revenue, on-court and in merchandise around the world.
"Not wanting to pay him" doesn't hold water unless they were convinced he was Albert Belle/Bo Jackson/someone who wouldn't be able to stay on the court AND that the contract would be unmovable. No way it'd be unmovable, his size+passing+shooting+resume guarantees he will always movable during that contract life. A 31y/o Bradley Beal making a higher % of the cap was traded for Butler before Beal veto'd it. Luka won't have a no-trade. Luka would have always been movable with that supermax. Not to mention, these contracts are insured in cases like Belle and Bo. It couldn't possibly have been about not paying, not with a salary floor.
The big problem with the trade is that even if you could somehow justify trading Doncic using concerns of his at ude, conditioning, future health, and a super max as justifications, you still didn't get the best deal for him. The notion that Nico didn't want negative attention if news of Luka's availability got out is pretty silly, considering how much negative attention he'll be getting for the next decade there. I'm still convinced that a lot of it was a general personality clash. Nico is a buttoned-down, tidy West Point guy who said recently in an interview that "God has my back." I think he looked at Luka and saw a tattooed European heathen who drank beer and smoked hookah, and was repulsed. Just my guess. Nico seems like a tightly wound neat freak, and I'm just getting the vibe of a Military dude looking at a hippie (or Euro anarchist, hahaha) and not liking what he sees.
Last edited by R. DeMurre; 04-22-2025 at 11:23 AM.
Exactly. Nico could have had reasons to trade Luka. But absolutely gifting him for pennies on the dollar is indefensible. That franchise is ed for a decade only because Nico thinks he’s smarter than everyone else.
Nice post. Could very well have played into it as I'm sure he's also used to being around Kobe (seeing him working hard and being super professional when it came to training and preparing for basketball). He very well could have been put off by Luka's off the court stuff - lack of training, lack of preparation, lack of taking care of his body, maybe doesn't have the best diet? Having said that, I don't know how hard Luka works or what his diet is, so I can't fully comment on that unless I know more details of what he was doing in Dallas to prepare himself for the season and his maintenance during the season.
It's just a coincidence that Nico has ties to Pelinka and Nike and that Luka's new shoe hit the day the Mavs played the Lakers.
Nothing to see here. It was incompetence, not malice.
Well apparently the Spurs tried to hire Nico as a GM three times, so they are as dumb as the Mavs. We dodged a bullet by being lucky.
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