AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
While some of you were preoccupied with the end of the NFL season last week, the NBA was making history. Teams are generally pretty busy in the time leading up to early February, when they have to finish up their midseason trades. But this year, the trading period blew past busy and turned headlong into chaos with some of the league's biggest stars getting shuffled from one franchise to another. And we have NBA reporter Dave DuFour from The Athletic here with us to tell us how they're doing. Welcome to the program.
DAVE DUFOUR: Thanks for having me. I'm very excited to be here. I love NPR. Thank you so much.
RASCOE: Well, let's start with the trade of the year, maybe the decade. The Dallas Mavericks gave up one of the league's most promising players ever, Luka Doncic, the 25-year-old star from Slovenia, to the Los Angeles Lakers. How has that worked out for the Lakers in the past week?
DUFOUR: I would say that it's mixed. Game 1, everything looks great. The Lakers are hitting a lot of shots. The second game, they go to Utah, and they just looked flat and a bit lifeless. But Rob Pelinka, the GM of the Lakers, when he sat there with Luka Doncic on the stage in the introductory press conference, basically said this was a gift. So I think that everyone in Laker land is pretty happy right now.
RASCOE: Dallas got Anthony Davis in return, which is not too shabby - right? - a 10-time NBA all-star. But fans didn't like saying goodbye to Doncic. And I take it they're still mad about it. I've seen a lot of, like, blowup on social media about this.
DUFOUR: Yeah, you know, these sports teams now have sold fans on, you know, hey, be with us for the good times, but also stick with us during the hard times. They sell hope to these guys. And Luka Doncic - the Dallas Mavericks had to go through a couple of bad years, and their fans stuck around. And then they landed Luka Doncic in the draft, and this was the hope that they had been sold. And then it's a bit of a rug pull.
RASCOE: With Doncic being such a star, why would the Mavericks make this trade to the Lakers?
DUFOUR: Well, there's a few reasons. Mavericks GM Nico Harrison has come out and said that the culture that they want to have in the Mavericks is about defense, accountability, being in shape and essentially just throwing Luka Doncic under the bus as not being those things. You know, there is a financial part of this, and I think that that's where the fans really feel betrayed because you didn't trade him because he wasn't good. You didn't trade him because he asked to leave. You traded him because of financial reasons and then sort of are covering it up with this, he doesn't work out hard. He's not in shape, which...
RASCOE: Oh, yeah, I saw that he had put on some weight or something.
DUFOUR: Yeah. I mean, listen, it may be true, but he just dragged that team to the finals on one leg. So it just comes off a little bit hollow. And I think for fans, they feel extremely turned off and just unheard.
RASCOE: All of this seems, like, really exciting. It's a lot of action. Is it good for the league that a player the caliber of Luka Doncic can be traded midseason like this? Is the chaos a good thing?
DUFOUR: No. I don't think so. I actually personally feel like this trade is a bit nihilstic. The GM of the Dallas Mavericks, Nico Harrison, even said so in a press conference, like, he's not going to be there in 10 years, so what does he care, essentially? And I don't think that that's a good way for a sports league to operate. By moving players all the time, by players moving all the time, you really have robbed NBA fans of the experience that a lot of us grew up with. I mean, I think that a little bit of sports stability is actually good.
RASCOE: That's Dave DuFour. He's the host of The Athletic NBA daily podcast. Thank you so much for joining us.
DUFOUR: Thank you for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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