All Hail the Blockbuster!

The NBA still knows how to do it. Other leagues, not so much

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There are already plenty of pieces attempting to analyze what the shocking trade of Luka Doncic to the Lakers means for L.A., to say nothing of the fantasy and gambling aspects of Anthony Davis being shipped to Dallas as the dominant component of the return package.

All well and good. But can we stand back for a second and just admire the scope of this deal? Does anybody do it better than the NBA?

This league gets superstars moved during the season at a truly amazing rate — no waiting until free agency and the long, quiet summer. The NBA absolutely leaves the NFL and MLB in the dust when it comes to flummoxing its own fans out of nowhere, often right in the middle of the campaign.

Let me just throw a few examples out there:

Lakers trade Shaq to the Miami Heat, 2004 (to give Kobe his space)

Timberwolves send Kevin Garnett to the Celtics, 2007

Sixers move Allen Iverson to the Denver Nuggets, 2006

Russell Westbrook, OKC to Houston, 2019 (Russ begins his NBA sojourn)

Kyrie Irving, Cleveland to Boston, 2017

James Harden, Houston to Brooklyn, 2021

Harden from the Sixers to the Clippers, 2023 (10-player megadeal!)

Paul George, OKC to the Clippers, 2019 (Thunder got Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, FIVE first-round picks and TWO pick swaps)

(The Thunder just love this kind of stuff)

Anthony Davis, New Orleans to the Lakers, 2019

All of them straight trades, almost all of them in the middle of a season.

The last couple of years? Sure: Kevin Durant from the Nets to the Suns in 2023. Chris Paul from Phoenix to Washington to Golden State in 2023. Irving from Brooklyn to the Mavericks to team with Doncic, 2023.

The league does this stuff all the time. And we’re here for it.

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Because I think about baseball too much, I was trying to figure out what a rough MLB equivalent would be to something as seismic as the Doncic for Davis trade. Imagining is all I can do, since baseball almost never pulls off this kind of ballsy stuff.

Doncic is a megastar whose team wondered if he’d stay healthy, or in shape. Davis is a league champion who without any doubt won’t remain healthy, but he still dominates when he’s on the floor.

And again — this is happening in a season in which both teams think they can make a serious playoff run. This is no free agency meandering, which is how MLB usually handles stuff, or a surprise roster cut to avoid some looming balloon payment, which seems to be all the NFL is about anymore.

The baseball version of such a trade? I’m honestly searching. Maybe Ohtani for Mike Trout? Vlad Guerrero Jr. for, I don’t know, Manny Machado? Trout for Giancarlo Stanton? Bryce Harper for Freddie Freeman?

You get the drift: This is a huge swing by both the Lakers and the Mavs. Dallas is risking sending away a generational talent in Doncic, who has already led them to an NBA Finals. Doncic has been hurt a lot lately, and he’s been carrying around a self-defeating amount of extra weight, which leaves questions about his conditioning. On the other hand — my god, it’s Luka. He’s absurdly talented.

The Lakers, meanwhile, have to figure out how to get Doncic back to his mega-performance peak and how to play even semi-respectable defense without Anthony Davis, who was far and away their best overall player. Davis was averaging nearly 26 and 12 for the Lakers, who had won 8 of their last 10 games to move into fifth place in the Western Conference and seemed to have regained their footing after a really rough stretch.

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Just massive stakes! And that’s the best part. The best part is that either of these teams, or both of them, could wind up airballing the deal. Yet the Mavs felt it was time to do something bold — and the Lakers not only took Dallas’s call, but effectively said, Yeah, let’s roll ‘em and see what happens.

Fans love teams that take care of business, of course. If you’re in love with a franchise, you sure want to see it draft smart, develop well, stay prudent and build a winner. But sometimes it’s amazing to watch teams just go for it, knowing that they could be blowing up their own engines. If that’s your kind of fun, you’ve got to pay attention to the NBA. It feels like the only place where this remarkable weirdness happens.

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