As Luka Dončić returns to Dallas again, Mavs still picking up the shocking pieces – The Athletic
The Athletic has live coverage of Lakers vs. Mavericks as Luka Dončić returns to Dallas.
Before the second quarter of the Dallas Mavericks’ Dec. 6 game against the Houston Rockets, the operations staff at American Airlines Center cut to a familiar face on the giant video screen: Dirk Nowitzki.
The 2011 NBA Finals MVP was seated next to his son, Max, who was wearing a Cooper Flagg jersey. Max proudly displayed the Mavs rookie’s No. 32, and the crowd cheered in approval.
Nowitzki’s presence that night was notable. It was his first time back in the arena for a game that didn’t involve Luka Dončić since the blockbuster Feb. 2, 2025, trade that sent Nowitzki’s friend and former understudy to the Los Angeles Lakers.
Nowitzki was among the thousands in Dallas and elsewhere who felt stung by the Mavericks’ decision to ship out Dončić eight months after he led his team to the NBA Finals. Mavericks fans never accepted then-general manager Nico Harrison’s logic behind trading one of the most gifted offensive players in NBA history for Anthony Davis, a member of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team but a player who is six years older than Dončić, with a long track record of injuries. Fan outrage eventually played a significant part in Harrison’s firing 11 games into this season.
As deafening as their “Fire Nico!” chants were, though, nothing spoke louder than Nowitzki choosing to travel to Los Angeles to support Dončić in his first game as a Laker.
The Dončić trade — along with other decisions Harrison made after winning a power struggle against former majority owner Mark Cuban for now-governor Patrick Dumont’s ear — created distance between the Mavericks and their all-time leading scorer. Nowitzki’s presence at their Dec. 6 game was a signal that Dallas was making progress toward repairing at least some of the emotional damage that had been done.
On Saturday, Dončić is scheduled to play his second game in Dallas since being traded. Nearly a year after the deal went down, the Mavericks are still cleaning up the wreckage.
Luka Dončić is preparing for his second trip to Dallas as a member of the Los Angeles Lakers. (Sam Hodde / Getty Images)
Dallas, in 12th place in the Western Conference standings, has the fourth-highest payroll in the NBA, which is why team decision-makers are exploring the trade market for many of the veteran players Harrison brought in, including Davis. Dallas is in a difficult position because it doesn’t have full control of any of its own first-round draft picks after this year until 2031. The Mavericks also have yet to name a permanent general manager as Harrison’s successor.
Mavericks fans can at least take solace that they have another young star to build around in Flagg. The 19-year-old from Newport, Maine, is averaging 18.8 points, 6.3 rebounds and 4.1 assists. Flagg’s numbers aren’t that far off from the ones Dončić put up in his rookie season, when he averaged 21.2 points, 7.8 rebounds, 6.0 assists and won Rookie of the Year — the first chapter in his electric 6 1/2-season run in Dallas that ended abruptly last February.
As demoralizing as last spring was, the Mavericks still sounded confident they could be a force in the West this year. At media day in September, Klay Thompson said that once injured guard Kyrie Irving returned to the lineup, “I don’t see why we can’t win the whole thing.”
Davis’ availability, however, was a major question mark. He got hurt in his first game with the Mavericks in February, suffering a left adductor strain that knocked him out of the lineup for nearly six weeks.
He had offseason eye surgery to repair a detached retina and was ready for the start of the season. But five games in, on Oct. 29, Davis suffered a left calf strain trying to wrangle a rebound. Cruelly for Mavericks fans, it was the same injury Dončić was recovering from when he was traded.
Without Davis, the Mavericks faltered, going 3-11 in the 14 games he missed. When he attempted to return before the Mavericks were in a full-on tailspin, Dumont intervened, wanting to make sure his $54.1 million player was fully healthy before returning to the court.
Davis was still sidelined when Harrison was fired Nov. 11. Harrison’s two lieutenants, Matt Riccardi and Michael Finley, were named co-interim GMs. For the past 2 1/2 months, both have been in charge of fielding trade offers for Davis so the Mavericks can reset around Flagg.
As the Feb. 5 trade deadline approaches, moving Davis for anything of value looks difficult. As The Athletic reported earlier this month, Davis’ agent, Klutch Sports CEO Rich Paul, has wanted Davis to go to a team with which a contract extension appears more likely (Davis is extension-eligible this offseason). But that appears unlikely, as Davis is hurt again, this time with ligament damage in his left hand that will keep him out until at least the end of February.
The Mavericks have already started vetting candidates to take over as their permanent lead basketball executive, according to team sources, but they aren’t expected to make a hire until this spring at the earliest. That is because the Mavericks want to be able to choose from the widest possible pool of candidates — potentially even ones who are already running NBA teams.
Before the Mavericks hired Harrison in 2021, he spent 19 years with Nike but had never worked for an NBA team. The Mavericks, one league source said, have no interest in taking a risk on a candidate without NBA experience again.
“(They) are going to over-index on the safety aspect of it,” the league source said.
Unfortunately for the Mavs, Anthony Davis is once again sidelined due to injury. (Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
Mavericks ownership knows it must have someone in place before this year’s draft. The way things are trending, the Mavericks will own a top-10 pick. With so much outgoing future draft capital, it’s a decision Dallas needs to nail.
The Mavericks owe a top-two protected 2027 first-round pick to the Charlotte Hornets as payment for the P.J. Washington deal and must fork over their unprotected 2029 first-round pick to the Brooklyn Nets for the Irving trade. Their 2028 and 2030 firsts are tied up in pick swaps.
The Mavericks do control the Lakers’ first-round pick in 2029. It was the only first-rounder they secured for sending Dončić to Los Angeles.
As Dončić sat inside his new home arena on the final day of his first season with the Lakers, he admitted he needed to figure things out.
“I’m mentally kind of exhausted from everything that happened,” he said. “A lot of people won’t believe me, but I am. I just think now is the time to process everything.”
Whatever excitement he felt for the opportunity to become a Laker, to take his skill and showmanship to an unquestionably bigger stage, had been suppressed by the hurt and confusion from the shocking trade.
Unlike most stars of his stature, Dončić had not played a role — at least not directly — in his exit from Dallas. Concerns about his conditioning, his prolonged calf injury recovery and injuries he’d hadn’t yet suffered could be linked to bad habits. Few around the NBA, other than Harrison and other Mavericks stakeholders, believed those were sufficient reasons to move on from someone so young and talented.
Those close to Dončić found themselves hate-watching the Mavericks, growing angrier when they saw things like photos of him being removed from displays at the team’s practice facility. His first stint with the Lakers was good — but below Dončić’s standards. He didn’t really find his full-on footing until his first game back in Dallas, when he scored 45 points in front of his old fans in the final week of the regular season.
The Lakers, though, didn’t catch their stride. Dončić suffered an illness before Game 3 of the first round of the playoffs against the Minnesota Timberwolves. Austin Reaves was seriously slowed by a toe injury. And LeBron James, by the end of the series, had suffered a knee injury.
With it all over, Dončić was hungry for closure.
Within days, he met with Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka to discuss the franchise’s vision to build around him. He returned to Slovenia to begin an intermittent fasting diet and a new workout regimen overseen by his medical team. Pictures of his slimmed-down physique flooded social media. He appeared on the cover of Men’s Health, did a segment on the NBC’s “Today” show and, on Aug. 2, swiftly signed a three-year, $165 million extension to stay with the Lakers.
The Mavericks traded Dončić, in part, because they believed his habits wouldn’t have changed if they awarded him a supermax contract in excess of $300 million. One team source likened him to Elvis Presley — and that the trade to the Lakers helped save him from those habits.
“They (fans) got skinny Elvis,” said the team source.
Sources close to Dončić, though, point to that kind of thinking as a reason why things in Dallas ended in the first place. Instead, they believed Dončić was on a path to improving his diet and conditioning as he matured, regardless of any trade. Their focus, especially since the end of last season, has been on the future and not the past.
After a dominant summer with Slovenia, Dončić arrived at Lakers camp healthy and in terrific shape, ready to build relationships with his new co-stars, James and Reaves. James, though, didn’t participate in a single second in training camp, setting the stage for a disjointed first half of the Lakers’ season.
Dončić scored at least 40 points in each of his first three games and barely slowed down as an offensive weapon. With James out, Dončić and Reaves showed that they could be the backcourt the Lakers build around. Despite the defensive deficiencies, Reaves looked like a player the team could safely slot into the role Jalen Brunson and Kyrie Irving had served around Dončić on his best Mavericks teams.
But Reaves, like James, would miss significant time, disrupting any real quest for rhythm once James returned to the court.
Lakers sources have referenced the time it took for Dallas to build out its most optimized rosters around Dončić, noting that the Lakers need more athleticism, shooting and defense to replicate what was left behind in Dallas. No potential move the Lakers make at the deadline will check more than one of those boxes, and some around the team believe the real work will happen in the summer, when the Lakers could have as many as three first-round picks to use in trades to improve the roster.
Individually, Dončić’s success and popularity have never been higher. He led players in fan voting for the 2026 All-Star Game and trails only Stephen Curry in jersey sales. He leads the league in scoring despite suffering through a handful of minor injuries and a 3-point shooting slump.
Still, the Lakers have yet to play any real consistent stretch of great basketball.
As popular as Dončić is with the public, the noise about some of his bad on-court habits has started to grow louder. At times throughout his career, Dončic has let his frustration with referees bubble over.
Luka Dončić has a discussion with referee Tyler Ford during a recent Lakers-Nuggets game. (Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images)
In the Lakers’ Jan. 25 loss to the Charlotte Hornets, Dončić wasn’t awarded a foul call in the third quarter. Instead of getting back on defense, he spent the possession complaining while the Hornets raced ahead and made a transition 3. Dončić was finally assessed a technical foul.
Hornets play-by-play voice Eric Collins had a blunt reaction.
“This guy is a whiner,” he said.
In Dončić’s first game back at American Airlines Center post-trade in April, the Mavericks recognized that they needed to thank him. The two-minute tribute video they showed was filled with Dončić’s game-winners and other moments of “Luka Magic.” Dončić’s eyes welled with tears as he watched it.
Saturday’s game between the Mavericks and Lakers shouldn’t be as emotional.
Dončić is focused on building a winner with the Lakers, and the main villain in this story — at least in the eyes of Mavericks fans — is out of the picture. Upon Harrison’s firing, he changed his bio on Instagram to “Girl dad | Unemployed.”
Nowitzki, now an NBA analyst for Amazon, said in November he believed Harrison’s firing should have happened sooner.
“This move should have probably happened this summer, honestly,” Nowitzki said. “I didn’t want this negative energy over the Cooper Flagg era.”
All of it was avoidable. Dončić never wanted to leave Dallas. Two days after the trade, he confirmed that he envisioned playing his entire career for the Mavericks.
Nowitzki, of course, spent all 21 seasons with the franchise. His statue in front of American Airlines Center, on a street renamed in his honor six years ago, is inscribed with four words: “Loyalty never fades away.” When Dončić was introduced as a Laker, he stressed how important this virtue was to him.
“Loyalty is a big word for me,” Dončić said. “But this is a fresh start.”
