Luka Dealt to Lakers: Nico Harrison is a Basketball Terrorist

[hakeemfaan]

I share some of that feeling as a Mavs fan.  Normally, winning a chip would make up for it all for most fans because winning it all can be so rare and so difficult for most cities.  After all, this team has ONE ring in 40 years! 
Even then its been almost 15 years since that one. 
So yeah, Nico can try to make the case that another franchise ring would make worth giving up the franchise centerpiece for the future. 

The problem is even then, he didn't just trade Luka.  This was all done in a way that reeks of DIRTY pool and hidden agenda.  

• He gifted the trade to the League's #1 Prima Donna Franchise the Lakers.  That's suspicious. 
  
• He has close long standing relationships, buddies with the franchise he has now gifted with this superstar talent and box office draw. 
  
• Nico did this even when his allegiance is supposed to be with the Lakers competitor he now works for.  That's ugly.  I mean think about it he could have traded Luka anywhere but he had now traded him to a team the Mavericks very well could have to go through in order to even get to the NBA finals.  Luka could easily be their finals block for the next decade or more! 
  
• He deliberately did not take bids from the rest of the league on one of if not the single most valuable player asset in the entire league!  This part is not explainable to me, under any circumstance. 
  

  
Even if Nico's heart was set on Anthony Davis, he has to make the Lakers bid against the highest bidders. 
Nico owes this to the fanbase and the players on the team and the city of Dallas.  He must get the best price, that is his fiduciary responsibility. The failure to do this would be incompetence except that we know Nico is not incompetent to that level.  No GM would do that.  That only leaves one reason in my mind, its dirty.  He did the deal in some part to benefit the parties that clearly benefitted here, 

1. his buddies in LA, 
   
2. Nike, 
   
3. NBA financial coffers and apparently 
   
4. the newest master, Mavs billionaire-gambling-powerhouse Miriam Adelson
   

So while winning would be a salve, the dirty nature of this deal including the obvious failure to get back fair value won't be washed away.

The other side I have heard is that throwing it open ticks off Luka, he tells all teams he will only take an extension with LA, LA then doesn’t even have to give up AD

My response to that…I am perfectly fine with taking that risk since the reward of getting a worse and older player AD on a 2 year window and another pick 5 years from now doesn’t move the needle for me to not open the bidding. If Luka walked and signed with the Lakers on his own so be it. I would not have traded him to the Lakers. There was zero urgency to do that 

I hear how the Lakers should have been forced other picks and players. No. the Lakers to me had nothing I coveted either short term or long term. If you really want to go all in for the next two years and make a totally insane move, there was only one player on that team who fits that criterion. It’s Bron and even Bron I take because the team won’t have to change much with him vs Luka and even there no GM would do it.  At least I can somewhat see the crazy logic there. AD made no sense.