Mark Cuban on Luka Doncic trade: ‘Just get a better deal’

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The only sign anyone will ever need that Mark Cuban is out of the loop on Dallas Mavericks basketball decisions is that Luka Doncic was traded.

Cuban’s sentiment on the trade echoes everyone else’s around the league: He would never have made the trade in the first place, but once the decision to move on from Doncic was made, he at least would have gotten a better deal. Cuban sat down with Jonah Javad of WFFA on Thursday and said this about the trade:

“If the Mavs are going to trade Luka, that’s one thing. Just get a better deal. No disrespect to Anthony Davis, but I still firmly believe if we had gotten four unprotected No. 1s and Anthony Davis and Max Christie, this would be a different conversation.”

Dallas got Davis, Max Christie and the Lakers’ 2029 first-round pick, with Mavericks GM Nico Harrison particularly focused on Davis, who he saw as a better fit with Kyrie Irving (in what has been a terrible run of luck in Dallas, both Davis and Irving are out injured, with Irving tearing his ACL and missing a healthy chunk of next season, too). For comparison, the Knicks gave up Julius Randle, Donte DiVincenzo, Keita Bates-Diop and a future first-round pick to get Karl-Anthony Towns, an All-Star but not a player on the level of Davis (an All-NBA player and Defensive Player of the Year candidate when healthy). To get Mikal Bridges out of Brooklyn required the Knicks giving up five first-round picks over the summer.

Talk to people in other front offices around the league and the Doncic trade is often called a “gift” to the Lakers, with a lot of those people saying their team would have put together a much better trade package for the now 26-year-old Doncic, a top-five player in the world when healthy entering his prime. That market was never seriously explored, outside of a call to Minnesota, which shot down the idea of an Anthony Edwards trade.

Pulling the rug out from under fans by unexpectedly trading away the team’s star player and fan favorite in Doncic (without Luka making a trade demand) has fractured the Mavericks’ relationship with those core fans. While the fan base was venting about the trade — holding a…

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Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/article/mark-cuban-luka-doncic-trade-165742628.html

Author : NBC Sports

Publish date : 2025-03-07 16:57:00

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