Decoding Dallas and Doncic

Who left these sacks of tea leaves here?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Shepherdess Bringing in Sheep; Camille Pissarro; 1886

More reporting around the Mavericks’ decision to trade Luka Doncic has spilled out in the 48 hours or so since the deal broke. This is the type of coverage that requires decoding, because there’s a lot of it and the reputational stakes for the main characters — Luka, Nico Harrison, the Adelson cabal, Rob Pelinka, Danny Ainge (!), Rich Paul, Jason Kidd, Anthony Davis, LeBron — are high.

In slightly related news, “Decode” is a top three Paramore song, right? Is it … the best Paramore song? The video either hurts or significantly helps the case, depending on how charitable I’m feeling about the Twilight phenomenon, which right now is high.

Anyway, let’s dig into the main stories. First, a Tim MacMahon and Ramona Shelburne tome at ESPN.

Harrison decided early on, team sources said, that the best way to trade a player of Doncic's caliber was to pick the trade that he wanted, rather than open up the process, to avoid Doncic and his agent exerting their own leverage. It would also avoid the crippling fan backlash that might influence the deal.

You know you’re off to a great start when part of the justification to hold exclusive talks with a single team over trading your franchise superstar is that you don’t want to make your own team’s fans so mad they derail the deal. There is a certain inventiveness about Harrison’s approach here — so often the trade market is limited due to the whims of the star, not the whims of the trading team — but then you wonder why Harrison wasn’t more ambitious. Davis is an excellent, valuable player … but there’s a gap between him and what most of us would consider where Luka sits in the leaguewide pecking order.