Luka to the Lakers 🤢

Luka is headed to the… 🤢 Lakers.

I knew this was coming, but not this way. Let’s examine the elements at play: Dallas’ Loss, The Player Empowerment Era, The Modern NBA, Nico the GM & finally, Luka.

Dallas’ Loss: Two Years Ago, I made a video that started with "This is why Luka will be a Laker."That nightmare has come true for this Mavs fan, but not for the reasons I predicted.

It's DoomsDay in Dallas with all the makings of a funeral. A make shift vigil, including a coffin and lots of ire aimed at Dallas Mavericks GM (& former Nike colleague) Nico Harrison has filled the city.
It's easy to get angry, or to develop conspiracy theories, but "The Opposite of Doom is Curiosity" so, let's get Curious.

First, I’m crushed, confused….& well, curious.

Since working in pro sports, I've become pretty cold & jaded, because, well Pro Sports are cold. Ice cold. This week is Exhibit A.
I lost my Cowboys hope years ago after working closely with the team & the NFL at large. #DezCaughtIt
But, I realized something unique about the Mavericks this week.
 
We've been insulated from the evils that plague so many franchises.
We had a vested owner who was closer to a fan than the usual distant Wizard of Oz pulling strings from the suites. Mark was not only on the floor, but with the fans and acted as fan #1.

If that wasn’t enough, we then lucked out with the most loyal star to ever play the game. We had Dirk Nowitzki who landed in Dallas as a rookie out of Germany, and subsequently adopted Dallas as his home and never once flirted with going elsewhere.
Do you know how rare that is? Even Kobe flirted with leaving (ironically to the Mavs, but Cuban wouldn’t include Dirk in the deal.)
There are exceptions: Steph & Giannis most notably, but Take the biggest stars in today’s NBA. Lebron, KD & Kyrie alone have switched teams a collective ten times.
That’s to say nothing of Harden, Jimmy Butler (traded again as I write this), or Anthony Davis: the moves made will make you dizzy.
To keep a star for his entire career is rare, and we thought we lucked into our next one…but, we should have known better in the modern NBA.

The Modern NBA is one characterized by Player Empowerment. It’s the league where players have the MOST power.
Lebron James has been the poster child of this movement. Lebron is not only a star, but has played within the rules to bend them to his will. His agent, Rich Paul, is the most powerful in the NBA. Together, they essentially act as the General Manager of Lebron’s teams.
They acquire the players The King wants to play with, and sign short term agreements to maximize leverage while minimizing commitment: all with the threat of leaving if management doesn’t make the most of it’s window. He’s used it to bolster his hometown team, then escape to tropical places like Miami, return back home, and finally to Los Angeles where all the biggest stars eventually wind up.

But there was bound to be a change.
Just a year or two ago, if Jimmy Butler wanted out of his team, he would threaten his team, sit out &/or let them know where he wanted to go. But, there are new rules in place that are thwarting these tactics, and it’s currently on display with Miami’s leadership, Pat Riley. Unfortunately, when it becomes public it tanks the value of the the disgruntled star because other teams know the Heat are desperate to move him. Hold onto that thought…

The new NBA CBA (Collective Bargaining Agreement btw Players & Owners, signed in 2023) was built to battle the Star Player power dynamic in a couple of ways.
It was designed to incentivize players to stay with their original teams. When players like Lebron move, it’s good for Twitter, but terrible for the franchises that he leaves. To keep stars like Anthony Edwards in Minnesota or Giannis in Milwaukee, or quite frankly Luka in Dallas, they made the Super Max contract available…which brings us to the current climate.

The General Manager’s job is extremely tough in the NBA.

Nico Harrison was hired away from Nike just a few years ago. He’s been up close and personal with the biggest stars in the league. I don’t know him well, but he is universally respected by people who know him. (Trust me, I called and checked multiple times this week) I know him to be a thoughtful and smart leader.

In many ways, GMs should be the counter balance to fans’ “fanatacism” which is defined as : extreme interest in something, to a degree that some people find unreasonable.
The GM’s job is to be ridiculously reasonable. And the GMs knows things that we don’t as fans. I generally like to give people the benefit of the doubt until they prove me wrong. I’d invite you to do the same, but the internet is not ready for that this week.
The current rumor that I personally know to be false is one case for this…

The internet’s lack of media literacy has Nico Harrison being [wrongly] crucified for losing Steph Curry to Under Armour. I have seen MILLIONS of impressions across X, Instagram and Tik Tok with that theory this week.
This is all the result of a Wikipedia article (open source authorship) that mis-summarized a Sports Illustrated article that directly quotes Nico as saying “It absolutely wasn’t me.”

If you knew how the process of pitching athletes worked, you’d know that a VP of Sports Marketing would not be building that presentation. You also know how it would be possible to let KD’s name slip in there from a previous presentation. Not defending it, but the grind of that life is real. There are long nights, early mornings, meetings constantly. People are often going too fast and mistakes get made.
The biggest challenge at Nike is the gluttony of resources you have. It’s a quality problem, but a problem none the less.
During 2013, Nike had Lebron, Kobe, KD, Kyrie, including the Jordan Brand’s Blake Griffin, CP3 & Russell Westbrook all with signature shoes.
Steph was right to go to Under Armour. He was offered significantly more money and marketability.
“An upstart company known as Under Armour offered $4 million per year plus a signature shoe and the chance to become the face of the company. Nike, whose offer was worth $2.5 million per year, declined its right to match the Under Armour money.”

And yet, the revisionist history is wild on this one. Steph’s stardom was not guaranteed back then. He had yet to win an MVP or a title. He had ankle issues, was undersized and while he had potential, Nike had a lot of other commitments.
Would Nike have done amazing things with Steph? Yes. But, if so, we’d have other articles talking about how they dropped the ball with Lebron, KD, Kobe or…er, Kyrie.

Nike did not intentionally botch that presentation, but Steph was never going to compete with Nike’s roster during that time.
Here’s Nico’s quote from the article.

By saying “I might have called him Seth”, he’s referring to the time frame over his decade plus relationship, not in the actual meeting! As if that had any effect.
Those meetings are important, but the contract numbers are often most important. The meetings serve as a gut test for who wants you most. It was clear that Nike had their hands tied elsewhere & Under Armour wanted him much more. They put their money where their mouth was.
I make this case, because most people are using this as a reason to negate Nico’s character. And if he is smart, thoughtful and not star struck, then maybe there’s more to this story?

But, I’ve digressed. On to Luka…

Luka is one of the best players in the league, and we’re not sure if we’ve ever seen him fully healthy.
The allure of Luka is that he can seemingly single handedly take you to the Finals - overweight and on one leg, but the frustrations of Luka seemed to grow massive over the last two years, but mostly this season.
Over the last few years, and especially after a devastating loss in the Finals, we all thought we’d get the summer hype video of Luka working out, getting in shape and ready to dominate this season. Lebron has shown us the way…

That never seemed to happen, and according to Tim McMahon & Ramona Shelburne’s piece, the Mavs fired their previous strength & health staff, Luka hired his own and still never was able to reach his fitness goals. He did reach, however, a top 500 ranking in the popular video game: Overwatch 2.
All of this, and he’s played less than half his games this year. He has a nagging “calf” injury, which some sources indicate an achilles-a very precarious injury. All with a looming $350m contract due to him in the next year.
Luka’s passion & competitive fire on the court is what attracts many of us to him. It’s also what I worry about the most.

Detractors would say he’s been immature, selfish at times and relentless on the refs. This doesn’t help the team morale or chemistry. Of course, he averages 30-9-9.
In the NBA of the past, that production would outweigh (pardon the pun) and overlook a host of red flags. Maybe some in the modern NBA will not overlook such issues?

By trading him, hurting his feelings and publicly shaming him, the Mavericks might have lit a fire under him that will get him to finally reach those health targets. They just traded him to the city of health & wellness with the poster child of Health. Lebron spends a reported $1.2m annually on his health.
I fear the worst in awakening the best of Luka.

Time Will Tell
Part of our overreactive immediate outrage culture is that we can’t evaluate trades like this. There’s a whole twitter account dedicated to Freezing Cold Takes dedicated to the boldest predictions that don’t play out the way people thought. I bet they’re loading up on Luka takes this week.
Despite our social media era, high level sports still contains secrets that the public may never know. I’ve been privy to some wild things that have never hit the media. The stakes are too high for many people involved.
I’m confident that Nico Harrison has seen such things in his past, and perhaps his present. If his ownership group demanded him to trade Luka over a personal spat, do we think Nico would come out in a press conference and say this?
If the Mavs got very worried about an achilles, would they come out and say this? Of course not.
A leaders job is to take bullets. I’ve known Nico to be a leader. So, until he proves us wrong, I’m willing to see how this plays out.

I feel sheepish saying how much I’m gutted by this.
But, I’m also willing to admit when I don’t have all the facts.
Time will tell.
But for now?
Welcome to my sports hell: a place where our beloved franchise player was just traded to the Lakers, all with a renewed fire lit under him.

Education:
I’m so proud of this new venture and we’re having a ton of fun. It’s the podcast we always wanted, but never had.
My new Video Podcast with Ashwinn & Oren launched a new episode today.

If you missed last week: check out the worst offenders in Dishonest Marketing plus Ferrari X F1, CFP Copywriting and so much more.

Follow Your Curiosity:

Blessings:

The Lord is BLESSING me in many ways, but chief of all is these below.
I hope you are blessed to find these as well.

If you made it this far, I appreciate you. If you appreciated this, will you reply with anything? Feels like I’m writing into the void sometimes.
Thanks again.