Fallout Thoughts About The Luka Disaster

Dallas' star is gone and not coming back – When/How will the franchise ever recover?

The premise of today’s piece is to attempt to piece together the many related and unrelated thoughts that have been in my head for 10 days now. I promise to the folks hoping for Cowboys and other pieces and such that we will get back to our normal programming soon, but this story deserves another look.

I have been in Dallas since 1998—interestingly enough to me, at least, July of 1998—which was just days after the city added two athletes who will forever matter: Dirk Nowitzki and Brett Hull. Somehow, in the piece below, I will work both of those Hall of Fame players into this Doncic trade. But the point of that is to say this: I have never seen anything like this. I assume this is one of those moments that our city will never shake. We all know what Dallas has been known for over the past 60 years to people who have never been here. It seems pretty possible that to an entire generation, hearing the word “Dallas” will make them think of “the city that traded that dude away for mysterious and foolish reasons.”

It remains bizarre. And because it remains bizarre, like the unsolved mysteries of 1963, there are no shortage of fan theories and things thrown against the wall to try to offer some explanation. This just doesn’t make any sense so our minds need to solve this mystery and boy do our minds create wild scenarios. Now, I have heard it all in the last 10 days and I assume – like so many of these in the age of the internet – there are too many fictional pieces to ever expect many who might already think the NBA is rigged and that the league wants the Lakers to have their place at the top (for ratings!) to believe it is just the case of the Mavericks betting against Luka Doncic’s future.

But, I still believe that is where we are.

I arrived here with my own conversations and intuition almost immediately, but I do think it is important to see that the actual NBA reporting is confirming this more and more: the Mavericks wanted out of the Luka Doncic business.

Does it make sense? Not to anyone outside the organization.

Did they go about it the right way? Of course not.

Did they do damage that may never get fixed? Absolutely.

But those are the facts as I understand them to be true. There is nothing more to wrap your arms around than the idea that the Dallas Mavericks' new leaders—in particular, Nico Harrison and Patrick Dumont—are making perhaps the biggest bet ever against the city’s most beloved son since Dirk, just months after he had the Mavericks within a few games of a parade.