The annual complaint from the Los Angeles Lakers stars had been lodged.
On Jan. 22, amid a month-long stretch of mediocrity in which their underwhelming team went 7-6, a story was published on ESPN in which the concerns of LeBron James and Anthony Davis were shared for all the world to see. This was not a new revelation, this notion that the Lakers co-stars were worried that the team’s president of basketball operations, Rob Pelinka, might not be able to upgrade the roster before the Feb. 6 trade deadline in the kind of way that would return them to title contender status. As if that wasn’t enough, Davis even issued a public request for a new center not long after while doing an interview on the network’s massive global stage.
Team sources say the public complaints caused serious frustration all the way to the top of the Lakers franchise. What’s more, there was little confidence that the sort of moves James and Davis wanted were realistically possible on the open market.
Truth be told, I’ve written some version of that same story in previous years. One time, in fact, it included comments from James in which he said something that — in terms of how the Lakers stars saw their situation — could be said every year about this time.
“Y’all know what the f— should be happening,” James told me on Jan. 7, 2023.
But when the moves they wanted wouldn’t come, or when the trades that were made wouldn’t lead to the championship-contender status they all wanted so badly, the tension would rise on both sides of the Lakers ledger. And all this time later, with Lakers owner Jeanie Buss clearly growing tired of this disgruntled dance and the chance of a basketball lifetime presented by a Dallas Mavericks team that was quietly desperate to move on from Luka Dončić, this move was made that was as monumental as any we’ve seen in decades.
As one source directly involved in the deal put it: “This might be the most stunning trade in NBA history.”
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Dončić is a Laker. Davis is in Dallas. And James, whose marriage of convenience with the Lakers has suddenly grown more uncomfortable, must now decide what it all means for the twilight years that he’d planned on spending in Tinsel Town. And all three of them, it should be noted, had no idea this was going down.
Anyone who spent any time around the Lakers could tell that James and Davis were incredibly close. Yet now, with his Klutch Sports brother dealt to Dallas and Dončić arriving to provide a younger version of what James does best for these Lakers, it’s fair to wonder where this relationship is headed.
James has a player option for next season worth $52.6 million, but the internal expectation before this trade was that he’d be requesting another extension when the summer rolled around. Even before this deal, it was unclear whether his desires would be met. And the question now, with the dynamics so drastically changed and Dončić arriving as the indisputable alpha-male in Laker Land, is this: Might this be James’ last season with the Lakers?
Let’s go back to that key word for a moment: alpha. While Davis had no shortage of fans within the Lakers’ walls, there was also a strong sense that he wasn’t “1-A” material. League sources say there were concerns about his durability and availability and a belief that he could never truly be counted on as a top option in the future. And while his approval rating was high, it had not been forgotten how — in those days before the decision was made to fire former coach Darvin Ham in early May 2024 — the known threat of a possible Davis trade request loomed so large when it came to their internal calculus. The pressure on that front had been rising for quite some time.
That organizational conclusion about Davis mattered a great deal, of course, because James — possible GOAT status and all — is a 40-year-old star whose angst with the franchise had made the key stakeholders wary of what was to come. The part James played in the public frustration had most certainly been noticed. What’s more, Lakers officials were wary to repeat anything remotely close to the James-driven Russell Westbrook trade in the summer of 2021 that left the franchise in such turmoil. In short, as they saw it, there wasn’t a true franchise centerpiece to be found.
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So when the Mavericks came calling, it was a solution to the Lakers’ problem that had been percolating for quite some time. For all of his faults, the 25-year-old Dončić is the type of player who could put the Lakers back on the proverbial map for the next decade. And the irony here, league sources say, is that both of the involved teams had similar concerns about the stars they traded.
The Mavericks were greatly concerned with Dončić’s durability — or lack thereof — and convinced his approach to the game would continue to be a problem in the years to come. Yet while there was no shortage of teams that expressed shock at the fact that the Mavericks didn’t broadcast their willingness to move Dončić, league sources say there was at least one team besides the Lakers that was approached by Dallas nearly two weeks ago about the prospect of swapping Dončić for another star.
That bid was turned down, but the message sent in the process had been clear: There was trouble brewing in Dallas. And the Lakers, in the end, were the ones who reaped the benefits.
(Photo of Luka Dončić: Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images)
