Sports will rip your heart out

Starting my Sunday with a big middle finger to the Dallas Mavericks organization.

When I was 8 years old, I was a fan of the New Jersey Nets. It was the only sports team I cared about at the time. My dad bought us season tickets (because we couldn’t get the games on TV, despite living in New Jersey) and we went to almost every home game despite living 60 miles away from the stadium.

In June of 1993, my favorite basketball player in the world died. His name was Drazen Petrovic, and anyone who was a huge NBA fan at that time will probably bore you with the stories about how great he was and how great he was going to be.

If I remember the story correctly, Petro was sleeping in the passenger seat while his girlfriend drove his sports car on a highway in Germany. There was an accident, he didn’t make it, and I found out in the newspaper the next morning.

One of my more vivid memories is going upstairs to tell my dad. He was still asleep in his bed. I brought the newspaper with me in case he didn’t believe me, and I ended up just holding it up for him to read because I couldn’t get the words out through my tears.

It was the first time that sports broke my heart. Looking back at it, I’m almost surprised that I kept being a fan of sports after that.

My daughter is roughly 7 years old and now I’m starting to see her go through some of the life milestones that I went through when I was her age. My wife and I are sports fans, so indoctrination started at a young age. The easiest team to get our daughter to watch was the Dallas Mavericks, a shared favorite team for our family, and her reason for watching them was Luka Doncic.

Last night, I laid awake in my bed after the news broke that the Dallas Mavericks had traded Luka to the Los Angeles Lakers and wondered if my daughter would cry the way that I did when Petrovic died. I wondered how she would handle her first real sports heartbreak. I wondered if she would give up on sports forever or find her way back to it the way that I did.

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Here’s my mini-breakdown of the trade:

There is nothing about this trade that makes any sense.

The Mavericks traded away one of the 5 best players in basketball, who is 26 years old and coming off a season where he led the league in scoring and then led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals.

They traded him away for Anthony Davis, who is about to turn 32 and is about as injury-prone as you can be before the league decides that you’re not worth the trouble anymore. This is also a guy who once told the New Orleans Pelicans that he wouldn’t play in any games until they traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers and then sat there and actually did it. This isn’t a guy who wants to be a great basketball player, it’s a guy who wants to be rich and play for the Lakers.

Oh, and they also got a mediocre bench player they don’t need in Max Christie and a 2029 1st round pick that is worth significantly less now that the Lakers will have Luka fucking Doncic in the middle of the his prime in 2028.

Let’s compare this trade to some recent blockbuster trades, shall we?

• The Nets received FIVE 1st round picks plus a pick swap for Mikal Bridges

• The Jazz received THREE 1st round picks plus two pick swaps along with two all-star level players and a rookie with potential for Donovan Mitchell

• The Jazz received FOUR 1st round picks plus a pick swap and some pretty good players for Rudy Gobert, who might be the worst offensive player in basketball

The Mavericks didn’t get anywhere near that return and they were offering a guy that is often talked about as being “the next LeBron James” in terms of the way that he can control any game or win any playoff series by himself.

The reporting says that the Mavericks were worried about signing Luka to a supermax because of his conditioning and his defense.

And….I feel like I’m crazy so I just need to say some of these things….

He finished 3rd in MVP voting last year. He has finished no lower than 8th in MVP voting in every season of his career since his rookie season (when he easily won Rookie of the Year). He is 26 years old and right now is facing his first extended absence due to injury.

You do not trade a player like that. You just don’t. It is akin to buying a house, remodeling said house, and then immediately lighting it on fire because the paint color doesn’t look the way you thought it would.

And EVEN IF you were worried enough about Luka to be trepidatious about signing him to a long-term big-money contract, the thing to do is to let the rest of the NBA know that you’re willing to listen to offers for Luka Doncic and watch them outbid each other until you have an overwhelming return that all but guarantees a solid future for the team without him.

But, no. They called the Lakers, and nobody else. They offered Luka and in return asked for 10 cents on the dollar. THIS. DOESN’T. MAKE. SENSE.

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As I mentioned, I grew up as a fan of the New Jersey Nets, who no longer exist. When they moved (and hired renowned wife-beater Jason Kidd as their head coach), I decided that made me a free agent.

I spent a couple of years trying on the fandom of the LA Clippers and Philadelphia 76ers before I settled on the Mavericks, because my wife loved them and because I was getting in right when they had drafted Luka Doncic. I was certain that the next 15 years were going to be NBA bliss.

Last night, my wife and some of the friends who I have met through Mavs fandom gave up on the team. We’ll see how long it lasts, but for right now my wife is throwing herself into the blender that is New York Knicks fandom because her favorite player on the Mavericks was not their 1st round pick in 2018 (Luka), it was their 2nd round pick….Jalen Brunson.

When a team is gifted with a draft class like that and throws it away for two miserable years at the end of Anthony Davis’ career, it is probably time to stop attaching yourself emotionally to their decision-making. I get it.

I don’t know what I’m going to do. I don’t know what type of damage last night has done to my love of the NBA. I’m pretty sure I can’t root for the Mavericks anymore, but I’m not trying to rush into any sort of big decisions like that.

Right now, I’m just sitting here marveling at how similar it feels to being 8 years old, trying to explain to my sleepy father that the player that made me scream with joy until my throat was sore on a regular basis was dead.

At least that one was a freak accident. This one feels like self immolation by a franchise that was maybe always headed in this direction. The team is no longer owned by Mark Cuban, but by one of Donald Trump’s biggest and most consistent donors. The team is no longer coached by the prickly but talented Rick Carlisle, but by the aforementioned shitheel Jason Kidd.

And their best player is no longer the fun-loving kid who can’t be stopped when he has the basketball in his hands, it’s the 33-year old guy who refused to get vaccinated and then got suspended for tweeting a recommendation for an antisemitic film.

The Mavericks have taken almost everything that I liked about the franchise and turned it on its head. And they did it in a way where they don’t even have any pieces to build a strong future.

It might be time for a new team, which is a thing that I was hoping I would never have to say or think again.