In defense of the Dallas Mavericks

The Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers shocked the entire sporting world on Sunday when they executed one of the biggest trades in NBA history. In it, the Mavericks shipped the league's reigning scoring champ, Luka Dončić, to the Lakers in exchange for a package headlined by 31-year-old Lakers star Anthony Davis.

Reaction around the league has been extremely negative toward the Mavericks for making the deal. Dallas fans, in particular, have reacted with stunned disbelief to losing a player who many assumed would take the mantle of long-term face of the franchise, much like Dirk Nowitzki before him. The general consensus among basketball critics seems to be that the Mavericks got rooked or at the very least should have held out for more.

If Harrison had any level of doubt about Dončić's long-term commitment to Dallas, unloading him now was definitely the right move.

Not so fast.

While shock and dismay over losing a generational talent like Dončić is a natural reaction from Dallas fans, you can make a decently convincing case that the Mavericks made themselves better — both in the short and long term — with this trade.

Dončić, admittedly, is a one-of-a-kind player in the modern NBA. In a league dominated by the three-point shot (more on that later), Dončić has turned himself into an unstoppable offensive force while driving to the basket. Watching Dončić attack a modern NBA defense is like watching a jackhammer attack a particularly pliant piece of concrete: he seemingly shuffles in, seemingly always finds an angle, and bulldozes his way into territory where he is literally unstoppable.

Once he has entered the key, he is more likely than not going to score and also more than likely going to draw a foul on one of your frontcourt defenders. To stop him, you have to utilize multiple extra defenders, which leads to potentially even worse results since Dončić is also an outstanding and creative passer. Every time Dončić has the ball in his hands, he is a problem that NBA defenses do not have an answer for. In this respect, his only NBA peer is the Milwaukee Bucks' Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Players like Dončić are simply not traded by NBA teams at the age of 25, especially when they are not in the final year of a contract. Finding a player like Dončić through the draft is the NBA equivalent of hitting the lottery — it is the hope that causes NBA teams to stockpile first-round draft picks in the first place. And as evidenced by the Mavericks' trip to the NBA finals last year, there's solid evidence available that a team built around Dončić as a cornerstone can meaningfully compete for an NBA title right now.

Making a championship team

Dallas fans' reaction to losing Dončić is an understandable one, but there are solid reasons to think Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison made the right move. The reason for that begins with a talent that Anthony Davis brings to the court — one that might well be far more valuable than any of the things even a player like Dončić brings to the court.

Considerable ink has been spilled over the last few years about the number of three-point shots in the NBA. Much of the criticism of modern NBA offenses is overly simplistic and ill informed. In my view, as someone who actually watches a fair number of NBA games, NBA offenses are as varied and creative as they ever have been. However, one thing is inexorably true: NBA offenses are shooting many more three-pointers, and the number of those only goes up in every year that goes by.

But while the Boston Celtics breezed to the NBA title last year on the strength of an unprecedented barrage of three-point shooting, the Celtics (who have been largely healthy and returned the same roster from last year) are at best the third-best team in this year's NBA. One of the teams that has been clearly better than the Celtics this year has been the Mavericks' division rivals, the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Like everyone else, the Thunder shoot a lot of threes, relative to any NBA team from 10 years ago. Relative to other teams in the current league, the Thunder do not shoot very many threes and are not particularly successful when they do shoot. They are 16th out of 30 teams in three-point rate this year, and they are merely 18th out of 30 in three-point efficiency.

The reason the Thunder are compiling one of the best point differentials in NBA history this year is pretty simple and well understood by other NBA general managers: They have stockpiled an almost unbelievable collection of elite perimeter defenders. These defenders do not merely attack passing lanes and gun for steals; rather, they actually block and alter shots from beyond the three-point arc.

The standout in this category is the spindly Chet Holmgren, a 7'1" shot-blocking menace who has disrupted three-point shooters all season. Unfortunately, injuries have sidelined him for significant stretches. When healthy, however, he has averaged an impressive 2.6 blocks per game — many of them on three-point attempts.

But the Thunder’s commitment to contesting long-range shots goes far beyond their 7-footer. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, a 6'6" MVP candidate, has garnered plenty of attention for leading the league in scoring. Yet in interviews, he takes more pride in ranking among the league leaders in steals while also averaging a blocked shot per game.

Lu Dort, a 6'4" defensive specialist, nearly matches that mark, averaging almost a block per game. Off the bench, Alex Caruso (6'5") and Cason Wallace (6'4") each contribute more than half a block per game, adding to the team’s relentless defensive presence.

From top to bottom, Oklahoma City’s roster is packed with defenders at every position who can make shooters think twice before letting it fly. This season, the Thunder are proving to the basketball world that aggressive perimeter defense is a formula for winning — one that is paying off in a big way.

And, if the tropes are to be believed, for league championships.

Questions of health

This reality was clearly front and center in Harrison's mind when he pulled off the trade. "I believe that defense wins championships," Harrison said, by way of explaining himself to a furious Dallas fan base. "I believe that getting an All-Defensive center and an All-NBA player with a defensive mindset gives us a better chance. We’re built to win now and in the future."

This explanation has been widely panned by Mavericks nation, but Harrison is on firmer ground than many Dallas fans are giving him credit for. Advanced metrics and old-school metrics both rate Davis as a far better defender than Dončić. But more importantly, Davis is a player who can really and truly alter every three-point shot taken within his vicinity. How long is the list of such players? It probably includes Davis, Holmgren, and San Antonio phenom Victor Wembanyama. End of list. Others can block reasonable numbers of shots close to the basket. Those who can reliably swat multiple three-pointers out of the air per game are still unicorns. But smart GMs who see what havoc guys like Davis, Holmgren, and Wemby can wreak on a modern NBA offense are doubtless in agreement: Unicorns are great, and you should get one on your team if at all possible.

The value of Davis' defensive presence, when healthy, probably cannot be overstated. Additionally, it should be noted that Davis is no offensive slouch. On a per-game basis, he scores at roughly the same clip as Kevin Durant. He can shoot from range, he can drive the basket in isolation, and he is a lethal pick-and-roll partner. In the present NBA, if both Dončić and Davis were healthy and I had to choose one to help me win a playoff game, I would personally pick Davis, as genius as Dončić's offensive ability is.

There are two major reasons, however, for skepticism about what the Mavericks have done. The first is that everything I've said about Davis has been preceded by the phrase "when healthy." The problem with Davis is and always has been that he's frequently not healthy. Over the last three seasons, Davis has missed an average of 24 games per year, which means that he's been unavailable roughly one-third of the time.

The other major reason is somewhat related to the first: Dončić is 25 and Davis is 31. Across all American professional sports, athletes tend to reach peak professional performance at age 26 or 27, which means that Dončić is on the right side of the aging curve while Davis is four full years on the wrong side of it. I think that Davis is currently a better overall player than Dončić, when healthy, although some might disagree. However, I think two years from now it's highly unlikely that that will still be true. Every year that goes by in the future, the normal expectation is that Dončić's performance will exceed Davis' by a wider margin. Even the best-case scenario for the Mavs would concede that in three years, Dončić will almost certainly be a much better player than Davis.

A tough call on the title trail

Good reasons exist to question Dončić’s long-term future with the Mavericks. The most obvious is his contract situation. His current deal effectively runs through next season, with a player option for the following year. When that contract expires, he could walk away in free agency, leaving Dallas with nothing in return.

Assessing the likelihood of that outcome remains difficult. Dončić has never publicly indicated unhappiness in Dallas or signaled an intent to aggressively test free agency. However, Harrison likely had insight into Dončić’s mindset that extended beyond public perception. He may have believed Dončić felt frustrated with the Mavericks’ title-chasing efforts.

Even if he had no such information from Dončić, the threat of it must have loomed large in Harrison's mind. And every month closer to the end of Dončić's contract likely reduced the return the Mavs would get for him as a trade asset. If we can imagine a world in which Dončić told Harrison, even privately, that he intended to test the free agent market during next season, there is no circumstance in which he could expect to receive a player of Davis' quality in addition to a first-round pick for Dončić on the trade market.

If Harrison had any level of doubt about Dončić's long-term commitment to Dallas, unloading him now was definitely the right move.

The second concerns the other stated reason the Mavs entered into this trade: concerns about Dončić's conditioning. I don't know how truthful Harrison's remarks and the leaks from the Dallas camp have been when it comes to Dončić's commitment to maintaining his body in NBA shape. I doknow that despite being a young player, Dončić regularly misses games due to various ailments. He has not played more than 70 games in a season since his rookie year. This year, he won't play in 60. You don't have to squint very hard at Dončić's career to see a player who is likely to become every bit as much of an injury concern as Davis has been, sooner rather than later. As the Philadelphia 76ers are currently demonstrating with Joel Embiid, building a franchise around a player who regularly misses a third of the season or more is a losing proposition, no matter how talented that player is.

At the end of the day, I think it's fair to ask whether the Mavs could have gotten more draft pick capital out of this trade. I think if the Mavs had been free to talk more openly with other teams about the possibility of the trade, or if they had been willing to accept more draft picks in exchange for a lower caliber of current player than Davis, then those are valid concerns. But from Harrison's standpoint, the view that the Mavericks are title contenders isn't a crazy one, even if they are currently eighth in the Western Conference standings. The Mavericks have performed very well in a tough conference despite the fact that their star player has missed more than half this season's games thus far.

The Mavs plus Davis remind you an awful lot of the Thunder and probably pose the most serious threat to the Thunder's own title run. I don't know that they can beat the Thunder (or Cavs or Celtics), but I think it's reasonable to dream that they can. And in such a universe, making this trade does make some level of sense.

If I had been in Harrison’s position last weekend, deciding on this trade would have been tough. I probably would have hesitated to make the move. But Harrison no doubt has access to more inside information on key factors, such as Dončić’s health and long-term satisfaction in Dallas.

Given that context, five years from now, we may look back and conclude that Harrison and the Mavericks deserve an apology for all the criticism they are currently facing.