{"id":839930,"date":"2025-04-08T18:13:16","date_gmt":"2025-04-08T23:13:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/the-mavericks-cant-undo-the-luka-trade-but-they-could-try-not-salting-the-wound\/"},"modified":"2025-04-08T18:13:16","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T23:13:16","slug":"the-mavericks-cant-undo-the-luka-trade-but-they-could-try-not-salting-the-wound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/04\/08\/the-mavericks-cant-undo-the-luka-trade-but-they-could-try-not-salting-the-wound\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mavericks can\u2019t undo the Luka trade, but they could try not salting the wound"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Let\u2019s check on Dallas Mavericks<\/a> fans.<\/p>\n

In the wake of the earth-shattering Luka Doncic trade, things could be\u2026uh, going better. Fans parading coffins and creatively constructed signs<\/a> around their beloved Dirk Nowitzki statue are being joined outside by those who tried to go to the game, but got thrown out of the stadium<\/a> for screaming \u201cFIRE NICO\u201d on the Jumbotron. It\u2019s a humanitarian crisis, a totalitarian regime<\/a>. By keeping the whole process under wraps before dropping the trade in the middle of the night while the team was on a lengthy road trip, the organization clearly understood a bad reaction was coming, but did they expect it to be Nowitzki himself showing up at a Lakers game<\/a> bad? <\/p>\n

Is it a revolt? No, Nico. It\u2019s a revolution. <\/a><\/p>\n

I feel for Mavs fans, and I frankly don\u2019t know if I would react any more favorably if the Boston Celtics<\/a> traded Jayson Tatum for Bam Adebayo and a first-round pick. But things are getting dire out here, and the Mavericks\u2019 out-of-touch response to their fans\u2019 completely valid freakout has me wondering if the NBA needs some honest-to-goodness legal reforms to protect fans. It\u2019s been out of touch, out of whack, and threatening to drive us all out of our minds.<\/p>\n

Absurd press conferences introducing their new players without the GM who acquired them present<\/a>. Completely tone-deaf quotes from owner Patrick Dumont saying<\/a> \u201cI\u2019m a big Luka fan<\/em>. My family are big Luka fans. I have a really deep appreciation for what he brought to this team\u201d… about a guy they just traded with no warning, in the middle of the night, less than a year after he led them to the NBA Finals<\/a>. If they were actively trying to make this worse, I\u2019m not sure what they would even do differently. And while I\u2019m not here to fix it, surely we can make this a little better, even if at this point I\u2019m hesitant to suggest the Mavs won\u2019t continue to find ways to make their responses even more tactless.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, like any unmitigated public relations disaster, we don\u2019t have a time machine to go back and fix the problem. But obviously, if any team is considering trading their best player in their mid-20s for a worse player in their 30s\u2026 don\u2019t. But that ship has already left port, sailed into an iceberg and sunk to the bottom of the ocean. So what is to be done?<\/p>\n

Step one: say sorry. <\/p>\n

The first step in correcting for any big mistake is apologizing, which the Mavericks probably think <\/em>they can\u2019t do less than two weeks after making the trade. But that\u2019s only because they want to look like serious people, but it would be possible to apologize and remain serious. You\u2019d just have to fire all the people who helped make the decision, so Nico Harrison, Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont. But that might be complicated, since two of those people own the team, so\u2026<\/p>\n

Thankfully, it\u2019s also possible to apologize without remaining serious. And we already know they aren\u2019t serious people, because\u2026 *gestures to the trade they just made*. So just apologize, fire Nico so he takes the fall for the billionaire owners, and move on. That\u2019s a good start.<\/p>\n

Step two could be a bit more material. Once they\u2019ve issued the most confusing apology in human history, the Mavericks ownership should probably start the world\u2019s most obvious bribery campaign. Free merch at every game. Kyrie bobbleheads everywhere. Hell, Adelson and Dumont should probably start funding public works projects across Dallas. Anything they can do to buy off the fan base, even if it\u2019s obvious. <\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019m not morally into bribery either, but I think getting your fan base back on board is worth a semi-obvious sustained PR stunt. But there\u2019s also the possibility that there is nothing <\/em>the Mavericks ownership could do to fix this thing in the short term; I\u2019m not even sure winning a championship would fix it. It\u2019s an affront to the past, present and future of this team \u2014 an affront to the fundamental laws of NBA nature. What can they do in that case?<\/p>\n

They could also go full-desperation mode, pull a page from the Lakers\u2019 book<\/a> and try to retroactively fail Davis\u2019 physical, thereby voiding the trade and starting possibly the most confusing legal process the NBA has ever seen. It wouldn\u2019t work, but it would show the fans they really, really <\/em>understand how wrong the thing they did was, and maybe earn some goodwill back for trying.<\/p>\n

Or, perhaps, the answer is to pretend it all didn\u2019t happen. Go full authoritarian mode and rewrite the history books. There never was a Luka. There has always been a Davis. Any mention of the trade is met with \u201cwhat trade?\u201d or \u201cwe\u2019re looking into that, thanks for bringing it to our attention.\u201d <\/p>\n

It sounds crazy, but get this: it\u2019d only be the second-craziest thing they\u2019ve done this season. So as a last resort, I don\u2019t see why not.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Oliver Fox
Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Let\u2019s check on Dallas Mavericks fans. In the wake of the earth-shattering Luka Doncic trade, things could be\u2026uh, going better. Fans parading coffins and creatively constructed signs around their beloved Dirk Nowitzki statue are being joined outside by those who tried to go to the game, but got thrown out of the stadium for screaming<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":839931,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[706,25007],"tags":[6651,45377],"class_list":{"0":"post-839930","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cant","8":"category-mavericks","9":"tag-cant","10":"tag-mavericks"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=839930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/839930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/839931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=839930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=839930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=839930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}