OverDrive - Windhorst on Doncic landing with the Lakers, the Mavericks' perspective of the deal and the conditioning becoming a factor

Episode Date: February 3, 2025

ESPN NBA Insider Brian Windhorst joined OverDrive to discuss the headlines around the NBA, the massive deal with Luka Doncic to the Lakers, the Mavericks' perspective on trading the superstar, the conditioning playing a factor, becoming a duo with LeBron James and more.

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there anyway to spend this negatively is there anything you can think of they would make you believe Okay, the Lakers are gambling here with this Luca deal For sure they are because Luca is not signed past next season and Once he's traded he loses the capability to sign what we call the super max contract and once that is taken away, then the Lakers are, they have no advantage over any other team in terms of paying the free agent.

And so the reason that this was put into the rules is to prevent the Kevin Durant situation that happened to the funder, I guess LeBron too, but it really happened after Durant where you're sort of on your third contract and you basically can get, in the case of Luca, it would have been $100 million more. And so now the Lakers don't have that quote unquote advantage. So when they come to him this summer, Luca know, Luca's going to be able to pass judgment on whether he wants to be with the Lakers or not. And if he doesn't want to be there, doesn't want to commit, the Lakers could be under a bit of pressure.

And I think that's one of the reasons why they didn't trade all their pieces for him because they had to convince the Mavericks, look, we may have to do some things to build this team up to make sure that Luca's gonna resign. I would bet on him extending. It's too early to know any different, but they lose the hammer of the Supermax, which is one of the reasons why the Mavericks traded Luca. They didn't wanna pay him the Supermax.

They didn't wanna give him the 350 million. Well, the Lakers can pay him $220 million over the same amount. It's literally that much of a difference. I wouldn't say there's a reason not to do it, but there is a level of risk there. So Brian, were you just trying to enjoy your weekend and then all hell breaks loose in the middle of the night? Or do you want to take us through that timeline? Yeah, I mean, this time of year, there's not much sleep.

And the thing that's different about this is that most of the time, people in my job, we hear about possible trades. We don't always understand all the parameters. We don't always see all four corners. Sometimes we can't confirm that they're real, but it's unusual if we hear about a significant trade that has never crossed our screen. And in this case, it never crossed anybody's screen, and it happened to also be one of the biggest trades of all time.

And so that's what was so remarkable about remarkable about is not so much the gravity of it Which was amazing in itself, but the way it appeared to come out of the clear blue What are you hearing from other executives around the league? In terms of the way this evidently played out that the Mavericks reached out to the Lakers and the Lakers alone To orchestrate this deal and it was never an auction where other teams could be included. Yeah so the most important thing you have to know about this is that the sort of the mother decision of all of it is that they decided that they didn't want to pay him the $350, $5 years $350. Their evaluation was that whatever his temperament,

his conditioning, whatever you wanna say, they didn't feel like that was a good investment. I'm not necessarily in agreement with that, I'm just telling you the decision that they came to. And so once that decision was made, it guided everything else that they did. That was the true decision. And so the second decision was

if we approach trading him, do we want to trade him to remain competitive or do we want to start some sort of rebuild? They decided on we want to trade him to remain competitive and perhaps even still be competitive enough to win the championship this year. So once those two decisions have been made, all of a sudden the number of players, the number of teams that you can go to goes shrinks way down.

And you have to understand that when you approach how they went about it. If they weren't sure what direction they were gonna go and they had to see what offers they were gonna get before deciding on direction, then an auction made sense. And again, I'm not passing judgment on whether that decision was the correct decision, but that's the decision that they made. And they identified Anthony Davis as a guy that they thought would make it work.

And so they only negotiated with the Lakers and when they were able to get Davis, they didn't need to expand it. And so that's the process they went about. I can understand that process. Again, I'm not necessarily saying I agree with it, but I understand what led them to trade LUCA, and I understand why they only want the Lakers. What I don't understand is why they didn't get more stuff

from the Lakers. And so I haven't heard a good excuse yet for it. Maybe I will at some point, but I haven't heard one yet. Brian, the conditioning thing has been brought up so many times, like I have to ask, like what are we talking about? Did this guy just tell the Mavs, like I don't work out, I don't do that, or like, how bad was this?

Well, I think it's being a little overblown that that was the only thing. I mean, a little overblown that that would be only thing i mean you guys watch basketball at soon you can be look at play you know you see you know that the most told individual i've ever seen right now but he if that's not the most like there's things about his game that are are problematic uh... and things that you know the you know and nobody has more information on

Luca than the Mavericks but I you know I think the conditioning is an issue was really an issue this season you know they had great momentum coming off of last year and Luca was being bothered by a knee issue and he went and played for his national team and then when they got eliminated and didn't make the Olympics, he rested it, which is probably what he needed to do, but he came into training camp and he wasn't in the best condition. He got hurt. He hurt his calf.

While he was out with the calf injury, he got really out of shape. When he came back, they were so displeased with his condition that they, you know, he had this, I think, finger or wrist injury or something, they shut him down for a while, yes, to rest his hand, but also because they told him to get in shape. He did, and then he re-injured the calf again, again, probably because he was a little out of shape. So, like... Jesus.

But that's not a reason to trade somebody. Like, I think that was a contributing factor. I don't think it was the driving force. I think there's just the whole, you know, there's a balance with star players. You know, like LeBron. LeBron stresses your organization out in many different ways, okay? And he has, there are times when he will have you say, man, LeBron is causing me to have a bad day if you are in his organization

place sure attack has made many people have good here okay because of what he does for a lot of star players are the balance and with luca there's a balance the maverick felt that the balance without a whack and decided to pull the record the conditioning only being one factor of it but they were probably numerous things that played into the final choice. You just mentioned LeBron. Does this kind of signal for you that the end might be near,

or do these two find a way to coexist gracefully for a couple of years? Like, how do you see it playing out? Well, one hour ago, LeBron was named player of the week for the 69th time. I don't think the end is near. I think he's got a lot of juice left. Can he still do it like he did in 2014? Of course not. I think he absolutely can contribute to a team, to a competitive team, and if anything I think this energizes him because I think Lucas ceiling is higher than Anthony Davis's feeling. He's already proven that. He's proven the most rare thing that you can have in the NBA in my view is a player who can change the balance of power in a playoff series.

You can take a team that is actually maybe not the better team and flip it on his head. We saw LeBron do that a number of times throughout his career. A number of teams he took to the finals were not the better team in certain series and he would flip the series on his head. Luca has done that. There are two times already in Luca's career where his team entered a series,

probably not the better team, that he flipped it and won it, including getting them to the finals last year against Minnesota, where he just was a killer in that series. And he was a killer in that series against Phoenix a couple years ago, and Phoenix was the 60th win, number one overall seed, and they took it, including taking game seven on the opposing court. That is incredibly, incredibly valuable.

And so to me, getting a player like that is, and having a player like that is incredibly worth it. And the balance that you have, it makes it worth it. And so, you know, for years, LeBron was the guy who did that. And now he isn't that player anymore. But they're no longer building around him with the Lakers. The Lakers now have a player to build around and LeBron can be a supporting piece and if LeBron's role is to be a high level supporting piece he can still play that role on a very high level. So you know we'll see what he says about him when he goes on the record, we'll see how he plays. You know when Luca teamed up with Kyrie Irving they struggled their first couple of months together but eventually they have a thing got it right uh... i think the bright and still

i think one still has uh... a way to help with them and be a really significant uh... partly with brian winhorst of the espionage how significant is is this reporting that uh... has indicated lebron was not in clued it all not involved was not aware of this uh... how significant is that in terms of the storytelling of this trade

and know that it's hard to believe and i'm not lebron so i can't say uh... whether it's true or not but from what i understand in what i've been told that that is indeed what happened, that he did not know, that Luca did not know, that LeBron did not know, that Anthony Davis did not know,

that the agents did not know. The Utah Jazz, who were a part of the trade, found out within the last hour or two what trade they were actually a part of. Now, you can say that that's not true and you don't believe it, and I can't necessarily with 100% certainty promise you that,

but the individual people who were involved told me that they did not know. And yes, that is extremely unusual, extremely rare. And that is part of the reason why this trade did not leak. And you may say, well, why would they do that with LeBron? Well, number one, they didn't want to leak. They had their reasons why they didn't want it to leak. And number two, I'm not so sure that's the worst idea

not to put it on LeBron's lap because of his connection with Anthony Davis. You don't want to make it necessarily where he's choosing whether Anthony Davis stays or goes, whether they were gonna give him the choice or not. If he had heard and then not did anything, it would have been like he agreed and he said go ahead and do it. I think it was a strategy and I also think it made some sense even though I know people

are not going to believe it. Yeah, I mean it is pretty incredible considering for the better part of 20 years anything that's happened in the NBA has been about LeBron or it's felt like it's been about LeBron competing with LeBron or teaming up with LeBron and and here he is literally directly involved as a Laker and now as a teammate and after he put on the performance he did at the Garden in New York

uh... and then this news breaks and from from Dallas' perspective their, their GM has been very, obviously he's been speaking on it, it was somewhat of an awkward press conference with Jason Kidd up there, because Kidd wasn't aware of it, yet Kidd, I guess, has to go along with it. What else is he going to do as the head coach?

If they win this year, next year, the year after, do you think that's, obviously, that'll justify the trade,? Do you think that's like obviously that'll justify the trade or do you think trading Luka is just always going to be connected to to Niko and to the Mavs moving forward? Well, infamy is on the table here. You know, Luka plays in the same conference as the Mavericks and if Luka is regularly pounding the Mavericks heads in, it's going to be a hard thing to live down. But the Mavericks believe that this team that they've assembled can compete to win the Western

Conference this year. And, you know, they are going to have great size and they are going to be very good on defense and those are two things that have proven repeatedly over the years to be very valuable in the playoffs. I think there could be another move in there for them as well. They need to sort of bulk up their ball handling now that they've traded Luca. So you know it is definitely a fascinating thing. The level of risk here is extraordinarily high. And I got to tell you, I don't know where the win-loss metric of this is, but I will tell you that I have a saying that I've developed in 20 years covering the league, which is

when you win the championship, it means never saying you're sorry. So if the Mavericks indeed win, then it means never saying you're sorry. But they may in fact need to win if they're ever going to live down this potential catastrophic moment if it goes very poorly. What a deal, man. What a weekend. I mean, there were other deals over the weekend completely overshadowed. Up here, the Raptors are winning, Brian. I know you're aware of that. We're trying to figure out what they're doing here. Are you tanking? I don't think they're going to chase down the play-in, but do you have any ideas? We're a few days away from the

trade deadline. What do you think Masai and Bobby Webster could be up to? They're definitely tanking and they will definitely be losing more. I think we're losing more than they wanted to and so I think it's a bit of a respite that they've gotten some wins and sort of lifted the mood of everybody but, you know, their team is not structured to win. And the only stuff I've heard about the Raptors is where they would be in as a third team. I don't think it's some sort of breaking news that Bruce Brown's contract is potentially attractive for teams that are looking to maybe move off some money.

So I think the Raptors are in one of the situations where they may be receiving called as the third or fourth email where they're basically going to rent out their uh... uh... expiring contracts and flexibility so i would not expect anything that dramatically affects them on the floor this year i could be them being a facilitator and significant rate okay will brace for that as the week goes on. I know it's been a crazy 48 hours. We

appreciate you doing this. Thank you, Brian. Take care. Brian Winhorst of ESPN.