So... Alright - The trade that shocked the world

Episode Date: February 11, 2025

Geoff dives into the most unexpected sports trade in a long damn time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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if you couldn't care fucking less about sports. I'm referring to the bombshell Saturday night trade of Luca Doncic of the Dallas Mavericks to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis. Now, let me go ahead and give you the full trade. That's essentially, that's the trade of consequence, right? That player for that player. But let me give you the full trade. So the official trade is Luka Doncic, a guy named Maxie Kleber and a guy named Markif Morris, who all play for Dallas.

They've been traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, a young player with a lot of promise named Max Christie, and a 2029, that's the year, first round draft pick. There is a third team involved with the trade, the Utah Jazz. They receive Jaden Hood-Shafino, a 2025 second round pick, and a 2025 second round pick that comes to them via the Clippers through the trade.

That's ancillary stuff that the Jazz entered in just to make it happen, make the trade work out for the other teams. Why is this a big deal? Why do you give a shit? Why does the whole world give a shit all of a sudden about this trade if you don't understand sports?

Let me do my best to explain it. Luka Doncic is a 25 year old NBA player. Now the fact that he's 25 is a big deal and plays a big part into this, right? He's from Slovenia. He has been playing professional basketball most of his life in similar to the way Europeans enter into professional sports leagues as early as their tweens and get bought by teams and then

Spend their childhood coming up through the professional ranks doesn't work that way exactly in America But it's more it's more formalized and organized in Europe and HEEK is a product of that probably the most successful product of that system I guess up until Victor women Yama who's also come from it, right? So he's this 25 year old NBA player who plays for the Dallas Mavericks. Dallas Mavericks are a big team, they're a big deal. Los Angeles Lakers are the biggest deal.

I, and I hate to say that as a Boston Celtic fan, the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers are, and have been bitter, bitter rivals for a very, very long time. The Celtics have come out on top almost every single time, like 80% of the time, they face each other in finals. And it is, listen, I don't wanna punch down. So I'm trying to be respectful of the Lakers.

But just so you understand this rivalry and my place in it as a Celtics fan, I'm trying to be respectful of the Lakers and their legacy and not paint this story with the brush of a Celtics fan. They're a very important organization and as much as I would like to shit on them, it's good for the NBA when the Lakers are good. That's another important piece of this, I think. So you've got this guy, Luka Doncic. Is he good?

He's so good. That's the problem. He is one of the three or four, now I'll say it, he's one of the four best basketball players in the world. And you hear those platitudes a lot. It's a big deal, obviously. These are some of the best athletes in the world. But he's one of the four best basketball players

in the world, and those four basketball players are on a different level than everybody behind them. They're on a different level than number five, number six, number seven, number eight, number nine, number 10, right? And the delta grows. And my guy for the Boston Celtics, Jason Tatum, is number five.

He's on that list. And I would love to be able to kick him into the list with the top four and say he's on the same level as those four guys. I just don't think he is. I think he could get there. I think he might be doing it this season. But the point being, try to be fair

and show as much unbiased as possible. So the conventional list that most people agree on, they'll jot, you know, they'll move up two to three or three to two or seven to eight or vice versa. But the list of the best players in the world tends to be number one, Nikola Djokic. Number two, Janas Antetinkoppo. Number three, SGA, Shea Gilgis Alexander.

And number four, Luka Doncsic. By the way, those four, none of those guys are American. Joker is from Serbia, I believe. Yanis is from Greece, SGA is from Canada, and Luka is, as I said earlier, from Slovenia. Number five is Jason Tatum, my guy. He's considered to be the best American NBA player. Behind him, number six already, is Victor Wiminyama.

He's French. Number seven, Kevin Durant. Number eight, Steph Curry. Number nine, Anthony Davis. That's why I'm bringing it up. And number 10, Jalen Brunson. Now, like I said, you might put Steph higher up or lower, or you may put LeBron in at number 10,

or maybe you put in Anthony Edwards at number 10. Carl Anthony Towns is having a hell of a year. There's a case for him being at the top 10, but generally considered, that's a pretty solid top 10. But what we're really focused on is those top four. Those four are so much better than the rest of the league, but they are also so much better than the rest of the top 10.

It's really, I to hammer that in. These are four very special players. We are blessed right now to be in a situation in the NBA where there are multiple generational talents. And that's it's been a rarity in the past. We had it. We had the Jordan era. We had the bird versus magic. You know, you had Bird versus Magic,

you know, you had Wilt versus Bill, you had all these great rivalries, but there was never this much talent all at once, right? Imagine having four Michael Jordans in the league at the same time. That's ludicrous, right? But that's kind of what I'm saying. Like you've got four people that are all of the same ability right there.

So you could say, Janis is number one and Luca is number four. And people would maybe argue a little bit, but nobody's gonna nobody's gonna make up make too much of a stink. If you're putting any if you put SGA is number one and Joker is number two, there is a case to be made for that. There's a case to put Luca anywhere between one and four on this list, but definitely not below four. And like I said, this four, these top four are a couple of rungs on the ladder above everybody else

Okay, now that I've hammered that point home He got traded for the number nine best player in the world that doesn't seem that unequal, right? So let's just put them at the bottom of the list and say number four But really if it's like 1a 1b 1c and 1d and those guys any of those four could be number one Let's say Lucas four, Anthony Davis is nine. There's only five people between them. Is it that crazy of a jump? Yes, it is for a lot of reasons.

One, when you get a hold of one of these players, like a Luka Doncic, who is a generational talent, who is going to be the face of your organization for the next 15 years probably who Might be the face of the entire NBA a guy who by himself is gonna sell you a billion dollars in jerseys alone He is a cash machine, but better than that. He's a winning machine. He's a basketball machine He's going to bring good things to your team. The Dallas Mavericks are the fourth largest NBA market

as I understand it. There's a lot of money in basketball in Dallas. This is an important team. The Dallas Mavericks were able to acquire Luka Doncic via a trade with the Atlanta Hawks on draft night. It was considered to be a lateral trade at the time. He was drafted by the Atlanta Hawks and the Dallas Mavericks drafted a guy named Trey Young.

And then they basically swapped those two players. Trey Young, very good player, little controversial, nowhere near on the level of Luka Doncic. So the fact that the Dallas Mavericks were able to trade for him on draft night and get him, they've had him now for I think six or seven years. Was a huge win. Instantly, if this kid pans out

and nobody knew he was gonna be who he is, right? But he almost from the second he stepped on the court in the NBA, he was a superstar. And it became pretty clear that this guy is on another level. He's got that much command over the game. He's an offensive juggernaut. He's got this, he's about six foot. I think he's listed as 6'6", I saw,

but I think he's like 6'7", or 6'8". I've seen him listed from anywhere from 6'6", to 6'8", which is a frustrating thing about basketball in general. You can never get a true height on any player. A lot of players will lie and say they're shorter than they are because they don't want to have to play center. Like Kevin Durant says he's shorter than he is. A lot of people will lie and say they're shorter than they are because they don't want to have to play center. Kevin Durant says he's shorter than he is. A lot of people will lie and say they're taller than they are because everybody wants to be taller or bigger or better, right? Anyway, I've seen him

reported anywhere from 6'6 to 6'8. So he's a big dude. He's a bulky dude. He's got heft to him, which is important in the NBA as long as your frame can handle it because he can't be pushed around. He can't be bullied around. He's got an amazing shot. His range is the entire court like Steph Curry. He has got a tremendous basketball IQ. He is in every way a floor general. He understands the game intuitively.

He is a tremendous passer. The only two knocks you could put on Luka Doncic, and these are the knocks that ultimately the Dallas Mavericks are putting on him, are that he is consistently out of shape. Every time he comes in from his summers off, he has to lose weight and he's been drinking a lot of beer and they're constantly struggling with him in terms of his conditioning, right?

Whatever, he's 25 years old. And two, he's not the best defender in the world. And that's not uncommon either. As long as he makes effort and tries and isn't a glaring error on the defensive end, then his offensive capabilities and his IQ are so much better. It more than makes up for any defensive liability he has. To put it into further perspective, Luka Doncic took the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals last year at 24 or 25 years old, which is almost unheard of to be the best player, the star of a team and to make it to the NBA Finals before like 27 is typically when the best stars, like when the best of the best are able to bring their team

to the NBA finals, it's typically around 27 or 28. So he's already ahead of the curve on that. Nobody expected them to make it that far and they did. Boston beat the shit out of them, but that's okay. That was supposed to happen. Boston has been in their position in the past. They were in their position in the past, took their lumps. Now they're back. They were ready. They had the losses under their belt. position in the past. They were in their position in the past, took their lumps. Now they're back.

They were ready. They had the losses under their belt. They had the experience. They had the grit and the determination. They knew what they had to do to make it happen. This was Luca and that team's first shot at a title in a very long time, Luca's first shot ever in the NBA. They were gonna lose that.

To get to the finals is such a huge tremendous win The craziest thing you can do is To then trade the guy who put you there to another team. Not just another team a rival team For a worse player. Look, we're not gonna talk about that first round draft pick they got because it's useless. It's gonna be, the Lakers are gonna have Luka Doncic. They're not gonna, it's not gonna be a good draft pick. It's gonna be a bottom tier first round draft pick. I assume it'll be leveraged for a future trade.

The other players, one of them's good, but not anywhere on the level of what we're really discussing. What really happened here is the Dallas Mavericks decided to trade L Luca for Anthony Davis. The guy who was in rarefied error in that somewhere bouncing around that top four, like I said, for a guy who's very good, a top 10 player, an all NBA defensive player, right?

Surely it can't be that unbalanced, right? It is, it is. It is for a myriad of reasons. Let's get into those reasons. And I like Anthony Davis. Like, I don't want it to seem like I'm being negative towards Anthony Davis. I've actually met the guy. I was fortunate enough a couple of years ago when I worked at Riche

teeth to get to go out to L.A. and film a video with them. We played a racing game together for about an hour. I spent most of that hour trying to convince him to leave the New Orleans Pelicans. He hadn't gone to the Lakers yet. He was still at the New Orleans Pelicans. I tried to convince him to go to Boston. I would have loved for him to leave the New Orleans Pelicans. He hadn't gone to the Lakers yet. He was still at the New Orleans Pelicans. I tried to convince him to go to Boston. I would have loved for him to play in Boston. I would still love for him to play in Boston.

Look, this guy is 6'11". He is somewhere between a power forward and a center, which is part of his discomfort playing in the Los Angeles Lakers. LeBron handpicked him to come to the Lakers with him. They won a title together in Los Angeles. So he is an NBA champion for the Los Angeles Lakers. Anthony Davis, he's a tremendous guy.

Like I said, he's LeBron's right-hand man. He's the best player on the Lakers right now, but he's about to turn 32 years old. NBA players don't age well outside of LeBron and a few others. Big men in the NBA don't age well. If you're over six, eight, your body starts to break down around like 27, 28 if you're lucky.

It's really rare for a guy who's the size of Anthony Davis to have a long healthy career. Anthony Davis has already had a career full of injuries. That's to be expected. He's the guy on your team when he goes up for a block or a dunk, you get terrified that he's going to come down wrong on his ankle and he's going to be out four to six weeks because he's had a lot of injury problems, which like I said, is to be expected given his size. But

this guy's tremendous defensive player. He's a great offensive player, too. But he's a really good defensive player. He's one best of, he's been the best defensive player in the NBA a couple of times. I'll say that. So on a Saturday night, out of nowhere, it just gets announced.

Lakers, Mavericks, flipping these two dudes. Mavericks are sending the future of their team to the Lakers and the Lakers are sending their current best player to the Mavericks are sending the future of their team to the Lakers and the Lakers are sending their current best player to the Mavericks. What that means for the Lakers is we'll get into that in a bit. What it means for Dallas is a team that just went to the finals has dismantled the heart of that core and shipped him off to another team to bring in this defensive specialist who is seven years older and a health risk.

I feel like I'm kind of all over the map here, but it's such a wild thing. Why would Dallas do this? Here's what Dallas says. Dallas says, we genuinely think Anthony Davis makes us better. They also said, we are sick of dealing with the conditioning issues of Luka Donchich.

Now, at 25 years old, given what he can do, even if he's out of shape, I don't think anybody in the NBA gives a fuck about his conditioning. You can get that under control. He's about to move to Los Angeles, where everybody is a supermodel. Moving to Los Angeles has a way of making people

want to get in shape. And you know what I mean? I don't think any pundit or NBA analyst takes the conditioning thing that seriously. Now, these guys have been working with Luca his entire career. So they obviously know more about Luca than we do. And Luca's hurt right now.

He's coming off an injury right now. They don't wanna be in the Luca business. That's their business. It's just such a shock. It would genuinely be like the Bulls trading Michael Jordan the year after they won their first championship because they think Patrick Ewing makes them better defensively. It's like, yeah, Patrick Ewing is a hell of a player, right? He's great on the Knicks, but he's not fucking Michael Jordan. Why on earth would you trade Michael Jordan for Patrick Ewing?

Now that's not a perfect one to one comparison, but I think it's close enough, right? There's a couple of conspiracy theories on why they do it, but if you take him at face value, they did it because they're tired of constantly trying to get him into shape, while also really prizing Anthony Davis' defensive abilities. And as they say, they think defense wins championships, right? They want to bring Anthony Davis in so that he can be this defensive line for them while also still providing a tremendous amount of output.

Now, does anybody in the NBA think that's a good idea? No. I will say this in their defense. The Dallas Mavericks signed Kyrie Irving two years ago when nobody in the NBA wanted Kyrie Irving. He was a lost cause. He was nothing but trouble for the Celtics. He was even more trouble for the Brooklyn Nets.

He had all of the controversy with the vaccination stuff and he wasn't even able to play in the city of the team he played for because of his vaccination status. It was, he became a horrible distraction for the entire NBA and nobody wanted them on their team. Dallas Mavericks took him in. Everybody thought it was a terrible idea. They flipped that guy around and he has been tremendous and completely,

completely rehabilitated his image and his career in Dallas. And he's also one of the reasons that Dallas made it to the NBA finals last year. So clearly Dallas needed to get a little bit better because they weren't over the hump. Some could argue that the experience of going and losing is enough, but they made some moves in the off season. They brought in Klay Thompson,

who is kind of an aged superstar, who people think doesn't have a lot of gas left in the tank from a Golden State and kind of did a Kyrie thing with him and he's playing pretty well and so they definitely strengthened their team and bolstered the team but I guess they felt like that wasn't enough and they didn't see the value in Luka that everybody else on earth does so under the cover of night with no warning to Luka or Anthony Davis or the coach on either team or LeBron James or anybody on earth The GM's did this trade and just suddenly this bomb hits, right? Nobody on earth can understand why you don't want this guy in your team and why you would give them up for so little and

That's I think that's the That's the the real crux of the problem is if you take the Mavericks at face value and they say yeah we don't want this guy on our team anymore. We really do think that Anthony Davis is a better fit for our team. Look at it apples to apples. Luca 25 years old entering into the prime of his career. An NBA player hits their primer on 28 years old and they tend to be in it from 28 to 32. Then there is what,

what historically has been a pretty steep decline in ability from then on out. A lot of NBA players are gone by 35 or 36 out of the league. There are obviously LeBron James is out there and Vince Carter's out there and Al Horford's out there who are able to maintain their abilities and their skills and their athleticism for much longer. And I hope that Luca is able to do that.

I hope that Anthony Davis is able to do that, of course. But Luca is 25, so he's not even in his prime yet. And he's already taken you to the NBA finals. Anthony Davis has won an NBA final, but he will turn 32 in March. He's a big guy whose body will break down. Every big man's body breaks down, right? It's so rare that they don't.

He's an injury risk. He's at the end of his prime window. So he should, in theory, start tapering off in productivity next year, right? Mavericks say they're trying to win now. They think he will make them better this year than Luca did. Now they're not having a great season right now and the Lakers are, weren't having a great season,

but they kind of are out of the blue. But that's why nobody on earth thinks this is a good idea because Anthony Davis is seven years older, seven years closer to the end of the line. Luca isn't even in his prime yet. He's gonna continue to get better. So we take it at face value, what they say, that's why. A lot of people suspect they just don't fucking like Luca,

he's bad in the locker room, they didn't get along with him, there's gotta be some tension there, and it got to the point where they would rather not be in business with him, than be in business with him. I can see that happening, I think it's stupid, I think when you're dealing with a generational talent like that,

you figure out how to make it work. Maybe they couldn't, but if you don't figure out how to make it work, if you can't make it work, here's the thing that you do. You put that guy up on the trade market so you can see what you get for him. Because if Luka Doncic is available,

every team in the NBA wants him. Every team, even those other three guys are on the trade block against Luka. If you call up Oklahoma City and you say, hey, we want to trade Luka for SGA, how do we get this done? I don't know that Oklahoma City ultimately says yes, but they have the conversation

and they run it up the flag pole and they try to figure out if it works. Same thing with Yanis. Same thing with Joker. I think maybe the only person in the entire NBA you couldn't work a trade out for with Luca is maybe Joker. But even then, I think if you call Denver and you say, hey, we want to switch Joker for Luca, Luca's a younger version of him.

What do you say? I don't know that Denver does it, but they fucking look at it and they take it seriously and they might. If you call my Boston Celtics right now and you say we wanna trade Tatum for Luca right now, straight up, there's no way Boston says no. And that breaks my heart because I love Jason Tatum

more than anything, but the dude is that good, right? So to go privately to the Lakers and say, we wanna get this trade done with you, they say it's because that's all, he's the only player in the NBA they want, Anthony Davis. They know that he's gonna make their team better. They think that putting him with Kyrie Irving and Klay Thompson creates this like this three,

this big three that's really solid. I don't think many fans of the NBA are going to agree with that, but we will see. Also clearly neither team has done trading, so there will be more moves to be made before the trade deadline, which is February 8th, by the way. So if you're listening to this after February 8th, the story's over.

If there were more trades, they've already happened, you can go look it up and see. If not, keep your eyes open because they will be, there will be more trades, they've already happened. You can go look it up and see. If not, keep your eyes open because they will be, there will be more trades, right? But the one thing you do is you talk to the other 28 teams in the league and you say, hey, Toronto, what do you got for me? You know, hey Orlando, I want Paulo Banquero

and three first round draft picks and Orlando looks at it. They figure it out. You know, there's like every team is going to put a tremendous deal forward towards you. Maybe ultimately you go with the Lakers at the end of the day, but at least you see what else is available and what else is out there and what people are willing to give. And it also gives you a value for your guy so that then you can get more out of the Lakers because the Lakers would have given up more than they did. There is no doubt in my mind that Dallas could have got

another three picks at it, maybe at least another first and probably two second round picks if they wanted it. There's so much more, he's worth so much more than they got for him There's so much more, he's worth so much more than they got for him that it's just like, it's basically, Dallas as a fandom is in a complete and total meltdown because of this. They've just lost the future of their team

for the next 10 years, right? They've already had them, they've fallen in love with them. He just bought, last week, he bought a $15 million house. He closed on a $15 million house in Dallas. And then this week, Dallas trades him. Like he basically, he had no idea. Nobody had any idea, right? He cried apparently when he found out.

The only thing he said was that he thought he was gonna spend the rest of his NBA career in Dallas. He didn't wanna leave. He didn't think he would ever leave. He wanted to be the next Dirk Nowitzki. There's a guy who played for Dallas a couple of years ago, a German dude named Dirk Nowitzki, who became the face of the franchise,

took them to a championship and won a title with them and is beloved there. He will be one of the most popular dudes in the city of Dallas for the next 100 years, right? Luka was on track to be that guy, to be the next version in line of that. So it's weird that they would trade him. It's even weirder that they wouldn't entertain offers

from anybody else because they could get so much more for him than they did. Do they hate him? Do they really think bringing in Anthony Davis makes them better now and they're a win now kind of team? They're not trying to set themselves up for success for the next five years. They're trying to set themselves up for success this year.

You gotta hope that that's the case because that's what they say. And all the other reasons are nefarious. A lot of conspiracy theorists out there think that maybe Luka has some sort of an injury they're hiding and they're trying to get rid of him before it becomes apparent. If that's the case, that would be very bad for basketball.

A lot of people, especially a lot of Celtics fans, think it's a fucking conspiracy that the Lakers are in the middle. I know they're playing pretty well right now. They're in fourth place. But LeBron James is gonna retire here in the next year or two. He's on his way out.

Anthony Davis is a great 1B guy. I don't think a lot of people think he's a 1A guy. And I guess to make sense of that, they're on the best teams, there are one A guys and one B guys. They're both like good enough to be the best player on the team. But they're like the one A guy,

for instance in the Boston Celtics is Jason Tatum. The one B guy is Jalen Brown. They're both almost equally good, but the A guy has like that, whatever that thing is that allows him to be the alpha and for him to take control and to be the floor general and to really marshal up and run everything. And it's really rare to be a one A guy,

to be a true one A guy. There aren't a ton out there. I think a lot of people think Anthony Davis is a one B guy, a guy who's a perfect compliment to that guy. And that's what he's been in LA with LeBron James. So they were going to have to deal with. Trading LeBron or LeBron retiring or whatever, they're going to have to get out of the LeBron James business, the Lakers are.

And then they're in the Anthony Davis business, who at this point is 32, is about to be 33, 34 and will continue to break down. May not be a one a guy in general. They don't have a ton of draft capital because they have been. Trading picks and making every move in the world that they can to make LeBron happy over the last few years. And so they don't have a ton of flexibility right now. Things weren't looking good long-term for the Lakers.

And the Lakers have had this fortune their entire time in the NBA when they have these, you know, you get Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, you get Magic Johnson for his run, then you replace him with Kobe and Shaq, you get Palgasol out of nowhere. As soon as as soon as LA hits the doldrums and they start to like they start to threaten to suck, LeBron James James shows up He brings Anthony Davis with him now LeBron James got one foot out the door Anthony Davis is you know on the tail end of his prime Lakers are in Have an upcoming existential crisis trying to figure out how to rebuild their team without a lot of draft capital because they sold their

Souls to get LeBron over the last few years and they don't have a lot How do they build from this? And then all of a sudden out of the blue on a Saturday night, nobody on earth sees it coming. Luka Donchich is now a Los Angeles Laker and they got him for 40 cents on the dollar, a fucking gift that just landed in their lap. Do I think it's an NBA conspiracy?

No, I do not. I think I can see why people do. It's a fun conspiracy to believe in. But you take a step back and you got to say, listen, I said it earlier, it's better for the NBA if the Lakers are good. They put eyes on TV screens. They get viewership. They're a great rival for us in the Celtics. I'm not worried about beating Luca and the Lakers in the finals. We still will, we beat them last year, we'll beat them again.

But I'd be a fool not to recognize that a bad Lakers team is bad for the NBA. It really is. So Luca going to the Lakers gives them a super duper superstar for the next decade that they can build around. They're already a huge free agent destination because everybody wants to live in LA.

If you don't know this about the NBA, there are three markets that people wanna play in. They wanna play in Miami, they wanna play in New York, and they wanna play in Los Angeles. Because New York, LA, and Miami are fucking awesome cities to live in and to be famous in. It's really hard to get a star to wanna go to Milwaukee or Oklahoma City, you know what I mean?

Or Minneapolis. So it's already easy to get people to wanna go to LA, but it's a hell of a lot easier when one of the biggest generational talents of this generation is gonna be there for the foreseeable future. So why does LA do this? Because they just got handed the biggest gift the franchise has had in the last 30 years.

How do you say no? There's no reason you would say no. Anthony Davis is great. He's a great defender. He's a great player. But like I said, he's 32. He's at what's considered to be the end of a big man's prime.

Why does he wanna do it? Well, I'll tell you what right now, it probably sucks to go from LA to Dallas. It sucks to not feel wanted. But the general manager of the Dallas Mavericks is a good friend of Anthony Davis and a huge fan of Anthony Davis and he's been on record for a long time

saying he loves him and wants to work with him and thinks he's a great player. So there's a history there. Anthony Davis is clearly coming into very friendly territory from an ownership and GM and management standpoint. He's got a lot of really bummed out fans that are probably gonna feel negatively towards him and it's not his fault and I feel bad for him.

Lot of people in the NBA five years ago wanted to see Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving play together. They thought that would be the combination of the league. Now we have that combination. It's coming much later in both of their careers, but it's still gonna be interesting to see that. But the cool thing for Anthony Davis is he traditionally fills the role of their careers, but it's still gonna be interesting to see that. But the cool thing for Anthony Davis is, he traditionally fills the role of a center,

which is the biggest guy on the court. He hates that position, doesn't wanna play that position, has to play that position in Los Angeles. Dallas already has two centers that are both great in Daniel Gafford and Derek Lively. So he will get to play the position he wants to play, which is power forward, the four slot. So he's jazzed about that. He can finally play the kind of basketball he wants to play, which is power forward, the four slot. So he's jazzed about that.

He can finally play the kind of basketball he wants to play for a team that, imagine what it must feel like on a personal level to have a team trade the modern day Larry Bird for you. That's gotta be kind of the best feeling in the world if you're Anthony Davis. You're like, fuck yeah, I'm worth this. Fuck yeah, I'm as good as Luka Donchich.

Fuck yeah, it was a smart trade. Fuck yeah, I'm worth this. Fuck yeah, I'm as good as Luka Doncic. Fuck yeah, it was a smart trade. Fuck yeah, I'm gonna show everybody on earth that it was a good trade and that there was good reason to do it when I help elevate this team and take them to the finals and do what Luka couldn't and win. Are they gonna do that?

I don't think so, but if I'm Anthony Davis, I feel like it and I'm fucking jazzed that I'm this prized by an organization and he should be prized by an organization and he should be prized by an organization because like I said he's a top 10 player in the NBA. It's just you know, he's not Luka. So that's where we are. I don't know if any of that made any sense. I don't know if I talked in too many circles, but we're at a place where.

I'll tell you this, if they get worse, and I'm that GM, Nico Harrison, I'm worried about my fucking job, because you just traded the guy that took you to the finals last year. The only way this trade is a win for Dallas now is if they win the finals. If you trade the guy who took you to the finals last year

to then go to the finals and lose in the finals again this year, that's not a win. If you don't make it to the finals, that's definitely not a win. You got objectively worse by the trade. If you win the NBA title, you're proven right. It was clearly the right decision, and now the Dallas Mvericks are NBA champions.

Is there any chance in hell that's gonna happen? I really don't think so. So basically you've created a win condition that's almost impossible to achieve. Damn near everything else you do other than win the NBA title this year if you are the Dallas Mavericks is viewed as a failure. I just, now you have to deal with the what ifs

for the rest of your career. And if you're the Los Angeles Lakers, congratulations, you just got handed one of the best players of the last 20 years, maybe 30 years. He's gonna, he's got the potential to be a top 20 all time basketball player if he stays healthy and stays in shape. And you already got what you consider to be the best out of Anthony Davis.

You already you brought him in. You paid him all the money in the world and he gave you a title and you're happy. They'll probably hang his fucking jersey in the rafters someday. Maybe it'll be interesting to see. He did win them a title. He was definitely the best player on the team when they won the title So they're like fucking Leave on a handshake. Thanks Anthony Davis. Hopefully it's positive was a positive experience for you and vice versa

Now we get this young kid we get seven more years to start him out of him before he's the age you are today. It's Man, it's hard to look at it as a loss for the Lakers It's been interesting because I think it's going to spur more trades in this, before the trade deadline. I think that because no one on earth saw this as even an inkling of a possibility, I think it's changed the landscape of the NBA a little bit. And so there's gonna be more activity and more movement

before the February 8th trade deadline probably. The Lakers and the Mavs I think have both signaled that they're not done trading. If you're the Lakers, I'll be honest, if you're the Lakers, I think you take a hard look at trading LeBron. Trading him to Golden State or Phoenix and getting some draft capital back

and maybe some really good role players back you need the Lakers are in need of a big man now they need a good center. There's a lot out there that are pretty cheap. I know it's insane to talk about trading LeBron James but he's gonna retire soon and he has already basically said he wants to play in Golden State or potentially Phoenix. And if you don't think you're gonna win this year with Luca and LeBron, I think you gotta consider it. I think you gotta consider it and they probably are considering it.

There's also a lot to be said for keeping a guy like LeBron James on your team. Just LeBron mentoring Luca for the rest of the season and then maybe next season as well has gotta be an invaluable benefit for Luca and for the L of the season and then maybe next season as well has got to be an invaluable benefit for Luca and for the Lakers, you know? And LeBron's still phenomenal. I mean, he's still a phenomenal player.

I don't put him in the top 10 anymore, but he is still a phenomenal player who can easily be the best player on the court any given night he wants to. He can't do it every night anymore because he's 40, but he can definitely turn it on when he needs to, right? Like during a playoff race or during the finals. If you are the Dallas Mavericks,

you now have three big men. I know Anthony Davis is gonna play the four, but those other two big men you have are pretty valuable. And you could look at Dillon one to get some more offensive power on your team, because right now, AD's a great player and he's a decent offensive player, but you've lost probably the best pure offensive player in the NBA.

And Kyrie Irving and an aged Klay Thompson, I don't think are gonna be able to pick up that kind of slack. You need somebody young and high energy. It's honestly a deer and fox or somebody I think would be great to throw in there, but he just got traded to the Spurs to go play with Wimby. So I wouldn't be surprised if Dallas has some more moves

ahead of them. Jimmy Butler is kind of flailing around trying to find a place to land and burning bridges everywhere he goes. He'll never play for the Heat again. It doesn't look like he told the Golden State Warriors and the Memphis Grizzlies, he doesn't want to play for them.

So there is some potential that he could end up there, but he also seems like he could be locker room poison at this point in his career. I don't know, man. It's a lot to figure out. It's gonna be interesting to watch the NBA media for the next couple of days. And when all the dust settles, we will have a playoff

race that's going to look a lot different than we thought it would, I think. And that's fascinating. The San Antonio Spurs, I just mentioned they got a guy named De'Aaron Fox, they got a lot better. They are now in the playoff race in a way that they probably weren't before. Some teams are going to get a lot worse. I wouldn't be surprised if the math's got significantly worse, honestly. I wouldn't be surprised

if the Lakers got a little bit worse, honestly, while these teams try to figure out and rebalance and determine what they are going forward. So wild times in the NBA. I hope that wasn't too boring. I hope I didn't put you to sleep. I hope I wasn't too boring. I hope I didn't put you to sleep. I hope I covered it adequately These are all purely my shitty hot takes

But I've arrived at them from a lifetime of NBA fandom and from absorbing a shitload of sports media And so I feel like I have a pretty good handle on it Ultimately, I I land where everybody else. I can't believe they made this trade. I can't believe they got as little as they did for Luka Doncic. And I would love to be proven wrong in much the same way we all were proven wrong when we thought it was a terrible idea for Dallas to sign Kyrie Irving. And it turned out to be a brilliant move that helped get them to the finals. I might be sitting here at this desk

with my head in my hands at the end of June this year going, I cannot fucking believe Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving just beat the Celtics in the NBA finals. I can't fucking believe that Aluka Doncic less Dallas Mavericks just swept my team or beat my team in six games in the NBA finals. This fucking sucks. I don't think that's gonna happen.

At all. Song of the episode is gonna be Gun Show by Classics of Love, a beautiful little fun punk rock song by Classics of Love, which was held by Jesse Michaels. I will do an episode of So Alright Someday just about Jesse Michaels and his influence over the entirety of the punk world

and his legacy and how strong it is. But this is an awesome, fun, catchy, easy to sing along to song that's got one of my favorite lines in all songs. That's just so much fun to sing. It's, the whole song is great and you'll love it, but this line, don't care about success or failure, just want a chance to impale the jailer,

is so fucking fun to sing along to. And it's such a cool song, and I hope you like it as much as I do, because it's upbeat and it's aggressive and it's political, and it's, yeah, it gets your blood flowing. All right. This is the end of the show. What?