How Will We Remember the Luka Trade in 100 Years?

One year later, Doncic for Anthony Davis looks even worse. When basketball is extinct and Nico Harrison’s memories have been uploaded to the cloud, will we feel any differently?

Not all trades are created equal. Some are boring. The Suns send Jusuf Nurkic and a 2026 first-round pick to the Hornets for Cody Martin, Vasilije Micic, and a 2026 second-round pick. Some are exciting. The Thunder send Paul George to the Clippers for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Danilo Gallinari, and five unprotected first-round picks. Some are so big, so out-of-nowhere, and so monumental that the person breaking them has to reiterate they’re real. That they’re not doing a bit and weren’t hacked. That what would have felt impossible a day before has now, somehow, happened. 

was that kind of trade: a stop-the-world transaction that continues to reverberate across the league a year after the ink has dried. Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days later, it still reads like a lie. What was true then remains true today. You do not trade Doncic, a 25-year-old wonder who had already taken the Mavs to the Finals, just because you wish he had a better offseason workout regimen. And if you do trade him, you certainly don’t shop him in secret to only one other team. You let the league know he’s available and watch the offers roll in. 

But one year later, what’s most remarkable about this trade is that it ages worse with each passing day. Yes, it was immediately panned as the worst trade in modern NBA history, but somehow it has sunk even lower since. Davis has played a total of for the Mavericks and might have been traded for six second-round picks by the time you finish reading this sentence. Doncic leads the league in scoring and has surpassed LeBron James on the Laker totem pole of importance. L.A. is 29-19 despite not having built an optimal team around Doncic. The Mavericks are 19-30 because they did build that team and then traded him away. 

If the Mavs hadn’t fallen ass backward into the no. 1 pick and Cooper Flagg, NBA basketball in Dallas would be a wasteland. Flagg, at least, gives Mavs fans reason to hope: a teenage live wire, barracuda, and supreme bucket getter already taking NBA defenses to the inferno. His emergence has softened the blow of losing Doncic, but it hasn’t changed the way we look back at the trade … yet. Will it ever?

Will we ever remember the Luka trade differently? Will the march of time ever paint it in a more favorable light? How will we remember it in another year? Another 10? 200? Let’s forecast how it might play out. 

February 2027: Two years since the trade 

The situation: The Lakers are loving life. They’ve built a more complementary squad around Luka, defenders and shooters all over the floor. LeBron James is a Cavalier once again and the entire Lakers organization breathes a bit easier knowing it no longer has to bend over backward to accommodate him. They are the 2-seed in the West and have the highest-rated offense in the league. Doncic is the MVP favorite, dicing up defenders and averaging over 34 points per game. A nagging ankle issue kept him out for an eight-game stretch in late December and he’s had to sit out the second night of some back-to-backs, but it hasn’t affected his offense. When he plays, he’s nails. If he hits the 65-game mark, first-team All-NBA is a certainty. L.A. is a true title contender and has the cap space to add another major piece in free agency. Vibes are strong. 

Davis is on the Orlando Magic. Through the first month of the season, he was the front-runner for Defensive Player of the Year, but an MCL tear in early December knocked him out for a couple of months. He starts experimenting with stand-up. 

How we remember the trade: With unbridled laughter. A year from this writing, the Luka trade is still considered the biggest flub by a front office in American sports history. “Nico” has become a verb. It’s synonymous with “ruin.” 

February 2030: Five years since the trade 

The situation: After coming into the year as the preseason favorite for MVP, Luka suffered injuries to his knee and groin that kept him out for the entirety of January and the start of February. When he comes back, his defense, already a massive question mark, suffers even more. Doncic is almost 32 and strictly guarding power forwards now. He does what he can to avoid switches, but offenses repeatedly bring him into actions and feast once he’s there. Point guards score more against the Lakers than any other team in the league. Still, Doncic leads the NBA in scoring and assists, but his body is starting to break down and he’s arguing with officials more than ever. The Lakers have made it out of the first round only once in the past four years and they’re currently barrelling toward the play-in. 

Davis is in his first year as a Chicago Bull. He had not played more than 35 games in any of the previous three seasons, but being back home has rejuvenated him. He’s averaging 26 and 12 and anchoring a competitive Chicago defense. There are shades of Bubble AD and the United Center crowd is in love. In 2028, while still in Orlando, he launched a new prank-calling podcast, Prankonia With Anthony Davis and Lil Rel. The show was featured on Vulture’s Best Comedy Moments of 2028 and is nominated for a Golden Globe in 2029. It loses to Aubrey Plaza’s You Talk When I Tell You to Talk.

Harrison remains a pariah in Dallas and cannot step foot in Texas for fear of retribution. He is president of basketball operations for the Kings.

How we remember the trade: The trade is still a disaster, though the memory has started to go down easier for Mavs fans. Flagg is already an All-Star and one of the most exciting players in the league. He has shaved the goatee into a mustache and it looks fine. 

February 2035: 10 years since the trade

The situation: Anthony Davis retired three years ago and has since become a permanent cohost with Impractical Jokers, now in its 21st season. Davis went viral two years prior for portraying a blind waiter making “fully loaded” table-side guacamole. He played his final two seasons for the Raptors and appeared in seven games total. 

Blindsided by a trade again, Doncic is now a Clipper. Rob Pelinka is still, against all odds, the general manager of the Lakers and rumors abound that Harrison, after being fired by the Kings in 2033, was brought on as a shadow special assistant and is heavily involved in personnel decisions. Sources say Harrison maneuvered tirelessly to make the deal happen and that Pelinka acquiesced after Doncic called him a cuck during a team meeting. At the beginning of February, the Lakers are seven games below .500 and, aside from Erick Dampier Jr., a complete shitshow. 

The Clips came into the year as the favorite to come out of the West, but injuries to Doncic’s shoulder and calf keep him out for the entirety of December and half of January. They are hopeful he can return in late March. 

How we remember the trade: The same way we currently remember the Thunder trading James Harden to the Rockets. Flagg led the Mavericks to the 2032 title and the Luka trade, while still an unconscionable misfire, is now recast as the prologue to Flagg’s legend. 

February 2050: 25 years since the trade

The situation: Doncic retired from the NBA 12 years ago, took one year off, then played two more seasons of professional basketball for Real Madrid in NBA Europe. Over the course of his NBA career, he led the league in assists three times, won five scoring titles and, in his final year in the league, took home one championship. He averaged nine points and three assists in the Finals, a seven-game slugfest that saw the Las Vegas Wild Cards outlast the Charlotte Hornets.

After seven consecutive losing seasons, Lakers fans call for the team to change its name to the Mambas. Ownership refuses and a compromise is made to change the name of their G League affiliate to the South Bay Mambas. 

Davis reprises Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s role as Roger Murdock in the new hit ABC comedy Airplane! He’s the breakout star of the series, featured on the cover of Time, and the show wins a Peabody. In his Emmy acceptance speech, Davis thanks Harrison who “believed in me when no one else did.” He is the only player in the Basketball Hall of Fame to receive and only the second to win an acting Emmy. Klay Thompson was the first, winning the 2038 Best Supporting Actor in a Drama Series for his performance as Bastion in Night Bulls From Oaxaca. 

How we remember the trade: Now 50 years into this millennium, the trade is prominently featured on compilations of the wildest sports moments of the century and former president Barack Obama ranks it the sixth biggest shocker since the year 2000 in a list published on his website, barackloveslists.com. 

February 2075: 50 years since the trade

The situation: Doncic has coached the Slovenian national team to gold in three Olympics in a row. Eight years ago, after the 2068 gold medal game in Fort Smith, Arkansas, he and the head coach for the United States, Chris Paul Sr., got into an altercation postgame after Paul kicked one of the Slovenians in the nuts. The fight ended when both men hit each other with folding chairs simultaneously. Neither coach was present for the medal ceremony.  

Davis dies in 2067, eaten by an orca off the coast of Oregon during filming for his new Netflix special, Prankers Anonymous. He wins a posthumous Oscar for exceptional contributions to motion picture arts and sciences and gets the hammer spot in the In Memoriam at that year’s Academy Awards. 

How we remember the trade: It lives at the edges of our memories, still a laughable gaffe, but so long ago the intensity of the scrutiny has faded. Flagg has a statue next to Dirk’s. 

February 2125: 100 years since the trade

The situation: 27 states remain. States that used to be coastal are now underwater. Montana is Canada’s. They moved Disneyland to Bismarck. West Virginia and what’s left of Virginia have merged to become Big Virginia. New Chicago is the size of two New Yorks. Harrison has been dead for 33 years but his consciousness remains, uploaded to Nimbus XRO. In the years before Harrison’s demise, Pelinka tells family that while he misses his friend’s physical form, he has grown accustomed to their new way of communicating. “In many ways, our relationship is better than ever,” he wrote in his memoir, which his family released after his death in 2118 at age 149. The Pelinka Paradox sells 547 copies and features many never-before-heard anecdotes about Kobe Bryant, whom he worked with for 18 years. 

Doncic died 11 years ago, surrounded by family, at his oceanside chalet in Paris. As he took his final breaths, he held in his hand a small wooden carving of what used to be Texas. He was buried in his Mavericks jersey. 

How we remember the trade: We don’t. 

February 2225: 200 years since the trade

The situation: The Rocky Mountains are in Kansas. You cannot go outside between the hours of 11 a.m. and 5 p.m. There are 568 active volcanoes in America and birds no longer fly. Cows are outlawed. The NBA folded 86 years ago and bloodball is the most popular sport on earth. Octopi have become amphibious. They walk and speak. Coyotes have gills. Joy is an illusion, death a relief.