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On the day that Nico Harrison traded Luka Doncic for a package built around Anthony Davis, he doomed AD to a public, ongoing humiliation. The deal itself was a laughingstock. No move of its kind in NBA history has been so obviously misguided, so clearly without even the most basic defense. It stacked terrible judgment on poor basketball philosophy and inexplicable process. And Davis, through no real fault of his own, came to represent it all. His tenure with the Dallas Mavericks was cursed from the start. Once the trade failed—and it could only fail—that disaster was always bound to compound in another move for even less value. Harrison didn’t even keep his job long enough to see those failures through, but the Mavericks trudged toward them all the same before finally accepting the inevitable.
Dallas traded Davis to the Washington Wizards in the lead-up to Thursday’s trade deadline and did it without getting back a single star, blue-chip prospect, or highly coveted draft pick in return. The deal was an acknowledgment of a franchise-crippling blunder that never should have happened in the first place. It was also one more indignity, seeing as the Mavs—in the updated accounting—effectively sold out Doncic for Max Christie, an expiring Khris Middleton, two long-shot prospects one Marvin Bagley, three not very good first-round picks, and three seconds.
NBA Trade Deadline Tracker: All the Biggest Moves
NBA Trade Deadline Tracker: All the Biggest Moves
NBA Trade Deadline Tracker
It’s sobering to see how little Davis fetched on the open market just a year after the Mavericks blew up a Finals team to acquire him. But Dallas had to do this—not this trade, exactly, but something like it. The Mavericks were never an Anthony Davis team, and any chance they had to become one fell away when they ping-ponged into drafting Cooper Flagg. The past nine months have seen the franchise gradually coming to terms with that fact. Wednesday’s trade doesn’t right any wrongs, but it at least shows that the Mavs finally have their priorities straight. The only timeline that matters now is Flagg’s. As he goes, they go. As he develops, they develop.
Frankly, Flagg has already been so remarkable as to make a blockbuster decision like this a bit easier. There’s no need to force the best thing the Mavericks have going into a veteran-driven formula—particularly when that formula relied so heavily on Davis, who missed almost two-thirds of the games during his Dallas tenure, and Kyrie Irving, who hasn’t played a game in almost a year. That version of the Mavericks was a wish. What Flagg is doing is real. When a 19-year-old is already playing like a star, just about everything else is secondary.
In a perfect world, Dallas could embrace a full-scale rebuild around Flagg, Christie, and Dereck Lively II (who underwent season-ending foot surgery in December). In the messier reality, the Mavs will likely still walk some middle path. Even if Matt Riccardi and Michael Finley (who are co-running the team on an interim basis) tore this roster down to the studs, no amount of cost cutting and liquidation would change the fact that after 2026, the Mavs won’t have control of their first-round draft picks for the next four years. Dallas was good enough to risk its future picks while trying to contend, and foolish enough to trade away the reason it was good enough to make those gambles in the first place. Given the circumstances, bringing back even two first-rounders in the trade for Davis—underwhelming as those picks ar—feels meaningful. Dallas needs the means to add more young talent, clearly, but also the assets to maneuver. First-round picks open doors. They give a team the currency to clear salary, work the angles in negotiation, or widen the scope of a trade. The Mavericks may not have control of their own tanking destiny, but any future firsts at all could facilitate movement for what was one of the most logjammed teams in the league. Dallas had an expensive roster bound for the play-in at best, bereft of draft capital. Trading Davis may not have fetched an amazing return, but it materially changed the Mavericks’ circumstances nonetheless.
Dallas no longer has to worry about when Davis might return to the floor after suffering ligament damage in his hand. It doesn’t have to make peace with those sorts of injuries while working out the details of an extension that could easily pay Davis upward of $60 million a season. The Mavs were a lottery-bound team staring down the second apron, which in this salary cap environment amounts to a death sentence. Trading Davis gave them a way out, or at least the start of one. Cleaning up the rest of the roster will take patience, savvy, and, more than anything: time.
That’s a luxury a team with Davis, who will turn 33 next month, can’t really afford. Washington has clearly leaned into a sense of urgency by trading for both Davis and Trae Young, declaring its intentions to compete for a playoff spot as soon as next season. It also now has one of the most expensive rosters in the league. Davis is a tremendous player who covers ground and disrupts plays on defense with the best of them—when healthy. That caveat just weighs more heavily with every passing season, as AD’s injuries mount and his salary continues to climb. The combination of the two is prohibitive enough that only a small subset of teams could talk themselves into absorbing Davis’s deal and all that comes with it. The market is what it is, as Dallas can attest. Washington just has enough emerging talent on rookie-scale contracts to at least try to think about the finances a bit differently.
With that comes a fresh start for Davis and the Mavericks both. So long as he stayed in Dallas, AD would have been tied to the bleakest moment in franchise history, his every accomplishment held up to Luka’s standard. And so long as Davis was around, the Mavericks would be burdened by the circumstances of his arrival and everything it cost. This move is a mercy for a team and a star that were drowning in context. It might not feel like the most inspiring trade package in the moment, but this move is about anything but today. The future? Sure. The past? Absolutely. This is what moving on looks like. The real return is letting go.
Rob Mahoney
Rob Mahoney