Mavericks only made Luka Doncic available to Lakers and one mystery team, per reports

In a move our Mavericks experts at Mavs Moneyball are calling “the worst moment in the history of DFW sports,” Dallas made a trade sending Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers for Anthony Davis, a first-round pick, and Max Christie in a blockbuster deal late Saturday night.

In the aftermath of the deal, the prevailing cries from NBA fans, Mavericks supporters and basketball punditry alike were united in asking “why didn’t the Mavericks make Luka available to more teams?” and “was this really the best package they could get?”

The reaction makes sense, because it’s rare for a move to be so stunning and completely out of nowhere that it catches nearly everyone involved with the NBA off-guard. But it turns out there is a reason for that — initial reports are that the Mavs indeed didn’t make Doncic widely available, choosing to only negotiate with the Lakers… and one mystery team.

According to veteran NBA insider Marc Stein’s latest dispatch on his Substack, the only people with the Mavs who really even knew this was a possibility were owner Patrick Dumont and GM Nico Harrison, the latter of whom apparently decided to just go after Davis and not even see what the market was for Doncic (emphasis mine):

Harrison made the decision, supported by new Mavericks majority owner Patrick Dumont, to pursue Davis and pretty much no one else. The Mavericks did not make Dončić available to interested teams for the richest possible haul of draft picks. Sources say that the Mavericks are convinced that this move brings back a top-10 player in the league as well as a 2029 first-round pick from the Lakers.

That “pretty much” leaves open the possibility that it wasn’t just the Lakers they put in cursory calls to, though, and Sam Amick of The Athletic wrote that there was at least one other team who turned down the Mavericks’ advances about trading Doncic for their star:

The Mavericks were greatly concerned with Dončić’s durability — or lack thereof — and convinced his approach to the game would continue to be a problem in the years to come. Yet while there was no shortage of teams shocked that the Mavericks didn’t broadcast their willingness to move Dončić, league sources say there was at least one team besides the Lakers that was approached by Dallas nearly two weeks ago about the prospect of swapping Dončić for another star.

That bid was turned down, but the message sent in the process had been clear: There was trouble brewing in Dallas. And the Lakers, in the end, were the ones who reaped the benefits.

Both reports leave us with an interesting question…

Which other NBA star did the Mavericks try to trade Luka Doncic for?

Theories abound, and we’ll probably never know for certain. However, it’s easy to wonder if Jason Kidd, who just got back a player he had won the 2020 NBA championship with in Davis, pushed his bosses to go after another player he had coached before in Giannis Antetokounmpo, given their mutual admiration for one another both in the aftermath of Kidd’s firing and over the years since.

Mark Cuban is no longer operating as (essentially) owner/GM for the Mavs, power abhors a vacuum, and Kidd is a noted coup enthusiast with basketball accolades to woo Harrison and their new bosses with. So if we find out later part of this deal was his engineering, it wouldn’t be a surprise, and neither would the Mavs throwing up a heat check to see if they could get Giannis amidst a weird season with the Bucks.

Photo by Juan Ocampo/NBAE via Getty Images

Again, we’ll probably never know for certain, but the list of teams that would turn down trading their star for Doncic is probably extremely limited, and may only include:

And that really might be the end of the list. Maybe you could throw Anthony Edwards of the Minnesota Timberwolves on there and Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors for legacy reasons, but it’s a short, short list, and the fact that (apparently) the only other team the Mavs called said “no” to trading for a consensus top-five player in the NBA shows just how selective they were being in their targets, and how secretive they wanted to keep Doncic trade talks.

Still, for everyone mad that the Lakers were seemingly able to acquire Doncic without having to compete with any other offers, it turns out that’s not entirely true, even if that surely won’t quiet league conspiracies about the NBA trying to help the Lakers here.