DeAndre Jordan knew first. He started wandering up and down the aisle, giving his teammates the news that sent a shock wave through the Nuggets’ team charter flight and the entire NBA community.
Luka Doncic to Los Angeles, according to ESPN’s Shams Charania. Anthony Davis to Dallas.
“I see DJ pacing back and forth, telling people a bunch of news,” Julian Strawther told The Denver Post, “and then I walked past Trey (Alexander). And Trey was like, ‘Something something to the Lakers.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Luka to the Lakers.’ It threw everybody off. We all was standing up and walking around. We didn’t know what to do.”
“He told us, and then I took my headphones out. I love watching the NBA, so I went on Twitter,” Christian Braun told The Post. “It was the first thing I saw. … I think I’ve seen a couple people say that they thought it was fake. I think everybody on our plane kind of said the same thing. Like, first initial reaction was like, ‘Oh, (Charania) got hacked.’ But then I looked at it again. Clicked on his account. Obviously it wasn’t a troll account.”
It was late Saturday night. The Nuggets were somewhere over the Midwest, flying home from Charlotte, from a five-game road trip. The Feb. 6 NBA trade deadline was still five days away — an eternity in the world of trade negotiations. If a blockbuster deal was going to happen, it probably wasn’t going to happen at that moment. It probably was going to involve Jimmy Butler, or maybe De’Aaron Fox.
Not Luka. Not a chance.
“I texted him,” said Nuggets star center Nikola Jokic, a good friend of Doncic. “I think that he didn’t expect it, of course. I think he just needs to be with family right now. It’s a big move. It’s a business. I don’t know. I think nobody expected it, especially not him. … Nobody is safe in the league, it seems like. But I think he’s going to go do a good job. I think he’s the player for the big scene, even though I thought in Dallas, he had something special going.”
Doncic is only 25 years old, but his accolades already speak for themselves. First-team All-NBA each of the last five seasons. League leader in scoring for 2023-24, averaging 33.9 points per game, 9.2 rebounds and 9.8 assists while finishing third in MVP voting to Jokic and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Frontman of an NBA Finals run by the fifth-seeded Mavericks.
In fact, his age was a major contributor to the collective astonishment felt throughout the sport. By acquiring Doncic, the excessively decorated Lakers franchise is seemingly set for the next decade, maybe more, conveniently supplied with its next flagship superstar. The Mavericks reached out to them to offer Doncic. Them and nobody else.
“I was pretty confused. We’re still talking about it, just how that’s really possible,” Nuggets forward Michael Porter Jr. said. “Just in the fact that (the Mavericks) made the Finals last year. And it’s like, the only way that trade makes sense now is if they win the championship. That’s the only other thing better than making the Finals.”
Elsewhere on the Nuggets’ plane, a team media relations employee saw Charania’s report and started informing coaches. Malone didn’t have much to say about the trade when asked about it on Monday, commenting that “if I’m spending time worrying about where Luka or AD is going, I’d be doing my players a disservice.”
Still, the historic trade will have immediate and long-term ramifications in the Western Conference as Denver competes for a second championship. The Mavericks have dismantled the core that brought them to the Finals and surrendered one of the best top-end talents in the league — but between Davis, Derek Lively and Daniel Gafford, they’ve also assembled one of the deepest rim-protecting frontcourts in the NBA to throw at Jokic in a hypothetical playoff series.
“I’ve been on the floor with Luka, and obviously he’s a once-in-a-generation player,” Porter said. “It was just a weird thing overall. I still feel like there’s something, some facts that are going to come out over time. Because I can’t really comprehend how that makes sense, to be honest.”
As for the Lakers, this signifies the end of an era, in one sense. The Nuggets have gotten accustomed to facing them — and eliminating them — in the playoffs. Even if they match up for a third consecutive year this spring, it won’t be the same. It won’t be Davis and LeBron James trying to finally summit Mount Jokic.
After the Nuggets won the 2023 championship, Davis issued a rematch challenge: “It was just a lot of talking. We get it, y’all won, but me and Bron had some conversations. We can’t wait.” The Lakers and Nuggets met again in the first round. Los Angeles put up a much stronger fight, but Denver still prevailed in five games.
Davis turns 32 in March. Now the unibrowed big man has been replaced by the Slovenian point guard as heir apparent to LeBron in Los Angeles.
“It’s always going to be shock when a top-two player in the world gets traded,” Braun said. “I don’t think anybody was like, ‘Oh, this makes perfect sense,’ or, ‘We see why they would ship off the second-best player in the NBA.’ But obviously that’s their organization, and it made sense on their end. That’s what matters to them. It doesn’t change anything for us, but it is kind of crazy to see.”
Jokic, naturally, viewed the trade through the lens of a friend above all else. But he reflected on it with the perspective of a basketball scholar.
“I think it’s definitely one of the biggest trades probably in, I won’t say history, but let’s say the last five, 10, 15 years,” he said. “Seems like nobody’s safe. And it probably should be that way.”
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