Decisions, Decisions: Spinning Arky's Trade

I don’t touch on basketball here, but it didn’t escape my attention when the Mavericks traded away Luka Dončić despite him:

• Being first team All-NBA each of the last five years.

• Leading the Mavericks to the NBA Finals last year.

• Being only 25 years old.

There were many comparisons at the time to the atrocious Mookie Betts trade a few years ago, but when my son and I chatted about it we agreed there really isn’t a recent trade in baseball that would match it. We resorted to making up deals that would be the equivalent and settled on a Juan Soto-for-Bryce Harper trade.

Trading superstars in their prime will always be a shocking turn of events. It makes more sense in sports with salary caps, which some teams will always use as a reason why a great young player who is approaching free agency has to be shipped away, but even then it’s usually accompanied by spin. The fan base is so outraged at most of these deals that the team has to offer up some kind of explanation.

In the case of Dončić the Mavericks said they didn’t think they could win with his defense being so bad. That’s plausible to a point, though I fail to see how Anthony Davis will help them in that regard given the fact that he’s nearly 32 and has played more than 70 games in a season just once since he reached the age of 25. In the Mookie trade it was explained that he simply wouldn’t re-sign in Boston for less than full market value, which the team claimed would ruin their ability to sign other players. That one never passed the smell test with the fans since the Red Sox are one of the most valuable franchises in the sport and had over $500 million in revenue against a payroll of about $240 million in Betts’ final year with the team.