The Lakers Keep Getting Away With This
By trading for Luka Dončić in his prime, the franchise continues its long-running trend of replenishment through acquiring Hall of Fame talent.
To say Saturday night’s Los Angeles Lakers-Dallas Mavericks trade broke the NBA would be an understatement.
The deal will reportedly send Luka Dončić, Maxi Kleber and Markieff Morris to L.A., with Dallas receiving Anthony Davis, Max Christie and the Lakers' 2029 first-round pick, and the Utah Jazz sliding in to grab Jalen Hood-Schifino, a 2025 second-rounder that used to belong to the Clippers, and the Mavericks' 2025 second-round pick. But those are just the details and logistics of the move.
The big takeaway from it is that the Mavs just shipped away a player with future inner-circle Hall of Famer potential in Dončić, for comparatively little in return — and that LeBron James and the Lakers, a franchise which always seems to get away with deals like this, seem poised to transition from one all-timer to the next yet again.
From the Dallas perspective, this trade is so mind-blowing that it didn’t seem real. (Shams Charania had to confirm that he wasn’t hacked, and that, yes, the trade was actually happening.) Bill Simmons’ podcast crew rightly struggled to wrap their minds around the fact that the Mavs reportedly pulled the trigger without fully shopping Luka around the league (which might explain the meager return). And the reported rationale from Mavs GM Nico Harrison — that the team had concerns about Dončić’s conditioning before giving him a supermax extension — stretches credulity to the point that it might be easier to connect the dots between this and Mark Cuban selling his majority Mavs stake in late 2023, and wonder exactly what the hell is going on with Dallas’ financial situation.
But the Lakers as Luka’s destination is the cherry on top of what might be the NBA’s most unbelievable trade ever.
I wrote several times, many years ago, about the Lakers’ penchant for plucking Hall of Fame talent from other teams, spurred by a bitter joke I read from a non-Laker fan that L.A. consistently manages to “pick up a HOFer or two every 4 years or so when their team’s playoff performance starts to slide a little.”
(This was around when the team was acquiring Dwight Howard, which didn’t quite go according to the Lakers’ plans — but the point still stands.)
And this is true: Even before Luka pulls on a Laker jersey, no team has relied more on Hall of Famers,1 in terms of total Estimated RAPTOR Wins Above Replacement (WAR) for their production than the Lakers since the ABA merger in 1976:
Since the merger, an insane 57.8 percent of L.A.’s production has come from Hall of Famers, which is roughly 10 percentage points clear of any other franchise (the Celtics are at 48.3 percent). For reference, the average team gets 28 percent of its WAR from Hall of Famers.
That top-line number is wild enough — and enough to drive other fan bases crazy. But what makes L.A.’s superstar-driven pipeline even more mind-boggling are both how consistent it has been — the team has gotten (or is on pace to get) at least 10 WAR per season from Hall of Famers in 37 of the past 49 seasons, and at least 15 WAR in 31 of 49 years — and the fact that almost all of that value in recent years came from Hall of Famers that the Lakers didn’t technically draft:
Starting in 1997, with the debut of Kobe Bryant — who technically was drafted by the Charlotte Hornets — the Lakers have gotten 437.8 WAR from Hall of Famers, and 436.0 WAR from Hall of Famers that were not originally Laker draftees. This includes value from Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, LeBron James, Pau Gasol, Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard, Gary Payton, Karl Malone, Steve Nash, Carmelo Anthony, and countless others.
If we expand the list to include earlier seasons, which means including Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes and the like, we find that the Lakers have gotten a staggering total of 617.2 WAR from Hall of Fame players they didn’t draft since the merger. That’s just about double the total from any other franchise; Boston is No. 2 at 312.7.
While regular teams have to obsess over nailing the draft, hoping and praying to land a player of LeBron, Kobe, Shaq or AD’s caliber to lead their franchise into the future, the Lakers always seem to be able to poach these superstars from other teams’ rosters. And it appears to have happened again this weekend, with Dončić falling into the Lakers’ lap with a trade that essentially nobody in the NBA saw coming.
Perhaps we shouldn’t have been surprised, though. This is how the Lakers consistently operate — and the Mavs are just the latest front office to help facilitate their Springfield-centric team-building strategy.
Filed under: NBA
Or potential Hall of Famers, using Hall of Fame probability for retired players and a WAR-based model for mid-career players.
I "liked" this article, but let the record show that I don't like it at all. Hopefully the Celtics can win a Finals over Luka in a Laker uniform as well.