The context is shady - do the Luka Doncic trade conspiracies have any basis?

Emotional attachment and a sense of disturbed balance are true heralds of swelling spirits and aggravated reactions. This dilution of the meaning of change has brought us to the age of react culture, where every possible move is a ticking bomb. Even in popular NBA culture, we used to know it as a Woj bomb. This is how the hot take culture rose to its industrialized proportions we grapple with today. It’s symbiotic with the tendency to react reflexively, especially when you’re prone to enjoy responding to the controversy.

There comes the reset button that shows us that a new era is in the struggle to birth itself. In the NBA, there was stagnation that we can attribute to quite a few things. Whether we’re talking about a lack of shot-making diversification, a still-ongoing transition between the former and the present generation of superstars, or just competition from other sports, the NBA was starting to feel like an afterthought.

In the wee hours of one early February morning, the Luka Dončić trade happened with no rumors, no prior notice, no senior NBA pundit theorizing scenarios a la ‘What’s going on in Utah?’ (and the subsequent reactions). It was just a major transaction of ‘seismic proportions’ that was clearly the herald of…something.

The overwhelming question has been ‘Why?’ Why does the return package feel so underwhelming? Why are they shipping him to a direct rival within their own conference? Why would Luka want out of Dallas (which was the first presumption)?

There were other questions involved, and these questions are marquee symptoms of the conspiracy theory culture that is piggybacking on societal, economic, and geopolitical issues around the world. The conspiracy bug has been all about deciphering what feels like a nonsensical move.

Since we’re at a loss for palpable debunking initiatives (except for Brian Windhorst’s anti-conspiracy assessment), we should take a step back and discuss these theories. They are the byproducts of the culture we live in, after all.

The Timeline of The Trade

Firstly, we need to provide the context behind this trade. For brevity reasons, we will abstain from singing the praises of both Luka Dončić and Anthony Davis because we all know what they’re about: their age, their injury history, their individual resumes, and their part in successful play-off campaigns.

By all accounts (official or otherwise), we know that the trade began with ‘coffee.’ Nico Harrison, the General Manager of the Dallas Mavericks, contacted his old business acquaintance and probably friend, Rob Pelinka (his counterpart for the Los Angeles Lakers). Those who haven’t heard of this history, these two have worked in some capacity for quite a long time, both of whom earned the trust of the late titan, Kobe Bryant. Harrison, a Nike executive who was instrumental in prying Kobe away from Adidas, had a business relationship with Pelinka, who was a former college-level basketball player turned agent.

The conversation, initiated by Harrison, was about trying to obtain a defensive-minded, All-NBA quality big man that could boost the defensive prowess of the Mavericks. He basically baited Pelinka into asking for Dončić as the centerpiece of a return package, which Harrison accepted. Before the negotiations started to get serious, even Patrick Dumont, the governor of the Mavericks, had an initial laughing reaction.

As the conversations about the return started to intensify, the two main transactors recruited the help of the Utah Jazz to absorb Jalen Hood-Schifino’s contract in exchange for two second-rounders. They did not know about the magnitude of the trade until just before the deal was reached and announced to the press.

As such, over the course of what was basically a month, this direct, personal red-line communication between the Lakers and Mavericks was the leitmotif of this story. As we’ll discuss shortly, there were motivations behind this process marred in secrecy. On the night between the 1st and 2nd of February 2025, the two franchises reached a deal with enormous implications.

Communication From Dallas

Dallas was the first to react, doing so in the usual corporate fashion that you may expect from a PR-laden transaction partner who sends away an extremely hot commodity. They basically had a two-step official stance that was to answer the questions according to their own motivations and points of reasoning without actually stepping even more on their fan base’s toes. The first two steps of their methodology were:

• A direct statement to the press in the immediate aftermath of the trade in which Harrison emphasized his belief in the primacy of defense for a championship team, the importance and gravitas of having an All-NBA and All-Defensive centerpiece player, and the flexibility of being in a position to win immediately, but also be competitive in the future.
• An ad-hoc press conference in which Harrison and Mavericks head coach Jason Kidd spoke about the trade. Two of the main takeaways/impressions from this address were a) Kidd’s visible distress/possible displeasure about what went on and b) Harrison’s veiled implications that Dončić was not a cultural fit, as compared to the incoming players of this trade. Another takeaway from this press conference was the idea that the summer of 2025 would’ve been ‘tumultuous’ due to a belief that Dončić would not sign the supermax extension that was on the table.

However, beat writers and insiders close to the Mavericks started to publish statements extracted from back-channel communication with the franchise’s front office. Such points were:

• The lack of conditioning and possible injury recurrence were accusations that Dončić called ‘a motive’ and directly rejected during his introductory press conference with the Lakers.
• The idea that Dončić would reject the supermax extension. This was on the basis that he’d have issues with the team construction, which were contradictory to the fact that the Mavericks were trending in a decent direction before Luka’s injury. In any case, Dončić again rejected the scenario in which he would’ve declined to extend the contract with the Mavericks.

*While not broadly discussed, we believe that this theoretical tumult would’ve been caused by a situation in which the Mavericks would’ve offered a lesser contract due to cultural and fitness concerns. In this case, the possible rejection would be more plausible.

• Luka’s tendency is to have yes-men around him within the strength-and-conditioning team. Following the firing of his closer personnel, Dončić hired his own fitness team, with which the Mavericks apparently had plenty of issues.

In our honest opinion, the whole process felt quite a lot like a smear campaign against Dončić, which the Mavericks seemed to adopt as a method of alleviating the obvious and extreme fallout with their fans. The online discourse, together with a majority of media commentary, criticized this move and wondered if there was something deeper behind such an unprecedented decision.

This secrecy, adopted by the Mavs and accepted by the Lakers, was meant to stop Dončić from exercising any leverage in his trade destination requirements, thus impacting the dealing. Moreover, the direct interest in Anthony Davis was just as important according to insider sources, since Davis was the prototype of the player that the Mavericks were looking for.

As information started to compile and declarations started to come from the involved parties, it became apparent that this was a deal done in complete secrecy, which was an unprecedented move, given the magnitude of such a transaction. As such, the importance, significance, and circumstances of this move were some of the main sparks that brought forth said conspiracies.

The Relocation Conspiracy

This is one of the two conspiracy theories that we will discuss since they’re the ones closest to being logical. It entered the public discourse right after the trade became official. Quite interestingly, it also entered the discourse of mainstream media, unlike the other theory we will discuss below.

The relocation controversy has three main elements to it: context, motivation, and methodology.

Context: Change in Ownership

At the end of 2023, the Adelson Family, spearheaded by matriarch Miriam Adelson and her son-in-law, Patrick Dumont, became the owners of the Dallas Mavericks by selling some of their Las Vegas Sands Corporation stock. They purchased almost 70% of the team’s assets, leaving outgoing majority stakeholder Mark Cuban with only 27% stock and control over the team. This eventually changed, leaving Dumont as a governor and placing him at the forefront of decision-making, ending Cuban’s 23-year tenure as controlling owner.

The Adelson empire, started by the late Sheldon Adelson entry into casino development and gambling operations, thus became the owners of the franchise.

Motivation: Strategic Relocation

The main argument behind this theory is that the Adelson family wants to tie the Mavericks brand to gambling operations and real estate development to serve their interests in the industry. They would be doing so by creating the necessary leverage to relocate the team to Las Vegas.

This has quite a lot of truth to it, but not in the way that this conspiracy theory suggests. The Adelsons, renowned for their status as mega-donors to the Republican Party (the political entity with an iron grip over Texas), have been carrying the agenda of gambling and sports betting legalization in Texas since at least 2021.

As recently as the summer of 2024, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation's lobbying efforts started targeting North Texas officials in their effort to create the legislative entry point. Their objective of providing a local market with global gambling influence, providing on-site resort opportunities, and moving into the free spins no deposit UK 2025 incentivization protocol are part of an elaborate fight to convince officials that their intention is to continue to invest in Texas in exchange for their openness to legalize gambling. The purchase of the Mavs and more than 100 acres of land in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area are strategic plans to do so.

The Sands Corporation has been tying itself to the Texas Destination Resort Alliance, the Texas Association of Business, and Fort Worth’s own Charlie Geren, the Trojan Horse of this initiative. In a declaration made by Matt Hirsch, a spokesperson for the Resort Alliance, he stressed the idea that the initiative and footprint of gambling’s proponents are ‘here for the long haul.’

What this shows us is that the Adelsons are, indeed, using the Mavericks as a show of good faith to the Texas legislature and citizens. However, their interest is to open up the gambling market in Texas. Why would they want to do so in this particular state?

Firstly, they have a very clear interest in the Texas market because of its size and economic prowess. Secondly, they would be having a clear head start over the competition, and, perhaps, have leverage as exclusive casino developers.

The reasons why the Vegas relocations wouldn’t work are very clear:

• Vegas Sands has no property in Las Vegas anymore. They sold their casinos to developers such as Vici Properties (the real-estate arm of Caesars Entertainment) and are currently operating in Asia (the Cotai Peninsula and Singapore). As such, Texas would be a new internal market where they would have a head start.
• The NBA has no motivation to approve the relocation since Las Vegas and Seattle are the likeliest expansion target markets. Given that the bidding war would create huge upfront revenue for the shareholders, the relocation of a team there would greatly diminish the financial incentive of relocation if another market joins Seattle.

Methodology: Tanking the Franchise

The idea is as simple as it gets: get rid of your hottest commodity and revenue generator and make the fans boycott your product.

If you have wailing audiences and decreased revenue, you can make a case that Dallas is not a viable market for your franchise, which would bring down the shared revenue of the league. This would increase the chances that your relocation request would receive the blessing of the Commissioner and the vote of the board of governors.

Since Luka Dončić is, by far, the face of the franchise and one of the most marketable assets in the NBA, giving him away in an unprecedented move certainly feels like intentional malpractice.

To conclude, the owners of the Mavericks currently have no interest in Las Vegas since they exited the market quite recently, and would also have a practically impossible task to obtain the relocation approval.

The Rating Boost Conspiracy

Every time something shocking happens, the “boogieman” Adam Silver starts getting the blame for his actions of carefully manipulating the league from the shadows.

NBA ratings are reportedly down 48% since 2012, and the evolution of the game has brought it to a space where 3-point shooting, load management, and the era of the superteam have brought down the quality of the product.

In all fairness, we believe that these points of criticism are valid reasons why one would prefer to spend their time and subscription money on other sports. As such, the possible concern would be more than understandable.

The ratings boost conspiracy is about the timing, circumstances, and the parties involved:

• Timing refers to the fact that this trade happened during a time when the NBA product suffered in quality. Moreover, it happened a weekend before Super Bowl weekend, thus stealing the spotlight from the biggest competitor on the domestic market. When you have Patrick Mahomes, the most famous person to play in the current Super Bowl, commenting about the trade, you know you have a show-stopper.
• Circumstances refer to how this trade was completely covered in secrecy to the point when even LeBron James, the shadow GM of every team he’s been on (the conspiracy spiral coils even more), did not know about this move even though it’s about his replacement, you tend to think that the real puppeteers are the ‘powers that be’ (i.e., the NBA itself).
• The parties involved refer to the fact that the traded player was Luka Dončić, a European attached to the global mega-brand that is Read Madrid. His potential and panache as a global megastar goes to the Los Angeles Lakers, the NBA’s premiere brand. The club that always gets the biggest stars. By pairing shock, the Lakers, Dončić, and the Luka-LeBron show-stopping cocktail, you have a rating boost.

As far as opinion goes, we need to say that this scenario kind of checks out. Whether we’re talking about logical fallacies or just instinctive sense, this conspiracy has stronger legs than the relocation ones.

Looking Forward - A New Timeline

This move is seismic for more than it just is: a trade involving a young superstar with enormous marketing potential.

Firstly, the Mavericks’ tacit refusal to pay him the supermax can be the herald of teams being less prone to pay such money in the era of the new CBA and the fear of the second apron. Team-building in the era of semi-mandatory financial flexibility proves itself quite a challenge when paychecks close to $70 million eat up a lot of your cap space.

Secondly, it proves that the era of superstar empowerment is dwindling down. All the trade requests from players with lengthy contracts, fearful GMs giving out max extensions and overpaying against looming free agencies, and temper tantrums a la Jimmy Butler are finally here to collect the dues. Players are gloomily saying that there is no safe player in the NBA in terms of trade scenarios, not unless there is that very rare no-trade clause. The billionaires are winning – they were never losing.

Thirdly, it shows that the generational switch is happening off the court as well. LeBron James, for the first time in his career, is the second fiddle and the lesser priority on his own team. He seems to embrace it gracefully and with a lot of optimism for this act of his career. The center that the Lakers have been trying to get for at least a year has been acquired right after Luka Dončić came to town.

For the first time in years, the NBA is the hotspot in terms of discourse, interest, and presentation. Number 77 is on everybody’s lips, and the historiography of NBA basketball will remember this event for decades upon decades.