Defense wins championships: Are Mavs still contenders with Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving duo?
By Quinn Everts
If you're going to trade your 25 year-old, franchise-changing, future first-ballot Hall of Fame guard who brought you to the NBA Finals a year prior... you should at least get a pretty good return, right?
Well... yes! (I would advise against ever doing something like that, but apparently I didn't warn the Mavericks quickly enough, as they just traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers) but Anthony Davis is a pretty good return regardless!
Mavs GM Nico Harrison said that "defense wins championships" to ESPN, which is a tenet I won't argue with... but Luka Doncic could also help win championships, right?
“I believe that defense wins championships,” Mavs GM Nico Harrison told ESPN regarding his motivation to trade Luka Doncic for Anthony Davis. “I believe that getting an All-Defensive center and an All-NBA player with a defensive mindset gives us a better chance. We’re built to… https://t.co/iPfQvA4str
— Tim MacMahon (@espn_macmahon) February 2, 2025
Subscribe to The Whiteboard, FanSided’s daily email newsletter on everything basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with a friend! If you don’t like it, share it with an enemy!
Mavs defense gets a big boost, but it's not enough
Now, with Davis anchoring the Mavs defense, Dallas has the potential to be a top-five defense. They're currently No. 12 in defensive rating, and Davis single-handedly raises the ceiling. He's one of the elite game-changers on the defensive end, taking over games often by thoroughly denying any entry to the paint and erasing any shots within about 11 feet of the basket.
However... they also don't have Luka Doncic anymore! This is no longer a championship-caliber roster. Don't get me wrong: Kyrie Irving is great. Anthony Davis is great. The role players on this team — PJ Washington, Quentin Grimes, Daniel Gafford, Klay Thompson, etc. — are very talented! It's a good NBA roster that can be competitive in a playoff series.
But the engine of this team, one of the best offensive players we've ever seen in the league... is gone! This is a monstrous loss, no matter how spectacular AD is on the defensive end. The idea of replacing "offense for defense" falls a little flat is this situation. Boiling Luka down to a "good offensive player" is so reductive of what he provides a team, and I am struggling to grasp how the Mavs front office does not understand that.