When fans look back on this Los Angeles Lakers season years from now, it's doubtful that getting knocked out of the first round of the playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves will be the first thing that comes to mind. Yes, it hurts to get bounced out of the postseason so early, especially after racking up 50 wins and earning the No. 3 seed. That wound is fresh since the season just ended on Wednesday, but it will eventually pale in comparison to the trade that brought Luka Dončić to Hollywood.
There's no way to overstate just how monumental the Luka-Anthony Davis trade was. Nobody believed it when it happened, thinking instead that Shams Charania's phone had been hacked. Honestly, people can't believe it even now. It's a surreal feeling when your team pulls off a deal out of nowhere for one of the best players in the world.
There are very few people around basketball that grade the Luka trade as anything other than an enormous win for the Lakers, even if the team fell short of its goals this year. In truth, the Wolves series laid bare that beyond their top players, the Lakers just weren't good enough, and their roster has a long way to go. JJ Redick was right when he admitted after the Game 5 loss that the Wolves are the better team.
LeBron James claims to have been just as shocked as everyone else when news of the Luka trade broke (let's just say that we're skeptical of that). Despite the surprise, he's undoubtedly benefited from the deal, as Luka has greatly lessened his ballhandling burden. He's also been a much healthier player than Anthony Davis in his career, which should make it less likely that LeBron is left to go it alone for extended stretches next year if and when he comes back next year.
One sort of unseemly side effect of the trade is that Anthony Davis has been catching strays left and right. Hell, I just did it in the paragraph above. AD is an outstanding player, and one of the most versatile two-way big men in the league. He helped the Lakers win their 17th NBA championship. He doesn't deserve to be thrown under the bus just because he's being compared to Luka.
Some people believe that Davis' comments to the media are what got him traded. For those that have pushed it out of their mines, Davis was steadily beating the drum about wanting and needing the Lakers to add a true center so that he could slide to the 4, his preferred position. It wasn't a one-off comment or a slip of the tongue, either — AD has been harping on this for years.
The 2020 Lakers title team had Dwight Howard and JaVale McGee manning the paint, so Davis has a point. Nevertheless, the conspiracy theorists don't need much to get revved up, and when he sat down with Shams and reiterated his desire for general manager Rob Pelinka to make a move for the umpteenth time, then got traded a few days later, that's all the red meat they needed.
LeBron James isn't looking to make the same mistake that Anthony Davis did
The Luka-AD trade proved that no player is untouchable (well, unless your name is Bradley Beal, but that's a whole different ball of wax). Just about anybody can be traded in this wild era of the NBA, and so when LeBron was asked to comment on how physically taxing it was having to bang with bigger bodies as the Lakers were forced to employ more small-ball lineups in the second half of the season, he didn't take the bait.
"No comment," he said with a grin. "I'll never say that, because my guy AD said what he needed and he was gone the following week, so... I got no comment. I put that uniform on every night, I gave everything I had, and that's all that matters."
LeBron is obviously engaging in some gallows humor now that the Lakers were eliminated, even if his words do have a ring of truth to them. In reality though, he's one of the few players in the league that has a no-trade clause in his contract, so even if he slandered Rob Pelinka on the 9 p.m. Sportscenter, there's not much the newly named president of basketball operations could do about it.
All the reporting on the Luka-AD trade indicates that it was something that gestated over a long period of time, so it's not like Pelinka saw AD's interview with Shams and decided that it was the straw that broke the camel's back. When you get offered Luka Dončić, you take the deal. It's as simple as that, regardless of whether your best player is speaking above his pay grade about the job you're doing.
LeBron was in a surprisingly chill mood after getting ousted, perhaps owing to the fact that it was clear early in the series that the Lakers were physically outmatched. That, plus 22 years in the league helps bring some perspective.
Pelinka may not have taken AD's advice when the Brow was still in purple and gold, but the center question is much more pressing now that he's gone. Rudy Gobert, of all people, just sent the Lakers packing, so if there's one directive for this offseason, it's to find a center that can at least come close to filling AD's shoes. With Luka and LeBron back next year, that alone could be enough to help the Lakers make a deeper run.