Luka who? Anthony Davis puts up monster first-half performance in Mavs debut: Best memes and tweets

The Dallas Mavericks pulled off perhaps the biggest trade in NBA history, trading Luka Doncic, a 25-year-old with five First-Team All-NBA nods already on his ledger, to the Los Angeles Lakers, in a deal that netted them Anthony Davis and little else.

Predictably, Mavericks GM Nico Harrison took an absurd amount of heat for executing this trade. Sure, Davis is a great player, but how do they ever even consider trading a player as young and as dominant as Doncic who, mind you, led this Mavericks team to the NBA Finals last season? The trade looked even worse when the Mavericks didn't even get much in addition to Davis in exchange for one of, if not the most valuable asset in the league.

While the trade undoubtedly looks bad for Dallas, Davis did what he could to make angry Mavericks fans forget all about Doncic. He just put up as good of a first half as you'll ever see in his Mavericks debut against one of the premier teams in the Western Conference in front of a jubilant crowd at American Airlines Center.

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Anthony Davis does his best to make Mavericks fans forget all about Luka Doncic with first half to remember in Dallas debut

This stat line would be outstanding for any given game, yet, Davis put it up in the first half in a game Dallas led by double figures against the 32-19 Houston Rockets. Davis made sure to make it abundantly clear where he is in the midst of his dominance on the court.

Mavericks fans have been protesting ever since the trade went down. It took one half of basketball for Nico Harrison's vision to be seen. Obviously there's a lot more work to be done, but Harrison has to love the early returns from Davis, especially while Doncic is on the sidelines recovering from his calf injury.

Oh yeah, Max Christie had 15 points in each of his first two games with Dallas and got off to a great start on Saturday as well. He might end up being more of a valuable player than expected.

What's really interesting about this performance is that Davis, for years, had been clamoring the Lakers to add a center to play alongside him, bumping him down to his natural power forward position. He gets to play that position alongside Daniel Gafford (and eventually Dereck Lively) in Dallas, and is thriving.

The real moral of the story here is that while Davis is not Doncic, and the trade might not look great in the next half-decade when Davis is in his mid-30s and Doncic is in his prime, he is still a superstar and one of the game's best players. He is as good as it gets, and with the right players around him, he can absolutely play a starring role on a championship team.

Again, he is not Doncic, but the disrespect Davis clearly heard after the trade went down was overboard. He is out there to prove the doubters wrong, and could not have gotten off to a better start in that regard.