Why Luka-powered Mavs should not panic at trade deadline

Dallas has been remarkably aggressive in the Luka Era, including the deal that brought him to Dallas from Atlanta for Trae Young and a 2019 pick first-round that became Cam Reddish for the Hawks. Last season, Dallas sent two first-round picks and Dennis Smith Jr. to New York for Kristaps Porzingis, and even took on some of the Knicks’ least favorite contracts, the deals for Tim Hardaway Jr. and Courtney Lee. And when they began to fall out of the playoff race, the Mavericks moved Harrison Barnes and his max deal to Sacramento for Justin Jackson and cap space. Dallas struck out on its dream targets in free agency (Kemba Walker) and settled for filling in around Luka with Delon Wright, Seth Curry and his Balkan buddy Boban Marjanovic. It’s an aggressive approach, but we’ve seen Cuban show more patience listening to a terrible Shark Tank pitch than he has waiting for this team to gel.

It’s a sign of the Mavericks’ impatience to compete that after announcing Porzingis would sit out back-to-back games, since he missed over a year recovering from a torn ACL, he played in all but their first back-to-back. After his third back-to-back, he got hurt and missed the next 10 games. It’s really not the load management you’d want or expect for an injury-prone young player who just signed a five-year contract.

It’s not clear if Porzingis is the ideal sidekick for Doncic, but it’s also far too early to tell definitively. KP is only 24, and he’s only played 222 games, just 32 with Luka. What the Mavs do know is that the four-man lineup of Doncic, Hardaway, Dorian Finney-Smith and Dwight Powell was almost unstoppable this season until Powell’s tendon gave out.

If Porzingis can get back to his stellar outside shooting, he should slide in nicely with this group, even with Willie Cauley-Stein taking over at center. Cauley-Stein is no Powell, who led the league in offensive rating the last two seasons, but he should get a lot of dunks playing with Luka, and he came very cheaply from Golden State. All the Mavs had to give up was a 2020 second-rounder, currently projected to be between the 54th and 57th pick. That’s the least you can give up in a trade without involving the legendary Cash Considerations.

The WCS deal is the kind of trade Dallas should be focused on this season: filling an obvious need at low cost, with little impact on the Mavs’ financial future. Even if Cauley-Stein picks up his player option, the Mavs are only on the hook for $2.28 million. Dallas is already out two first-round picks from the Porzingis deal, so there’s not a lot of assets to trade. Sure, Dallas could do something with Courtney Lee’s expiring contract, but the Mavericks shouldn’t even deal the second-round pick they own from Warriors (currently projected at No. 31). Getting cheap, young, cost-controlled talent is going to help this team much more than a veteran who might give them a 1% greater chance of beating the Jazz in Round 1.

The closest and perhaps only comparison to Luka’s mind-boggling statistics as a 20-year-old is LeBron, whose early Cavaliers teams should be a cautionary tale for the Dallas front office. In James' first two seasons, Cleveland traded six draft picks, including two first-rounders. Then, after falling a game short of the playoffs in 2005, the Cavs committed almost half their salary cap to three veterans who didn’t push them over the top -– Larry Hughes, Damon Jones and 32-year-old Donyell Marshall.

Eventually the Cavs fell into a cycle of making big deals at the trade deadline, but without any future assets to deal. So they had to settle for distressed assets -– NBA players whose contracts had negative value. LeBron played with a 37-year-old Shaq, a washed-up Ben Wallace and an aging and overpaid Antawn Jamison. LeBron didn’t take his talents to South Beach because he loved Gloria Estefan and Jimmy Buffet. He left because his team mortgaged his future before he could legally drink.  

And this happens all the time! 

The Pelicans went all-in on veterans after Anthony Davis’ rookie season, and got stuck on the treadmill of desperately dealing future picks, sometimes attaching first-rounders to get rid of veterans they had traded first-rounders to acquire. The Timberwolves got so antsy to compete with Kevin Garnett that they made an illegal deal with Joe Smith that doomed them for five years. Even the Sixers got so excited that Joel Embiid got healthy that they blew up their roster twice in the past season.

Luka is fantastic, but this is just the first of what could be 10-15 years of All-Star seasons. There’s no reason to panic. The Mavericks should get some playoff experience, let coach Rick Carlisle evaluate who’s the best fit beside Luka, and make Porzingis prove he’s over his Knicks-induced trauma. But Cuban and GM Donnie Nelson must hold onto their young players and picks, because otherwise they may cause a chain of events that leads to an unthinkable disaster: trading for Andrew Wiggins.