Anthony Davis admits Mavericks made a Luka Doncic mistake he still doesn't understand

Former Dallas Mavericks big man Anthony Davis is still trying to make sense of how he got traded by the Los Angeles Lakers for Luka Doncic in the first place. And now, after the dust has settled, he finds himself on the Washington Wizards, of all places, after his short, injury-plagued tenure with the Mavericks.

Anthony Davis feels the Mavs didn't have a real reason to trade Luka

And if you let Davis tell it, he still doesn’t think it made sense to trade him for a Luka Doncic (now 27) who was just entering his prime, fresh off an NBA Finals run. Davis still seems to be in disbelief over the Doncic trade fiasco. Mavs fans have to feel vindicated that their concerns about the trade were very valid.

The 33-year-old Davis recently joined his former adversary, now turned basketball therapist, Draymond Green, on The Draymond Green Show podcast to talk about what happened behind the scenes and how he really felt when the Luka trade for him went down.

Davis always had an appreciation for Doncic's skills

Davis confided to Green that Doncic was always a player that he admired from afar. And that if LeBron James was going to retire, he felt that Doncic’s skillset made him the next best player for him to team up with in a perfect dream scenario.

“I was like, 'What up, Rich?' and he was like 'They just traded you to Dallas,'” Davis said. “I’m like, shut up. But like, I know because I spoke to Rich before, I'm like, man. Luka is so cold, bro. We used to talk about Luka all the time. Man, imagine me with Luka, like oh my gosh.”

Davis also explained that being traded was nowhere on his radar at the time. “At the time, I wasn’t sure what Bron was going to do, if he was going to retire. I wasn’t even thinking about being traded or asking to leave. I was just saying, in general, the next thing, as far as what he can do, who could be close to Bron was Luka.”

Davis is just as confused as Mavs fans are on the reasoning for the trade

Davis was perplexed because he expected to be given the keys to the Lakers franchise once James retired for good. While Mavericks fans were expecting their team to continue competing for championships with Doncic for years to come. This is why Davis was baffled that Dallas would part ways with a generational talent like Doncic after they just went to the 2024 NBA Finals.

“Mind you, they just went to the finals,” Davis emphasized to Green in disbelief. And there you have it. This is the thought process that baffles and haunts fans in Dallas to this day.

Was Luka so far gone that his faults couldn’t be remedied internally with the Dallas organization? Nico Harrison seemed determined to trade an injury-prone Doncic for an aging but more defensive-minded Anthony Davis, whom the Lakers had begun to lose faith in.

The NBA is a business, but the Doncic trade will sting for some time

“Luka is Luka…From the business standpoint, like I can’t be mad. But like, why? I just couldn’t fathom, I couldn’t understand it,” lamented Davis.

Davis ultimately only played 29 out of a possible 83 regular-season games for the Dallas Mavericks before his acquisition was ultimately deemed a failure and he was shipped to the Wizards, where he’s currently sitting on injured reserve for the rest of the season.

Doncic is battling his own injury woes with the Lakers as he tries to recover from a Grade 2 left hamstring strain he sustained against the Oklahoma City Thunder on April 2. His status for the NBA Playoffs is in jeopardy. Thus, it seems to be more of the same with Davis and Doncic as they battle their injury demons.

However, Dallas fans will always view Doncic’s untimely departure as a basketball tragedy worthy of Shakespeare’s pen. If the trade didn’t make sense to Anthony Davis, you can imagine how Mavericks fans feel about it even after all this time.