Luka Doncic reveals key trait the Mavericks failed to show him

The aftershock of the Luka Doncic trade is finally starting to cool down in Dallas, as fans are finally starting to accept that the team traded him to the Los Angeles Lakers despite wanting him to spend his entire career as a Maverick. This doesn't mean that fans aren't still extremely hurt by this trade, but they are starting to accept the reality that Doncic may never be a Maverick again.

Dallas' trade to send Doncic to Los Angeles for Anthony Davis shocked everyone, as no one expected the team to be shopping Doncic. It was known that the Mavericks were busy on the phones ahead of the trade deadline, but no one knew that this busyness would lead to trading a 25-year-old worldwide superstar to the Lakers.

While seeing Doncic in the purple and gold has been hard enough for fans, everything that comes along with this trade has been even harder. From ownership throwing Doncic under the bus to Davis getting injured in his Mavs debut, this transition has not been easy for fans.

Doncic's loyalty to Mavericks outweighed their loyalty to him

Mavericks fans may never fully get over Doncic being traded to the Lakers, and as time goes on, it becomes more and more clear that the Mavericks didn't have the same loyalty for Doncic that he had for them.

The day after that Dallas traded Doncic to Los Angeles, he made it clear that he thought he would spend his entire career as a Maverick in a letter to the city that he posted on social media titled "Dear Dallas." He wanted to bring the city of Dallas a championship badly, and his only focus on the basketball court was winning a championship. Doncic didn't care much about individual accomplishments. He just cared about doing whatever he needed to do to help the Mavericks reach the NBA Finals and hoist the Larry O'Brien Trophy for the first time since 2011.

He had a golden opportuity to turn that dream into a reality in 2024, but the Mavs fell short to the Boston Celtics. In response to that, Dallas made some excellent moves over the offseason to retool the roster around Doncic, but now fans will never get to see how this year's team would have fared in the postseason with Doncic leading the charge. This year's roster was said to be the deepest team of the Doncic era, but Nico Harrison decided to move in a different direction.

In Doncic's introductory press conference as a Laker, he made it clear that he planned on signing a supermax extension with the Mavericks this summer, and there were no indications from his camp that he was going to do otherwise. It has now been reported that Dallas didn't plan on offering Doncic the supermax that he wholeheartedly deserved, further showing that he didn't seem to be in their long-term plans.

Doncic expanded on how important loyalty is to him in his Lakers press conference, and this only threw more salt into the Mavericks fans' wounds who were still mourning the trade.

"I thought I was gonna stay my whole career there," Doncic said. "Loyalty is a big word for me."

Doncic highly values loyalty, as evidenced by him wanting to be a Maverick for life, but Dallas didn't share the same loyalty for him.

They didn't want to give him the supermax extension that he was owed this summer, and the loyalty that the franchise showed Dirk Nowitzki through the thick and the thin was nowhere to be found when it came to the way that the Mavericks handled the Doncic situation. The message at the base of Nowitzki's statue outside of the American Airlines Center which reads "loyalty never fades away," was disregarded, and fans couldn't be more furious at the way that things went down.

Angry Mavericks fans showed their loyalty to Doncic with a massive protest with hundreds of people outside of the American Airlines Center before the first home game after the trade, and these protests continued inside of the stadium for some recent home games as fans have worn various shirts and held up signs that show disgust of the trade.

Fans still can't comprehend that the team traded Doncic like this out of nowhere, and while many fans are showing their loyalty to the Mavs by supporting them through this time, some fans have abandoned ship and followed Doncic to Los Angeles. Mavericks fans expected Doncic to retire a Maverick just as Nowitzki did and never wear another team's jersey, but that possibility has already been thrown out the window.

The Mavericks' fan base has always been about loyalty, as they believed in Nowitzki when no one else did, and they had this same belief in Doncic. They believed that he had what it took to take them back to the NBA Finals, but the front office believed that Davis gave them a better shot at doing that.