RandBall: Nothing else can be shocking in the NBA after Luka for AD trade

Timberwolves boss Tim Connelly has made two of the larger and most surprising trades in the NBA in the last three years.

First it was a big swing for Rudy Gobert in the summer of 2022, then shipping out Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo on the eve of camp in 2024.

Connelly was pummeled as an idiot the first year of the Gobert trade, then praised as a genius the second year after a trip to the Western Conference finals, and now he’s back to being a dunce for the KAT trade in the court of public opinion.

We’ll see if that one swings back up the other way next year, too. The Gobert trade at least invites us to consider that first impressions can be misleading.

The Dallas Mavericks brain trust is currently hoping that is true, having pulled off what we should now consider the last shocking trade in NBA history.

Anything approaching the deal that sent Luka Doncic and two others to the Lakers for Anthony Davis and a single first-round pick — one that materialized out of nowhere late Saturday and was seemingly so preposterous that numerous credible folks thought it was a prank — will now be compared to that trade, and we will be forced to conclude thusly: Well, the Mavericks traded Luka so anything is possible.

Perhaps the immediate grades, which seem to all be giving the Lakers an A and the poor Mavs an F, will be proven correct. Patrick Reusse and I certainly found it to be extremely lopsided and strange as we discussed it at the start of Monday’s Daily Delivery podcast.

With a little more time to think about it, first I needed to brush aside reports that Dallas is concerned about the conditioning and fitness of Doncic — oft-injured, sure, but a top-3 NBA player whether he is trending toward the svelte side or not — as a specious retrofitted narrative considering that Davis is not exactly an ironman even if his body looks the part.

Does Dallas really think Davis and his defense, six years older than Doncic (31 to 25, both with birthdays soon), is the key to winning a championship after Luka just dragged them to the Finals a year ago? Nonsense.

I’m left to conclude, then, that the chief motivation (and one of the true undefeated motivators in the entire world) is money. Dallas didn’t want to pay a five-year, $345 million supermax contract for Doncic this offseason. Instead, they’ll be on the hook for two more years after this one guaranteed (plus a player option) for Davis, at a lower rate.

Give out a contract like that and you get into the luxury tax pretty quickly. Love will do funny things to a person, and it seems the “second apron” of that tax will, too.

That much-discussed apron, certainly a factor in the offseason Towns deal that no longer qualifies as a shocker after this weekend, is at an even higher threshold beyond just the luxury tax line that prevents teams from aggregating salaries in trades, using mid-level exceptions in free agency and more.

It’s harder to compete when you can’t make moves around the edges to circumvent the NBA’s salary cap. Of course, it’s also harder to compete when you don’t get the best player in a trade.

If Dallas was worried that Doncic was going to weigh them down in more ways than one, they will soon find out how it feels to let go.