Luka Dealt to Lakers: Nico Harrison is a Basketball Terrorist

[hakeemfaan]

There's enough evidence out there to confidently say Dallas decided they weren't going to offer Luka the supermax. This was a financial decision and an ownership call. Maybe Nico advised against the supermax, but regardless that's not a decision he makes in a vacuum. Ownership looked at the totality of the situation and decided Luka wasn't worth $345 million guaranteed. Everything falls into place from there. Dallas just had no leverage and you're talking about serious money.

Unfortunately we'll never really know if the Mavs were right or wrong. The most Luka can sign for now is 4 years $229 million but he'll most likely sign a two-year extension to put himself back in position for the supermax with 10 years of service. And of course now the Lakers have leverage the Mavs didn't. I think Luka will rise to the challenge and win multiple MVPs and Championships in LA but that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing wouldn've happened if Dallas guaranteed Luka $345 million this summer.

Dallas still had leverage. If you don’t have leverage when you have a 25 year old perennial MVP candidate coming off a Finals run, then you might as well shut down this franchise. 

Let’s assume the worst case scenario that you throw bidding open to all teams and Luka gets ticked and says he won’t sign an extension with anyone other than the Lakers. So be it. My understanding is that he still is under contract for the Mavs.  The guy won’t dog it on the court. I would have taken the chance of the worst case scenario being we completely losing out on everything than settling on a meaningless AD  and late future first pick. 

Old organization or new, it’s only the Mavs who seem to always have no leverage when it comes to trades. Other teams always get more even for borderline all stars though in many of those cases they have had even worse issues. 

There is zero excuse for this being the best haul that they could have pulled off and claim they had very little leverage. Absolutely zero.