Luka Dealt to Lakers: Nico Harrison is a Basketball Terrorist

[SleepingHero]

I think the difference here is that there's a plausible reality in which Luka would never have won a championship here, and some of us have had that sneaky feeling for a while. Is the club giving up on him confirmation that the feeling was fair, or is the club giving up on him "Stockholm syndroming" us into forgetting how great Luka really is? I have oscillated back and forth for the past two weeks, but what's clear is that for some, Luka winning multiple championships here seems to have been a "when" more than an "if." Those are the people struggling the most with this, I think.

This was very well written and I am going to be mulling this paragraph over the next few weeks as I try to reason with what you've written here. Mostly, if it isn't obvious by now, I was apart of the crew that thought a Luka championship was an inevitability. In fact I thought he'd win multiple rings.

Of course thats a very hard thing to do. And it is ironic to me because I have also had moments in the last couple of years, especially during the regular season, where I thought "hmmm, maybe Luka won't win." But those thoughts did not last long as Luka usually put up an incredible game the following day or had an incredible individual playoff performance that just reinforced my belief this dude was the guy. 

And it stings extra hard, as the Mavs are literally fresh off a finals performance with Luka not looking his best. Who's to say Luka with this team wouldn't have won it all?  They had all the ingredients that worked for him last year, with a lot of additional pieces that we all said we needed after the finals. These are questions we will never have the answer to and as a guy apart of the "Luka WILL win a ring" crowd, it's extremely hard to move on. 

In an ideal world where I had some clairvoyant ability to know this trade was coming and I could choose when they made it, I would've wanted to see at least 1 more playoff run with Luka before they cut ties. Even if they were so sure he was going to break down, I am very confident LA would've given up AD in the summer too just because they were that desperate to find a mega superstar post Lebron. Even with a potentially poor playoff showing by Luka, he'd still have fetched the exact same guys we got 2 weeks ago. That is 1 thing I am very confident on.