The Los Angeles Lakers eked out a win Tuesday night over the visiting Dallas Mavericks, 107–99. The win keeps the rising Lakers a scant few percentage points above the Houston Rockets for the West's fourth seed; the loss leaves Dallas perilously close to the bottom of the conference play-in. Neither team will have to scrounge around too desperately for encouragement: The Lakers played choppy, underwhelming basketball, but got the hero stuff they needed from their best guys and eventually took care of business; the Mavericks looked sharper and better organized but were handicapped by injuries and doomed by an off-shooting night. In basketball terms, this was not a memorable game, just one of those February work-nights where no one has it going but someone has to win.
Because it was the first contest between these two teams since the Luka Doncic trade, assessing it solely in basketball terms misses quite a lot of context. "It was just a lot of emotions and not much sleep," said a wrung-out and relieved Doncic, who had an off night despite posting a triple-double. "It was a different game ... I'm just glad it's over, honestly." Tension was high, at least in the early going: Doncic picked up a technical foul in the game's third minute for objecting to a swallowed whistle. Later in the quarter, when he bombed home a deep three-pointer and turned to glare at Dallas's bench, television cameras picked up several of his former teammates grinning and laughing in what appeared to be sincere appreciation. They're bigger men—literally and figuratively—than I: Being mean-mugged by a former colleague for an unpopular decision made by management would cause me to boil with indignation. If Tom Ley trades Luis Paez-Pumar to Wired, Luis had better direct his vengeful showboating at Tom damn Ley, or summon a competent second and face me in a duel at sunrise! I will have satisfaction, by God.
Besides, on this night, Doncic had a worthier target for pointed stares: Nico Harrison, general manager of the Mavericks and architect of the bewildering trade, was on the sidelines during shootaround and in the lower section of the stands during play. Harrison has been out of sight at Mavericks home games since the trade, so this was a noteworthy appearance. Something happens in my tummy when I ponder it. At an absolute minimum, the optics are very poor: Harrison and Rob Pelinka, his Lakers counterpart and former boss, worked quietly to execute one of the most lopsided trades in the history of North American professional sports. It strikes me as messed up, and possibly even cowardly, for Harrison to make himself available to the feedback of blessed and grateful Lakers fans before he accepts a night of righteous venting from heartbroken Dallasites. Lakers fans, to their credit, forced Harrison to eat a small portion of the shit that is his rightful comeuppance:
The post-Doncic Mavericks are feisty and well-coached. Last night a motivated and energetic Kyrie Irving kept them afloat early, and in the game's intense finale a red-hot Klay Thompson brought them to the brink of an unlikely road victory. The team that almost upset the Lakers Tuesday night can pin some of their short-term hopes on the prospect of Anthony Davis returning to action before the Phoenix Suns remember how to win basketball games, and making the rest of Dallas's rotation fit in a way that it cannot while he and all the rest of the team's tall guys are shelved. For now they're hanging on for dear life, but it feels very reasonable to suspect that even a healthy Daniel Gafford would've pushed them over the top in Los Angeles.
The Lakers have nothing so promising in reserve. The team they put on the floor is what it is: Rui Hachimura, who in his career has collected about a third of a block per game, is presently their best option at center. Doncic and James will get better at playing together—hell, they got noticeably better as this game went on, including a delicious two-man sequence where they manipulated one another into increasingly advantageous positions until finally Doncic passed LeBron into a wide-open three-pointer—and the team's role-players will eventually fall into shapelier orbits. The Lakers don't look very much like a serious contender, from moment to moment, but they're piling up wins even with janky undersized lineups, and with a noticeably round and earthbound Doncic still playing his way into shape.
I feel icky pulling any meaning out of the Lakers' current form, though, because doing so does a favor to Harrison and Patrick Dumont, who justified the trading away of the Mavericks' future with half-assed claims about maximizing the team's near-term opportunities. A healthy Lakers team might today lose a game or a series to a healthy Mavericks team, but Doncic is 25 years old, and the devastation felt by Dallasites has only a little bit to do with how the remainder of this season plays out, or the remainder of Doncic's current contract. Also, not for nothing, but if the Mavericks aren't healthy enough to beat the Doncic-led Lakers, possibly that might have something to do with the decision by Harrison and Dumont to swap Doncic for someone who is never, ever healthy.
Even the flabby, out-of-sorts Doncic who missed 11 shots and six three-pointers Tuesday night was impossibly cool and effective. He made a contested jumper so preposterous—ruled a three and then adjusted by replay to a two-pointer—that you would hoot and shake your head if it happened in an all-star game. He threw a pass in the second quarter that caused me to inhale with enough force to temporarily relocate my lungs within my torso. I've watched the replay approximately 18 times and I still can't wrap my mind around it:
The Lakers are still figuring out how to orient themselves around this new star. They've got so much time: The point of the Doncic trade was to secure the franchise's next era, and whatever discomfort they experience in the short-term is well worth the potential rewards. In the meantime, go ahead and circle April 9 on your hoops calendar: The Lakers will travel to Dallas on that date, and the West is dense enough that playoff seeding might still be up for grabs. Davis should be healthy; even Gafford might be back in the mix. If the Mavericks are lucky, they might still be fighting for something. God help them, truly, if they're not. Either way, we'll learn by Harrison's presence or absence his appetite for the mess he's created.
