What the Luka Doncic Trade Taught Me About B2B SAAS
Making sense of how Nico Harrison ended up making the worst trade in NBA history
The Mavericks just made the worst trade in NBA history, trading a 25-year-old top three player in Luka Doncic in exchange for an almost-32 year old top 15 player in Anthony Davis and one first round pick. They essentially sold their future to at best get marginally better this year and maybe next year.
Like everyone else, my first reaction to the Luka Doncic trade was assuming that it was fake news. My second reaction was questioning reality and wondering if I was dreaming. My third reaction was waiting for some mistake to be announced and for the owners to rescind the trade. My fourth reaction was reading conspiracy theories about how the Mavericks/NBA were intentionally sabotaging the Mavericks or propping up the Lakers. My fifth reaction was slowly realizing that Mavericks GM Nico Harrison really was that stupid, and the owners had somehow signed off on the trade after initially laughing at Harrison for suggesting it.
There have been crazier stories in the NBA like the Clippers kidnapping Deandre Jordan or the Sixers General Manager tweeting out sensitive information and insults against his star players on his burner account. But as surprising as those stories were, they didn’t go against all my priors about the league and make me question reality the way the Doncic trade did.
How could Nico Harrison be this stupid? He clearly has more basketball knowledge than me; he built a finals team last year off of two brilliant in-season trades for Daniel Gafford and PJ Washington. What caused him to make the worst trade in NBA history?
How the Doncic Trade Happened
Between the Mavericks’ internal data and clashes with Doncic’s attitude towards fitness, Harrison considered Doncic to be a Joel Embiid-level health risk and did not want to pay him the super-max of $70 million a year. In particular, Harrison did not seem to believe that Doncic’s body could handle four playoff series without breaking down. Furthermore, the Mavericks were also concerned about defensive effort and appeared to generally be sick of Doncic.
While most people would disagree with the assessment, it is still understandable. What was truly perplexing was Harrison’s decision to only negotiate with the Lakers. Why didn’t Harrison put Doncic on the open market and start a bidding war?
From what I’ve gathered from listening to various podcasts, Harrison wanted to avoid a Jimmy Butler/Damian Lillard/De'Aaron Fox situation, where the superstar refuses to sign an extension with all but one team, thereby depressing his trade value. Hence, keeping any trade talks secret from Doncic was of paramount concern to him. Harrison chose to get ahead of the situation by acting first to get the trade he wanted.
The trade that Harrison appeared to want was anything involving Anthony Davis, because “defense wins championships” and Davis is a defensive anchor. In fact, it seems that Harrison legitimately thought that the Lakers and Mavericks got equal value from that trade due to his perception of Davis and Doncic.
Allegedly, the original trade had more Lakers assets such as Dalton Knecht and the 2031 first round pick. However, the Lakers played the “we aren’t sure Doncic will sign an extension with us can we talk to him” card. Harrison valued secrecy over additional Lakers assets and whittled down the trade to what it was in exchange for the Lakers accepting the risk that Doncic would not sign an extension. Harrison’s premium on secrecy was also why he did not approach other teams and shop Doncic around.
The Lakers were also happy to oblige in keeping things a secret in order to avoid starting a bidding war and letting the media expose Harrison for how terrible the trade was. As a result, we got the shock reveal last week out of nowhere that Doncic had been traded.
Where did it all go wrong?
The irony is that Harrison was so worried about losing leverage he ended up making a worse Doncic trade than anyone could have imagined. Even with no leverage, Harrison should have been able to at least get two picks and two swaps in addition to Davis.
Harrison believed himself to have incredible alpha over the league—that Luka Doncic is overrated and injury prone—and then completely bungled the process. How did he turn that supposed alpha into the dumbest move by a GM in NBA history?
If we grant Harrison’s premise that trading Doncic was the right thing to do, what Harrison should have done instead was sign Doncic to the super-max extension, and then start a bidding war to trade him to the highest bidder. Even if Doncic tried to pull a Damian Lillard and tell other teams not to trade for him, plenty of teams would still be happy to trade for a 26-year-old Doncic locked up under a five year contract. All Harrison would need would be two teams to start a bidding war.
However, Harrison believed he built a championship-quality team in last year’s finals team around the team’s defensive identity and three-point shooting, but it was held back by Doncic’s poor defense and conditioning. Conditioned on this belief, he couldn’t waste even one year of the Mavericks championship window and had to act now.
As someone with a worse understanding of basketball than Harrison, I’ll withhold complete judgement on this assessment until the Mavericks lose in the second round this year, but to me it appears to be a common case—not just in basketball—of an executive overreacting to fleeting results and going on an ego-trip of what a visionary he was while downplaying the contributions of the superstar who carried the team there.
Now even if we grant that the Mavericks needed to move off Doncic and had to act right now, the Mavericks still massively bungled the trade process. I think what ultimately did Harrison in was his commitment to secrecy. The secrecy cut him off from all feedback channels from other Mavericks employees or the public media that might have told him there were alternatives to Anthony Davis (maybe Alperen Şengün and some defensive wing depth) or that this would go down as the worst trade in NBA history. It blocked him from asking the coaches whether this would be a good idea. It blocked the media and other teams from swooping in and saving Harrison from himself. It allowed the Lakers to force unnecessary concessions from the Mavericks. And for what? Although Harrison doesn’t seem to think he got ripped off, everyone else does. He ended up juking himself into having less leverage than in any possible doomsday media circus disgruntled-Doncic scenario.
My takeaway from all this is that secrecy comes at a very high cost. As tempting as it is to keep things secret in order to streamline your process and avoid awkward situations, everyone has blind spots. Secrecy prevents you from receiving feedback that uncovers how terrible your awful ideas are. If you’re going to engage in secrecy, it better be for a really good reason. And even then, even if you think you have a really good reason for keeping things secret (e.g. losing leverage in trade negotiations), by keeping things secret you open yourself up to the possibility of unimaginably bad decision-making far worse than the scenario you were trying to avoid.