The most charitable possible explanation for the Luka Dončić trade — and this was already a stretch — was that it improved the team’s short-term prospects. Nico Harrison told us as much when he said, “The future to me is three to four years from now” in his post-trade press conference. Anthony Davis, though not nearly as valuable as Dončić, complements Kyrie Irving quite well. Max Christie has already played well in Dallas, and the extra first-round pick gained gave Dallas another chip to use for further upgrades over the summer. That still probably didn’t make the post-Dončić Mavericks better than the pre-Dončić Mavericks, but a justification existed if you were willing to look for it hard enough.
Well, Year No. 1 of that theoretical window went up in smoke on Monday when Kyrie Irving tore his left ACL. It’s entirely possible that Year No. 2 is gone as well. There’s not exactly a fixed timeline for ACL recoveries. Consider the cases of Iman Shumpert and Derrick Rose. The two of them both tore ACLs on the same day: April 28, 2012. Shumpert was back on the court by Jan. 17, 2013. Rose did not play a single minute during the 2012-13 season. Late-season ACL tears like theirs have derailed multiple seasons for several critical players. Jamal Murray tore his ACL on April 12, 2021, and did not return until the beginning of the 2022-23 season. Irving is in his 30s. He has a lengthy history of injuries, especially in the left knee, that includes his presently torn ligament. There is no guarantee whatsoever that Irving will play next season. Even if he does, the odds of him returning to full strength by the playoffs don’t appear great.
Luka Dončić trade continues to haunt Mavericks as Kyrie Irving injury exposes worst-case scenario
Brad Botkin
That means the first season in which Dallas can reasonably expect to have its two pillars healthy from start to finish would be the 2026-27 campaign, the third year of that stated window. That will be Davis’ age-33 season and Irving’s age-34 year. Davis himself has a lengthy history of injuries. He has thus far played just 31 minutes in over a month as a Maverick. As bad as this looks now, it would only take one less-than-freak occurrence to make things a whole lot worse.
Could Dallas trade its way into a roster capable of holding down the fort until Irving returns? Well, maybe, but remember, they failed to extract every ounce of value from the Lakers in the Dončić deal and are somewhat limited in what they can offer. They don’t have a bad salary either. Any salary they use to match money on a possible acquisition is going to be attached to someone they’d miss. Say they want to chase Kevin Durant, as was reported at the deadline. He’s owed $54.7 million next season. It would take three or four good players to match money there, and even if they did, they’d be bringing in another aging, injury-prone star.
In short, we’re looking at maybe one or two years of winning here on the GM’s own timeline. After that, things get dark. Not just on the basketball court, but within the entire framework of the organization’s place in professional basketball. The Mavericks have already lost a substantial amount of fan support in the wake of the Dončić deal. They’re probably going to lose more of it after they decided to raise season-ticket prices on Monday. Their push to win before this season also cost them quite a bit of their future. Dallas doesn’t control its own first-round picks between 2027 and 2030. When this core ages out, there won’t be young prospects coming in to replace them.
That’s bad enough, but they get even worse when you consider where those picks are going. The 2028 pick is owed to the San Antonio Spurs through a swap. The 2029 pick is likely to go to the Houston Rockets outright. The 2030 pick is headed to the Oklahoma City Thunder through a swap. Two of those teams play in the same state as the Mavericks. The third is geographically closer to them than either the Spurs or Rockets. These teams are, effectively, the three biggest regional competitors the Mavericks have for the loyalty of prospective basketball fans. Those three teams also happen to have three of the most promising young rosters in the NBA. Guess which teams fans in that part of the country are going to flock to as this Dallas situation continues to deteriorate? It’s either them or Dončić’s Lakers, who have never had trouble attracting fans outside of their home market.
This is not just a basketball issue. This is an existential crisis for the Mavericks, the sort that can make or break a team’s standing in the league for decades. What this team does in the next few transaction cycles is going to determine whether or not the city of Dallas will ever embrace the Mavericks again. And what they should do, as soon as humanly possible, is clear: trade Anthony Davis.
Let’s make this clear from the jump: none of this is Davis’ fault. The overwhelming majority of teams would be thrilled to have him. The Mavericks are simply in the middle of a wholly unique mess of their own creation, one in which Davis makes sense neither off the court nor on it. To an extraordinarily angry fanbase, Davis is fighting an uphill battle. Short of potentially winning a championship, there is little he can do to shed the label of “the player we have instead of Luka Dončić.”
Kyrie Irving injury puts Mavericks in an unimaginably grim position, both short- and long-term
James Herbert
What Dallas needs, more than anything, is a fresh start, a new young player for the fan base to rally around. They have a very brief window to find that player. Jasmyn Wimbish explained in detail why it’s time for the Mavericks to tank here, but here’s the short explanation: Dallas has two chances left to control its own pick this decade. After the 2026 draft, they have no safe way to position themselves to add a notable young player. Their pick this year, given the injuries they’ve endured, will almost certainly be at the backend of the lottery. If they can weaken the roster enough, their pick next year could be closer to the front of it. Their next chance to do so after 2026 won’t come until 2031.
Two lottery picks guarantee nothing, but remember, trading Davis would do more than just weaken next year’s team. Such a deal would presumably net an impressive haul in its own right. Not nearly the sort of return teams would have given up for Dončić, but, well, Davis is already a sunk cost. This is where the Mavericks stand today. The 10-year Dončić window is closed. Most of the three-or-four-year Davis and Irving window is now closed, and it’s no certainty that it ever re-opens. The Mavericks made their bed and now they have to sleep in it. Two lottery picks plus whatever they can get back for Davis and their other veterans may not be a slam dunk of a rebuild, but given the grim outlook this win-now plan faces after Irving’s injury, it’s still the best this team can do.
It helps that a rebuild wouldn’t be fully starting from scratch. The Mavericks have at least two youngsters with considerable upside in Dereck Lively and Max Christie. Jaden Hardy is going to benefit from the on-ball opportunities Irving’s absence creates, and he’s locked into an extremely favorable contract. These are players who could be part of the next winning Mavericks team, but none are equipped to lead the Mavericks into the post-Davis and Irving future. That’s what they’re going to have to do if Dallas stays the course here.
The most obvious roadblock here is Harrison. He bet his career on Davis. It seems almost impossible to imagine him giving up the star he wanted badly enough to trade away Dončić. But we’re not writing about what’s best for Nico Harrison. We’re writing about what’s best for the Dallas Mavericks. And if Nico Harrison stands in the way of what’s best for the Dallas Mavericks, then Nico Harrison should no longer be the general manager of the Dallas Mavericks.
There’s plenty of justification for a leadership change already. The job of a general manager is to position his team for both the present and the future. It’s hard to imagine any general manager who openly dismisses a future beyond four years well-suited for the job. A report from Tim Cato of DLLS even surfaced suggesting that Harrison is not planning to hold the job for the long haul. If that is indeed the case, even letting Harrison make the trade was irresponsible on the ownership’s part. The goals of a general manager and an organization need to be aligned. It’s not clear that they are in Dallas. And from a fan retention perspective, moving on from Harrison might be a necessary step. The trust between city and franchise has been broken. The first step in mending it would be installing someone the fan base does trust in the GM seat moving forward.
Where does Irving fit into this? He still has a surprising amount of leverage. He has a player option for next season. Whether he’s capable of playing or not, the Mavericks have to re-sign him. The notion of letting him walk for nothing when the entire team was just retrofitted around his timeline is simply untenable. As low as this team’s championship odds with Davis already are, they drop to zero if Irving isn’t part of the team. Even hurt, he is far and away the most popular Maverick today. If there’s any lingering goodwill with the fans here whatsoever, it dies if Irving leaves.
There’s a reasonable compromise for both sides here. Rudy Gobert gave them a template when he declined his $46.6 million 2025-26 player option to re-sign in Minnesota for $109.5 million over three years. Doing so lowered his immediate cap hit, but guaranteed him long-term money. Irving, given the risk of entering free agency in 2026 coming off of an ACL tear, would probably be amenable to something like that, and by locking him in long-term, the Mavericks would probably have an easier time convincing him to be cautious when it comes to his recovery timeline. If they’re tanking, it doesn’t make sense to play him next season anyway. His best chance at returning anywhere near an All-Star level would be with the 19-month recovery timeline skipping year would create, and that would give the Mavericks a chance to immediately become relatively competitive as soon as they stand to give away picks. The last thing anyone in this organization should want would be giving the Thunder, Rockets or Spurs high draft picks.
What sort of market would Davis garner if he was made available? Not the one Dončić would have had the Mavericks shopped him properly, but still a considerable one. Houston stands out as the ideal suitor, given its depth of assets and its ability to send Dallas its own 2029 pick back. Golden State has been interested in the past and still controls the bulk of its future draft capital. The same could be said for Sacramento, who sorely needs a rim-protector to pair with Domantas Sabonis. Speaking of teams needing rim protection, an under-the-radar option might be Phoenix. Durant is almost certainly headed out over the summer, so perhaps there is a three-way construction that pairs Davis with Devin Booker and turns Durant into a younger asset for Dallas. Davis remains an All-NBA-caliber player. Finding him a home wouldn’t be difficult.
That home just shouldn’t be in Dallas. It never should have been in Dallas. If Dallas was ever going to trade Dončić, it should have been for the sort of package that a star typically nets: one loaded with young players and draft picks. This harebrained win-now-without-the-second-best-player-in-the-NBA scheme never made sense from the start, and the Irving injury only underlined the risk that Dallas didn’t seem to know it was taking. It’s time for the Mavericks to cut their losses and start over. As unappealing as that might sound, it’s a far brighter future than the one they’re headed for when the Davis-Irving era inevitably peters out.
