The Los Angeles Lakers made arguably the most shocking trade in NBA history last February when they sent Anthony Davis and Max Christie to the Dallas Mavericks for Luka Doncic.
Considering Doncic is only 26-years-old and had just led the Mavericks to the NBA Finals, no one thought him getting traded was even a remote possibility.
The deal went down late at night right after the Lakers had beaten the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden. On a recent appearance on “The Young Man and The Three” podcast, Austin Reaves broke down how he found out about the trade and how he thought Davis was joking to the team:
“We played New York, we beat New York by I think 15 or so, pretty comfortably without AD. We were playing well. We get in the locker room after the game, I was sitting by LeBron just talking about bullshit and everybody was falling into roles, everybody was bought in. Like I said, we were playing well and I was like we’re gonna be alright once we get AD back. Obviously he was a big piece of what we were going to do at the time… We get on the bus and we’re like five minutes away from the hotel and our group chat starts going crazy. Honestly, I hardly ever look at the group chat. They just talk about whatever, it could be about the weather or anything. So I thought a couple people just texted, because we had a couple guys out, and just texted like good win or whatever. The first thing I look at when I pulled my phone up was AD said ‘They traded me.’ If anybody knows AD, he jokes around a lot. So I laughed and put my phone down. And my phone kept going off so I was like what the hell? I pulled up Instagram and saw Shams’ post or whatever, called [my agents] and I was like what the f—? They were like there’s no way this is real, and I was like alright cool, let me know if you hear anything else. I call one of our assistant coaches, Beau (Levesque) and I was like what the f—? And he was like uhh, and that’s all he said. I was like uhh what? And he was like, it’s real. Why do you know that? And he was like, I’m sitting by Max Christie. And I was like oh shit, this is actually real. So I was obviously hurt at the time because I had a good relationship with Max, I had a really good relationship with AD. So that aspect, I was with AD for four years, Max for three… But we get Luka though and like you said, incredible player, generational player. Nobody thought he would get traded at that age, or anytime honestly. But everything happens for a reason and I’m really excited about what we got.”
Fans were obviously taken back by the trade, but it’s funny to hear that the Lakers players felt the same way and were also caught off guard. The Lakers were playing great basketball at the time and even though Davis is still an elite player and Christie was emerging as a quality young role player, acquiring Doncic in his prime was simply an opportunity Rob Pelinka couldn’t pass up.
Reaves was known to have a good relationship with both Davis and Christie so finding out that news had to have been difficult, although it didn’t take long for him to adjust and thrive playing alongside Doncic in the Lakers backcourt.
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