The Los Angeles Lakers were and will continue to be the clear winners of the Luka Doncic trade. That much has very little to no room for debate. However, the further time moves away from the initial shock of the deal, the more details emerge, and the more it becomes evident just how much this move was the perfect trade for the Lakers.
The NBA world stood still when the deal initially went down on an unexpected Saturday night. People everywhere were debating if Shams Charania was had his Twitter/X account hacked. The focus since that moment has largely been on Doncic.
Insiders and cap experts were quick to evaluate the financial implications of this trade for Luka. The on-court fit of Doncic and LeBron James was quickly put under a microscope. The same goes for the Lakers' frontcourt situation and overall roster construction.
Anthony Davis became somewhat of an afterthought as a major part of this deal. The conversations have certainly been there, but nowhere near to the same extreme. However, Lakers owner Jeanie Buss recently shed light on how Davis fit into the equation here, and why moving on from the dominant big man was actually in everyone's best interests.
Buss reveals how Doncic trade solved more issues than one
The fact that Doncic busted the title window wide open in Los Angeles for the 2024-25 NBA season has become a given after some initial skepticism. The Slovenian superstar has also set up the Lakers to have a strong future moving forward, whether that is the immediate future that involves LeBron, or the distant future when the franchise completely belongs to Luka.
Those are some of the bigger issues solved by Doncic's arrival in Los Angeles. What about the issue of the Lakers ridding themselves of a disgruntled superstar?
Perhaps it was not as obvious as it should have been, but there were certainly hints that Davis was growing frustrated with his time on the Lakers. The most obvious of the bunch was when the former Lakers superstar openly told Charania in a sit-down interview for ESPN that he wanted Rob Pelinka and the front office to acquire big man help so he could play more at the four.
In an interview with NPR, Buss revealed that there was more to those comments than most people would have thought at the time.
"Anthony Davis was complaining about where he was being played and he wasn't happy," the Lakers owner told A MartÃnez . "I think this was a positive for both teams. They got what they were looking for; we got what we were looking for."
Davis got his wish to move back to the four as a member of the Dallas Mavericks. Unfortunately for him, that experience did not even last a full game. For the Lakers, this new wrinkle just became yet another ticked box on the checklist of why this was an all-time trade for the franchise.