Boomer and Gio spent much of Monday’s show the way many around the sporting world spent their weekend: trying to make sense of the blockbuster trade between the Mavericks and Lakers.
The deal, which sent Luka Doncic to LA for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and a 2029 first-round pick (among other marginal adds going back to the Lakers with the Jazz included as part of a three-team deal), was seen as a massively underwhelming return for Dallas. For Gio, the return package wasn’t even the worst look for the Mavericks and the NBA. It was the team that seemed to get the exclusive opportunity to acquire a top-five player in his prime for a first-round pick and an oft-injured star.
“The most egregious thing is, when you have a superstar like this that you’re trading, you can’t have some underground thing going on where he ends up with the Lakers,” Gio said. “That, to me, looks like this thing had been planned by everybody, including the highest level of the NBA, because the damn Lakers always get another player.
“Every time they’re about to go through a stretch...all of a sudden, they get the 25-year-old superstar. Shaq goes there, Kareem goes there, Wilt goes there, it never ends. Anthony Davis goes there. It never ends over there!”
The trade was so sudden and so shocking that Gio couldn’t believe that Dallas didn’t seem to take time to shop Doncic around to other teams that very likely could have offered more, especially in draft capital, as players like Rudy Gobert and Mikal Bridges have recently brought in a plethora of first-round picks in return, and neither player is close to the star that Doncic is right now.
“His value still would have been tremendous on the open market, which they never put him out there...that’s what baffles me,” Gio said. “What you can’t do is engage one basketball team when the coach doesn’t know, the players don’t know, LeBron doesn’t know.”