The Los Angeles Lakers shocked the world by acquiring Luka Doncic via trade with the Dallas Mavericks. The Athletic’s Senior National Writer, Sam Amick guides Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni inside the Lakers negotiation process, the Mavericks decision to trade Luka, De’Aaron Fox’s move to San Antonio, and the Kings acquisition of Zach LaVine. Then, the Athletic’s Jovan Buha joins the show to look at the Lakers’ roster, their trade deadline plans, and LeBron James’s fit with Luka.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni, Sam Amick & Jovan BuhaExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodyRead Sam’s story on the trade: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6108360/2025/02/03/luka-doncic-nba-trade-negotiations-lakers-mavericks/Submit your questions to The Athletic NBA Daily mailbag: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5939460/2024/11/25/nba-podcast-mailbag-athletic-daily/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. It's trade deadline week, but guess what? Hey, they're still playing basketball games that count. So we're going to talk about those a little bit. We got Sam Amick to go inside the Luka Dodger to the Lakers trade, which shocked the world. And we got Yovan Buha to go inside the future of the Lakers, how they're going to build around Luka.
Good morning, everybody. Good morning, S. Good morning. Good morning. Quiet night in the NBA compared to the weekend. Yeah. Monday. Yeah. It felt like a Wednesday, man.
Yeah. I'm like, I'm numb to it now at this point. It's like, oh, yes, there's basketball that, you know, you sometimes forget during the trade deadline that the reason people are doing all these trades is for the on-court product to be better, the basketball to get better. So.
there you go basketball still happening you almost think maybe they should just like take a break like it should be the all-star break and trade deadline week right yeah like they do for soccer you know like a little window to just do everything and then right instead zach levine happens to have uh paternity leave just in time to be traded to the sacramento kings we're going to talk about that
Uh, with Sam and a little bit, we're going to get into the Luca trade. Cause Sam has all the details on how that happened. Uh, but let's talk about the games a little bit. Let's talk about those Kings. The Kings got a big win. They beat the terrible wolves who man, they've had a shaky couple of days. They lost to the wizards the other day, losing to the Kings.
who are shorthanded because no De'Aaron Fox out there. But end of this game as I was just struck by how good it looked to have Malik Monk and DeMar DeRozan just handing the ball off, taking turns and just absolutely crushing the Wolves defense, just waltzing into the paint. And I started, you know, my head starts spinning.
I'm thinking to myself, you know, the defense is going to be awful ass, but they're going to have three guys that can go out there and get a bucket. They're going to be tough.
And I think to Levine's credit, he really can be the off-ball guy there, space the floor, be a weapon off the catch. Elite at three-point shooting. Incredible as a three-point shooter. And having a really, really good season this year, too. So you think of him and Keegan Murray on the wings with Monk and DeMar facilitating, making plays.
And then you also have Sabonis with the high post playmaking. All of that can come together to be a really good offensive team. And you think about like what this Kings team was when they made their run, you know, becoming the three seed, they were a historic offense. So you might be able to get back to something along the lines of that.
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