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How exactly do you contextualize a trade that has no historical precedent? It's nearly impossible, let me tell you, and I say because that's exactly what myself and many others have been attempting to do for the last 12 or so hours, ever since the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks agreed to a deal that would swap Anthony Davis and Luka Doncic. Never before has a midseason trade featured two players who are reigning All-NBA performers, and frankly, that note only scratches the surface of how rare a deal like this one is.
It's not just that Luka Doncic and Anthony Davis are two of the best players in the NBA and that they were recognized as such last season. It's that Doncic was supposed to be a franchise cornerstone in Dallas for years to come. Someone who was expected to be handed that torch by Dirk Nowitzki. It's that Davis was brought to LA in 2019 and the Lakers won an NBA Title just a little over a year later. He was named of the 75 greatest players ever, and is in the midst of one of the best seasons of his career.
Again I ask, how do you contextualize a trade like this one? It turns out ESPN's NFL insider Adam Schefter had been pondering the very same question.
“Trying to think of a football trade as massive as this NBA one,” Schefter said on X in the wee hours of the night. “Herschel Walker? Eric Dickerson? Matthew Stafford-Jared Goff? There aren’t many, if any.”
Frankly, none of those deals measure up. Walker was traded for an absurdly large bounty of draft picks. Dickerson's trade involved five-time Pro Bowler Cornelius Bennett, but Bennett was a rookie at the time. Stafford for Goff didn't feel nearly as momentous as this Doncic for Davis, since neither QB had ever been named an All-Pro. Eventually, Schefter was able to concoct a hypothetical NFL deal that actually does stack up to this very real and very surprising NBA trade.
“An NFL equivalent: the Ravens trading Lamar Jackson+ to the Bengals in exchange for Joe Burrow+ — in the middle of the season.”
Of course, a deal of that magnitude, let alone one made just five days ahead of the league's trade deadline, would never, ever happen in the NFL. And until this morning, I don't think anybody would've thought it was possible in the NBA either.
