Luka Doncic knows there will be a lot of emotions when he steps on the court in Dallas for the first time wearing his No. 77 jersey for the Los Angeles Lakers. For him and those Mavericks fans who cheered him while he wore that number in Mavericks blue the first five-and-a-half seasons of his career.
Two months after that seismic trade out of nowhere that sent the five-time All-Star to the Lakers, the 26-year-old Doncic is back in Dallas for a game Wednesday night.
“Honestly, I don’t know about closure. It’s obviously a lot,” Doncic said. “I know the fans are going to appreciate me being back here. Honestly, I don’t know how I’m going to feel, but I’m just excited to be back.”
Several hours before the sold-out game, tickets on the secondary market for upper-level seats were running at $230 and more, excluding fees. For the next Mavericks home game Friday night against Toronto, similar tickets were available for less than $20 before fees.
Doncic had been the face of the Mavericks, and he was the NBA scoring champion last season when they made it to the NBA Finals. The 2019 rookie of the year from Slovenia had two seasons left on his contract when general manager Nico Harrison traded him the first weekend of February in a package that brought Anthony Davis to Dallas.
Mavericks fans conducted a mock funeral outside the American Airlines Center on Feb. 2, right after news of the trade late the previous night. There have been protests and plenty of ire directed at Harrison, including “Fire Nico!” showing up on plenty of signs and T-shirts. As for the GM, he hasn’t spoken to the media since comments he made right after the deal was done when he said he felt the team was “built to win now as well as in the future.”
During a Mavericks TV broadcast last month, new team CEO Rick Welts said the reactions showed the emotional connection between the fans and the team.
“The wonderful thing about our business is these things have a scorecard, right? Time, wins and losses will tell whether the deal was a good deal or a bad deal,” Welts said. “I just am going to promise our fans right now, whatever trust we have lost, or whatever concerns they have, we’re going to earn it back, as we’re going to do this the right way and we’re going to win a championship.”
The Mavericks went into the reunion with Doncic sitting in 10th place in the Western Conference, the final spot to get into next week’s play-in tournament.
Dallas was 12-18 since the trade. Davis had played in only seven of those games (five wins). The 10-time All-Star missed six weeks after his dominant debut with the Mavs on Feb. 8, when he had 26 points, 16 rebounds, seven assists and three blocks against Houston before coming up lame in the third quarter because of a groin injury.
Los Angeles, which was third in the West with four teams only a game behind them, was 20-12 since Doncic joined LeBron James’ team. The Lakers were 16-9 in the games Doncic played, including Tuesday night when he got ejected at Oklahoma City.
This isn’t the first time Doncic played the Mavericks. He had a triple-double (19 points, 15 rebounds and 12 assists) in the Lakers’ 107-99 home win on Feb. 25, only 23 days after the trade.
After that game, Doncic struggled for the words to express how strange it was to play against the Mavs.
“It was so weird,” Doncic said then. “There were moments I felt like I don’t know what I was doing.”
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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