The Luka trade is 100% about money

Dallas new owners only care about making maximum profit. They don’t give one shit about winning. In fact they don’t mind pissing off the entire fanbase in order to move the team to Vegas.

The Dallas owners are literally scum. Research them.

They don’t want to pay Luka $350 million and get stuck over the 2nd apron. They don’t want to pay massive luxury tax.

I would not be surprised if Adam Silver brokered this deal. He needs the Lakers to be a contender to juice up ratings. Maybe he promised Dallas owners some juicy incentives.

One possible incentive is Silver fast tracking the move to Vegas. The Mavs owners ultimately want to move the team to Vegas next to their casinos and hotels. They would invest tens of BILLIONS to build a basketball/gambling mecca on several city blocks in Vegas.

That is the only explanation. This was not a basketball trade. This was about money

And why didn’t the Mavs make it public that Luka was available? There would have been an absolute bidding war between multiple teams. Mavs could have gotten so much more. Instead they secretly made an offer with only 1 team. This makes absolutely zero logical sense.

The only logical explanation is Silver would return the favor to the Mavs ownership in the future. If Luka was publicly on the trading block then massive trade offers would come in. If the Mavs rejected those superior offers, then it would be public knowledge that this deal is dirty. Instead they kept this trade secret so now the public can only speculate what other teams would offer for Luka.