Here's Stephen A. Smith Clowning The Dallas Mavericks After Trading Anthony Davis

The Anthony Davis era in Dallas is officially over. And all the Mavericks have to show for it is a consolation package of utility players and not-too-stellar draft picks.

If there’s one person who could be counted on to lampoon the Mavericks for this outcome, it’s Stephen A. Smith. The ESPN personality did it in real time as he monitored the developments of the trade deadline on “The Stephen A. Smith Show.”

"Breaking news out of the Association, as in the National Basketball Association," Smith said as he prepared to read aloud a tweet from his ESPN colleague Shams Charania. Moments prior, Charania had reported that Davis and three of his teammates (Jaden Hardy, D'Angelo Russell, and Dante Exum) were going to the Washington Wizards in exchange for one-time NBA champion Khris Middleton, three reserve players, and a total of five draft picks.

With the wheels turning in his head, SAS promptly came up with an evaluation of the trade. And it wasn’t a positive one. 

"In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the same franchise that traded a 25-year-old superstar, a global iconic basketball brand that is Luka Doncic, ultimately has Khris Middleton, AJ Johnson, Malaki Branham, Marvin Bagley III, 2 first-round picks, and 3 second-rounders," Smith concluded.

Smith said these words with a slow cadence, and anyone who has followed the loud-mouthed analyst over the years knows that SAS reserves that delivery for mocking purposes. It’s the same cadence that he used when he ridiculed the likes of “Kwa-Me Brown” and “T-ia-go Spli-tter” in the past.

Naturally, Smith also took shots at the former Dallas GM who pulled the trigger on the Doncic deal. “I understand that Nico Harrison lost his job as an executive. He may never get another basketball job again.”

A year after Harrison traded Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in a package that brought Davis to Dallas, the Mavericks have essentially blown up their roster with Cooper Flagg as the designated survivor. Meanwhile, Doncic and the Lakers are in the thick of things, putting themselves in position to secure homecourt advantage in the Western Conference playoffs for a second consecutive season.

Wrapping up his assessment of the Davis trade to the Wizards, Smith had one more word for the year-long sequence of events in Dallas: "Inexcusable."