Luka Doncic Rehashes Lakers Trade in Wall Street Journal Cover Article

The Luka Dončić–Lakers trade will probably be talked about for the rest of NBA history. It is one of those monumental trades that completely shakes the entire league. Top-5 players just don’t get traded without their consent. Ever since that insane deal, we have heard countless stories (from both sides) of why things went down like they did, and it still doesn’t make complete sense.

Now, Luka is on a huge media tour, not only showing off his new and improved body, but finally revealing his true feelings about the Lakers trade. 

Luka was recently featured on the cover of the Wall Street Journal Magazine. He was also interviewed and showed some of his true feelings about getting traded. WSJ Magazine posted an Instagram teasing the article and providing some interesting quotes from Luka about being traded. The post said this: 

“Welcome to the Luka Dončić Revenge Tour.⁠

Last February, as the planet knows, @lukadoncic was traded by the only NBA team he’d played for, the Dallas Mavericks, to the Los Angeles Lakers. Everyone was stunned, no one more than Luka. He showed up in L.A. looking like someone who’d lost his luggage.⁠

“I didn’t know how to react, how to act, what to say,” Dončić says. “It was a lot of shock. I felt Dallas was my home. I had many friends there. The fans always supported me. I didn’t want to upset Dallas fans. And I didn’t want to upset Laker fans.”⁠

In trying to explain the inexplicable—why on earth Dallas traded one of the best young players in NBA history for a talented but older and oft-injured center, Anthony Davis—stories began to arrive that questioned Dončić’s commitment, his fitness, his long-term durability. It was the sort of leakage that happens after big trades—“A lot of it untrue,” says Dončić’s manager, Lara Beth Seager—but it was jarring to a beloved player who’d never really gotten bad press.⁠

“Putting aside the merits of the trade, you could argue that it was a bit of a kick in the ass to Luka,” says Adam Silver, the NBA’s commissioner. “He didn’t try to sugarcoat this trade.” ⁠

NBA fans weren’t the only ones completely shocked by the Luka–Lakers trade. Luka himself was completely caught off guard and had his feelings hurt. Read the whole WSJ article on Luka here.