We Need to Talk About *This* Trade War, Actually

Late Saturday night, a paradigm-shifting NBA trade caused fans to pull over on highways and leave parties early. DJs paused their sets to break the news. At least 3 podcasts dropped emergency 2 am episodes. 

By Kylie Cheung  |  February 3, 2025 | 5:47pm
Photo: Getty Images In Depth
We Need to Talk About *This* Trade War, Actually

Over the weekend, we were rocked by catastrophic trade deals that threw the future and stability of our nation into question. Confusion reigned, lack of government transparency sowed chaos, conspiracy theories ran amuck, and people took to the streets in protest. That’s right: The Dallas Mavericks traded their 25-year-old superstar, Luka Dončić, to the Los Angeles Lakers for the 31-year-old, oft-injured Anthony Davis. Some non-NBA fans have asked for a pop culture comparison. No disrespect whatsoever to Mr. Davis, but this trade feels akin to Destiny’s Child trading Beyoncé to *NSYNC for Joey Fatone.

Over the last seven-odd years, Dončić has managed to make the Mavs a competitor every season, even with almost comically unhelpful teammates; finally given some help, just last year, he took the Mavs to the NBA Finals on an injured leg. In 2022, he not only almost single-handedly ended the Phoenix Suns organization, but inflicted a lifetime of therapy bills on my beloved Devin Booker. That same playoff series, he also transformed future Hall of Famer and 20-year veteran Chris Paul into a meme that will probably be printed on his tombstone.

Nevertheless, the Mavs traded Dončić, Maxi Kleber, and Markieff Morris in exchange for Davis, Max Christie, and one (1) single first-round pick—or, as one social media user put it, Dončić was traded for “some street clothes and a bag of chips.” 

I’ll never forget this trade, mostly because I’ll never forget what it was like to get the news. I got the push notification close to midnight on Saturday, while at a party surrounded by a largely queer audience who were pretty indifferent to the paradigm-shifting news; I simply had to go home immediately. Some social media users say they were driving when they got the news and had to pull over. At least one DJ interrupted his set to make the announcement. The Suns’ Kevin Durant received the news from the bench in the middle of a game on Saturday night; he leaned back in shock. Booker said when he first heard the news, he thought it was about the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Luka Garza, which… would make a lot more sense!

My favorite teams are not in championship contention at all, so you’d think the impact on me, personally, would be pretty minimal. But as a member of polite society, I was shocked nonetheless: This trade felt like a shattering of the social contract. If one of the most promising and proven stars in the league could be traded on a random Saturday night, what’s to stop anyone from doing anything—your long-term partner from dumping you, your employer from transferring you to Canada (which… actually would be pretty cool right about now!), your friends from shunning and replacing you with someone far less cool than you. In such a world, as of Saturday, nothing matters and nothing is sacred.

One person called this “the craziest day of my life and I done been SHOT before.” (Fair! Gun violence is tragically endemic in this country—unlike shootings, trading a 25-year-old, top three player in the league for anything, let alone for almost nothing, doesn’t happen every day in this country.) At least three podcasts dropped emergency 2 a.m. episodes.

As someone with no real memories of the day, I couldn’t help but wonder: Was this what living through 9/11 would be like with Twitter??? Considering we’ve been living through “unprecedented times” for the last decade, it’s saying something that this genuinely felt like the most united the internet has been in a while—at least since Luigi Mangione’s identity was revealed, but that was almost two months ago, which is about 20 years on the timeline we’re living in.

This trade felt like living through history, and ever since that first notification hit my phone, the history-making hasn’t stopped. Fans (nonviolently <3) stormed Dallas’ American Airlines Center on Sunday; some brought a coffin and staged a funeral for their franchise—unironically, I see that as an entirely proportional reaction. 

The deal reportedly materialized out of thin air over the last few days; almost no one—not even other teams peripherally involved in the trade—knew about it, not even Dončić, which, IMO, seems incredibly fucking rude, especially when the team’s general manager has been at the organization for six months compared to Dončić’s seven years. Per one Monday report, Dončić had just bought a $15 million house in the Dallas area last week and cried when he learned of the trade. If we lived in feudal Japan, or any proper society with rules, really, someone would have to fall on their own sword in shame for this.

The Mavericks organization has spent the last couple of days performatively thanking Dončić for his service, all while appearing to smear him and his famous and beloved, bodacious build, suggesting he’s too out-of-shape and unable to play defense to win a championship. (There are so many reasons to loathe this organization’s owners, but they can especially rot in hell for this.) In a tear-jerking letter to the Dallas community on Sunday, Dončić conspicuously thanked everyone but the organization. NBA stars across the league have since pointed to this trade as evidence that, despite the demand for their loyalty and dedication to their teams, there’s no obligation for their organizations to reciprocate this. Boo!!!!

Please give the NBA fans in your life some space in the coming days (weeks?? months??) to process this; it’s all still incredibly fresh and surreal. When the news first broke, large swaths of the internet believed the reporter who broke it, ESPN’s Shams Charania, had been hacked. On Monday, Charania confessed that when he received the news, he, too, thought he’d been hacked. One tweet from 2022 that states that Dončić and LeBron James would be teammates on the Lakers in 2025 has since resurfaced and gone viral, with some asking the apparent prophet if their ex-girlfriends will ever take them back. (“No,” has been the resounding answer.)

The Saturday night trade was immediately followed by another blockbuster trade on Sunday that sent Zach LaVine from the Chicago Bulls to the Sacramento Kings and ultimately sent the Kings’ DeAaron Fox to play alongside human giant Victor Wembanyama on the San Antonio Spurs. But it was almost impossible to even react to that news after Saturday—it would be like if a child’s remote-controlled toy plane flew into a tree 24 hours after 9/11. 

Maybe our Lisan al-Gaib Timothée Chalamet was onto something when he declared in 2022 that “societal collapse is in the air.” A rapid succession of highly destabilizing events have unfolded with increasing destructiveness over the last several days, and I’m starting to think accelerationists—those who believe society has to descend into chaos and essentially self-destruct before anything can get better—are onto something!

Dallas-based readers, please find a directory of therapists in your area here. You’re welcome.

 
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