MANILA, Philippines – The NBA world was rocked to its very foundations after a bombshell report revealed that Dallas Mavericks superstar Luka Doncic is set to be traded to the Los Angeles Lakers for a package centered around fellow superstar Anthony Davis on Sunday, February 2.
Fans, players, and even reporters who broke the trade were in utter shock at the sheer magnitude of the transaction between two generational talents and were left scrambling to make sense of the astonishing situation.
While this purported trade will undeniably go down as one of the most shocking events in NBA history, this was certainly not the first time a league-altering transaction went down in trades or free agency.
Here are just a handful of the most stunning transactions in recent NBA lore that garnered reactions close to what the Doncic-Davis trade just did:
Kevin Durant leaves OKC, signs with Golden State (2016)
In what is perhaps the wildest free agency move in NBA history to date, the Golden State Warriors achieved the impossible in 2016 by snagging former Oklahoma City Thunder MVP Kevin Durant to join established stars Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Andre Iguodala.
A team that just set an NBA regular season record of 73 wins in 2016, Golden State pulled off a classic “rich got richer” move by timing the Durant signing with a new collective bargaining agreement that gave teams more salary cap space, while also taking advantage of Curry’s existing budget-friendly deal.
It immediately turned out to be one of the most reviled transactions in league history outside of Golden State, as the overpowered Warriors breezed their way to back-to-back titles in 2017 and 2018, both at the expense of the LeBron James-led Cleveland Cavaliers.
DeMarcus Cousins further stacks Warriors (2018)
Already proven to achieve the impossible, the Warriors doubled down on their game-breaking deals shortly after winning two straight championships by landing then-All-Star center DeMarcus Cousins on a puny league-minimum contract ahead of the 2018-2019 season.
Although at the time coming from an Achilles tendon tear, Cousins was still one of the NBA’s best centers who still commanded a multimillion-dollar salary, but he nonetheless took a gargantuan pay cut to solve Golden State’s last roster “problem,” if one could even call it as such at that point.
Even more shockingly, however, the Warriors ultimately failed in their three-peat title bid with Cousins on board, as Durant tore his own Achilles in a cruel twist of fate in the 2019 NBA finals, eventually won by the Toronto Raptors and the next person on the list.
San Antonio trades Kawhi Leonard to Toronto (2018)
In the same off-season that got Cousins to Golden State, Toronto also swung for the fences and went all-in on a trade to send Raptors cornerstone forward DeMar DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs for a package centered around their soft-spoken, yet disgruntled superstar Kawhi Leonard.
Although the transaction was not between league MVP-caliber players at the time like Doncic and Davis today, the Raptors and Spurs still traded their unquestioned best stars in the hope of instantaneous outlook changes.
As mentioned earlier, the Raptors’ massive gamble with Leonard’s expiring contract paid off with their first franchise championship in 2019, while the once-mighty Spurs never again reached the playoffs from that point until today, six years later.
Leonard would then turn out to be a one-and-done on Canadian soil as he immediately parlayed his second career championship and Finals MVP to a lucrative multi-year deal with his hometown Los Angeles Clippers.
Miami-bound LeBron James makes ‘The Decision’ (2010)
In the aftermath of one of the fiercest free agent bidding wars of the 2000s, the Miami Heat hit the jackpot in 2010 after landing who would eventually be one of basketball’s greatest players ever, LeBron James.
Born and raised in Akron, Ohio, James spurned a lucrative extension with his hometown Cleveland for a shot to play for his then-first championship with fellow All-Stars Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, announcing his intentions in a grand, arguably excessive ESPN special show titled “The Decision.”
Gritting through the unbridled vitriol of league fans and the Cavaliers’ faithful in particular, the Miami ‘Big Three’ won two championships in four straight finals, before James eventually returned home to Cleveland in 2015 and completed his redemption arc as the Cavaliers won their first-ever title a year later.
Celtics trade aging Pierce, Garnett to Nets for Tatum-Brown foundation (2013)
As Miami completed a textbook league-altering move to land LeBron James, other NBA Eastern Conference teams scrambled to catch up in the hopes of contending, including the Brooklyn Nets, who engineered a deal with the Boston Celtics to land champion All-Star duo Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett.
It was a clear win-now move for the Nets, as Pierce, then 36-years-old, and Garnett, then 37, joined an All-Star-caliber starting five of Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, and Brook Lopez, plus sixth man Jason Terry, while the Celtics reloaded for the future with a pair of first-round picks in 2016 and 2017.
The move ended up being a massive disaster for Brooklyn, as the Nets were eliminated in the 2014 playoffs’ second round before doing worse in 2015 as a first-round exit. Both Garnett and Pierce left the team shortly after and quietly settled into their respective career twilights.
Meanwhile, due to the Nets’ record eventually being atrocious in 2016 and 2017, the Celtics shot up to third overall in both years’ rookie drafts, enabling them to select eventual 2024 Finals MVP Jaylen Brown and future multiple-time All-Star Jayson Tatum in back-to-back seasons.
– Rappler.com