Nico Harrison’s nine-month reign of error as the Mavs GM is finally over.
What are we supposed to chant now at Stars hockey games, high school football games, TCU basketball games, and city council meetings?
Category: Dallas Mavericks (Page 1 of 8)
I’ve been away from my phone this morning.
Nico Harrison hasn’t traded Cooper Flagg yet, has he?
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Think about the very first words our God said to the very first human beings. In the creation account in Genesis 1, the text says “God blessed them.” His very first words to his created humans were words of blessing. He created them and he immediately spoke blessings to them.
I wonder what he said.
We don’t know. The text doesn’t tell us. Maybe it was something like this.
You are very good. I made you in my image. You are mine. You belong to me and I belong to you. You are important to me. You are valuable to me. You matter to me. You are deeply loved by me.
Then almost immediately, these people take what God says is important–people–and make them not important. They take what God blesses as valuable–people–and make them not valuable. There’s murder and revenge, lying and rape, pride and jealousy, violence and drunkenness–all kinds of evil in our hearts and minds and in our actions against each other.
And in Genesis 12, God says, “No! This is not how it’s going to be! What I think is important is going to be important! What I have blessed as valuable is going to be valuable! I am going to bless Abraham and, through him, I am going to bless all the people of the whole world!”
And Jesus takes all that wickedness, rebellion, and sin, he bears it in himself, all the way to the cross, and he leaves it there. And on that third day, when our Lord is raised to life by the Holy Spirit, he doesn’t speak one word of vengeance or punishment or anger or retribution. The very first word Christ Jesus says to his disciples on that resurrection day is, “Peace. Peace be with you.”
You are very good. You are made in God’s image. You are his. You belong to God and he belongs to you. You are important to God. You are valuable to him. You matter to God. You are deeply loved by God.
And his blessing for you and his promise to you is bigger than all your sin.
I think about David, the king of Israel, the man after God’s own heart. What did God see when he looked at David that day and chose him and blessed him? David was just a kid, kind of an afterthought, just a kid hanging out with the sheep. What did God see in him that day?
Did he see David’s fierce violence or his fierce loyalty?
Did he see David as the great psalmist or the notorious outlaw?
Did he see David’s humility and prayers or his rape and murder and lying and sin?
God saw all of it. Every bit of it. And God still picked David. He chose David and blessed him.
And our God chose you in Jesus Christ before the foundations of the earth.
His blessing for you and his promise to you is bigger than all your sin.
Peace,
Allan
Before we get into today’s topic, I would like to make a modest and sensible proposal: the Mavericks send their number one lottery pick, along with Anthony Davis, to the Lakers for Luka. Please.
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I am continuously in search of ways to better articulate my conviction that the Kingdom of God and the kingdoms of this world are incompatible. As disciples of Christ and citizens of God’s Kingdom, we already have our politics. We belong to a holy country without borders and we have a crucified and risen King, we have laws for getting along together and taking care of those around us, we have rituals and traditions that keep our story straight and our loyalties in place, we have ways and means for effecting change and transforming the world. And all of it stands in direct opposition to the politics of the nations. The two kingdoms have opposite foundations and goals, opposite ways of getting things done, opposite methods for changing peoples’ lives, opposite ideas about wealth and power and force, opposite values–opposite everything.
Our King tells us we cannot serve two masters. We will love the one and hate the other, we will be loyal to one and despise the other. Jesus tells Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world; if it were, my servants would fight.” The politics of God’s Kingdom and the politics of worldly empires not only have nothing in common, they are each directly opposed to the other’s goals and ways and means of reaching them.
My brother, Keith, has heard me talk about this for about 20 years now. He doesn’t agree with me on every point–in his own words, he doesn’t see it as an “either/or,” he’s more of a “both/and.” But he’s come across an article by Paul Kingsnorth, a Christian writer living in Ireland, that articulates my views very well. The article is titled, “Against Christian Civilization” and was published in January by First Things. And it’s excellent.
On the third page Kingsnorth quotes Charles Alexander Eastman, a Dakota Sioux who was eighteen at the time of Custer’s Last Stand: “There is no such thing as ‘Christian civilization.’ I believe that Christianity and modern civilization are opposed and irreconcilable.”
I’ve read this piece five times now and I’m impressed with the expert way Kingsnorth weaves his narrative, and I’m thrilled with the clarity it gives the reader and for the potential for moving my conversations forward with others.
I’m asking you to read the article. It’s right here. And it will take some time. It’s thirteen pages and it covers a lot of historic and theological ground. I think you will find it helpful in, at the very least, understanding where I am and, I pray, wrestling with your own understandings and Christian calling regarding what I call Church As State.
Read it today. And I’ll write more about it tomorrow.
Here’s an excerpt to entice you to click and read:
“When we read the life of Jesus of Nazareth, in fact, it is impossible not to see a man who was, in some fundamental sense, uncivilized. He did not tell us to get good jobs and save prudently. He told us to have no thought for the morrow. He did not tell us to generate wealth, so that economic growth could bring about global development. He told us to give everything away. The rich, he said repeatedly, could never attain the Kingdom of Heaven. He did not tell us to defend our frontiers or to expand them. He told us never to resist evil. He did not tell us to be responsible citizens. He told us to leave our dead fathers unburied and follow him instead. He told us to hate our own parents and to love those who hated us. Every single one of these teachings, were we to follow them, would make the building of a civilization impossible.
What we are really hearing about, then, when we hear of defending or rebuilding ‘Christian civilization,’ is not Christianity and its teachings at all, but modernity and its endgame. It is the idol of material progress–the progress that has shredded both culture and nature–which is causing such grief everywhere. ‘Christian civilization’ is not a solution to this; it is part of the problem. And when actual Christianity is proposed instead, the response is so often the same: Oh, yes, that’s all very well, you fundamentalist–but what practical use is it?”
That last line reminds me of G.K. Chesterton’s “Orthodoxy” in which he says Christianity has not been tried and found lacking; it’s been found difficult and never really tried.
Go Stars!
Allan
My intense hatred for the Cowboys did not happen in a flash. It wasn’t a switch that got flicked on the moment Jerry Wayne fired Jimmy and replaced him with Barry. Almost thirty years of devotion to the Cowboys wasn’t undone that quickly. But I do point to that moment as the cataclysmic event that led very quickly to my disdain for the whole organization and everything it stands for. Or refuses to stand for. It started there and it didn’t take long.
That’s what the Luka trade feels like. I don’t consider myself a Mavs hater. I haven’t thrown out any of my Mavs gear. But my heart is completely void of any feeling or concern for what happens now. I didn’t watch one dribble, pass, or shot of either of their two play-in games last week. I don’t care. The gut-punch that was the Luka trade is getting worse, not better.
Every time Nico opens his mouth, it gets worse. More and more of the hubris of the new carpet-bagging owners and the GM gets revealed every day. More of the arrogance. More of the reality that the financial bottom line is more important than a championship. More of the complete lack of concern for the Mavs’ fans. The more time goes on, the more it looks and feels like a betrayal of a public trust–very much like how Jerry runs my once-favorite-team. Say what you want about Mark Cuban, but he was a Dallas guy who wanted our Dallas team to win titles. Miriam Adelson and Patrick Dumont said they bought the team as an “in” to doing business in North Texas.
Give me the three-hour heart attack of last night’s thrilling come-from-behind overtime win for the Stars. Give me the hope of a team that’s close–so close–to winning it all, and doing whatever it takes to get there. Give me the loyalty of a GM like Jim Nill who understands the big-picture value of Jamie Benn and Tyler Seguin and his commitment to the cause to trade for Miko Rantenan down the stretch. Give me Colin Blackwell scoring the overtime game-winner last night in his Stars playoff debut. That’s what I think about every day. That’s what I look forward to. That’s what fills my sports heart.
Peace,
Allan
Before the main topic of this post, I want to set a pin here to acknowledge Luka Doncic’s first game as a Laker against the Dallas Mavericks last night and lament one more time the indescribably horrible trade that sent the NBA’s most exciting player to L.A. Luka exchanged ear-to-ear grins and extravagant handshakes and hugs with his former Dallas teammates in the moments before the tip and directed at least a couple of hard glares toward the visitors’ bench after hitting a big three and an impossible reverse layup. Luka wound up with a triple-double, of course (19 pts, 15 rbs, 12 assists), and said after the game “I didn’t play great.”
And he’s right. It was a very average game for Luka. Which only emphasizes how truly great he is. Triple-doubles are a given for Luka, the ho-hum result of a merely pedestrian performance.
The most regrettable part of this whole thing is the unforgivable incompetence or inept apathy or both that led to probably the worst trade in professional sports history. It was revealed again last night that Luka never had any intention of leaving Dallas and was completely blown away by the trade. It was obvious last night that he is still in shock, he’s still in a daze. He’s still sad about it.
When asked by reporters last night if the win over the Mavericks can provide some closure for him so he can move on with his career and his life, Luka answered, “No, not really. Closure is going to take a while. This is not ideal. There are lots of emotions. But I’m just taking it little by little. Every day is a little better.”
Luka was 19 when the Mavs drafted him. He just turned 26. In the words of Kyrie Irving, he’s just an innocent kid, a mega-talented innocent kid who is not an American. He’s not from this culture, he’s not grown up with an understanding of these expectations. Sometimes he responded to things that came at him in ways that felt awkward or weird. But that’s on NIco and Kidd and the Mavs. It’s almost like they didn’t try at all. The spin they’re putting out about Luka’s lack of conditioning is a cop-out. Some of it may be true, but you don’t trade a generational talent because he likes an occasional cheeseburger. It’s not like Luka hasn’t made All-NBA five times, had an MVP season last year, and led Dallas to the NBA Finals.
He’s still just a kid. His best years are still ahead of him. This would be like trading Dirk Nowitzki after his sixth year, only worse, because Luka is galaxies ahead of where Dirk was at this stage.
I’ll agree with Dirk who says, “I’ll never be a Lakers fan; but I’ll always be a Luka fan.”
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Sometimes I post things here that I had intended to preach on Sunday, but didn’t because of time–things that wound up on the cutting room floor. Here’s a paragraph or two from our sermon Sunday about Peter’s betrayal of Jesus.
In the Garden of Gethsemane on that last night, Peter drew his sword to protect Jesus from the crowd of guards and soldiers who had come to arrest him. Peter struck one of the officials, cutting off his ear. Peter was going for the kill. He wasn’t aiming at Malchus’ ear. He’s not Mike Tyson. He was going for the guy’s throat, he was trying to cut off his head. But Malchus ducked and Peter cut off his ear. And Jesus said, “No. Put your sword away. Violence doesn’t fix anything; it only leads to more violence. If my Kingdom were of this world, then we’d fight. I’d call down twelve thousand angels and we’d wipe these guys out. But we don’t fight. We never use violence. I’m showing you a different way.”
I preached that. I left this next part out because of time. Here it is, directly from my manuscript.
Here’s a sidebar: It’s interesting to me how we’ll argue and debate and get red in the face about the literal details of creation and the literal details of the ark and the flood and we’ll insist on the literal facts about Jonah and the fish and we’ll parse and dissect every syllable of the Greek words in Paul’s letters, but we’re very quick to dismiss the literal words of our Lord Jesus. Jesus gives very direct commands about violence or money or refugees or forgiveness, and we’re like, “He didn’t really mean that literally.” When we do that, we sound just like the devil. “Did Jesus really say…?” We’ll twist Jesus’ words so he doesn’t really mean half of what he says. That’s another sermon. For another day. Probably a guest speaker.
I should have said it. I’m sorry I didn’t. I cut it because the sermon was running long and I didn’t want to distract from or take away from the main points of the lesson. I called it a sidebar when I wrote it, but it started to feel more like a rabbit trail on Friday and Saturday night. So I cut it. I should have said it.
Peace,
Allan
There’s nothing more to be said about what Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison did late Saturday night. The shocking and inexplicable trade of Luka Doncic to the Lakers is a demoralizing deal for the team that might take two decades to overcome, and a sucker-gut-punch to all Mavs fans that might not ever go away.
It is foul. And it feels more personal than I ever imagined it could.
I understand the concerns about his conditioning. I get the problems with his inattention to defense. I am continuously frustrated by Luka’s immaturity with referees. But he is by far–going away! indisputable!– the most exciting-must-see-thrilling-can’t-miss superstar in the NBA. “Luka Magic” is a thing, it’s real! Luka makes you tune into a road game against the Raptors on a Tuesday night in November because you know you’re going to see something you’ve never seen before. Just about every night. Luka’s specialty is taking your breath away. These thirteen highlights in the clutch are just a very small sample.
Luka is not even 26-years-old, he’s been All-NBA every season except one, and he was NBA Rookie of the Year that season. He gets league MVP votes every year. He averaged 40 minutes per game in 92 games last season, including the playoffs, which culminated with the NBA Finals. He’s already broken several of Magic Johnson’s and Michael Jordan’s all-time scoring records, and he’s posted more triple-doubles than both Wilt Chamberlain and Larry Bird. If Luka wants to just jog up and down the floor with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth the first half of the season, you let him! He’s a global sensation, a once-in-a-generation superstar. And, again, he’s just about to turn 26. Was there no thought given to patiently allowing him to grow and mature, to realize the value to his own career and the good fortunes of his team in proper conditioning and getting back on D? And while he’s maturing, isn’t it okay to keep winning playoff series and maybe capture a title or two?
Here are 100 Luka highlights. Twenty minutes of Luka Magic. The most exciting player in the NBA. No-look passes, between-the-legs dribbles, and behind-the-back dimes. One-handed, off-balance, corner fadeaway swishes and mind-blowing half-court heaves. Tons of crazy threes. Buzzer-beaters. Game-winners. Series clinchers. And, most of the time, that tremendous smile. And, sometimes, that menacing snarl.
It’s the worst trade in NBA history. Unprecedented. I am as stunned as I’ve ever been in my life, and I have no hope of this ever making any sense. Nico traded away the young dynamic superstar face of the franchise for Anthony Davis, Max Christie, and one first-round draft pick in 2029. Nico did not contact any other teams. He only spoke to the Lakers. And he started the conversation way back on January 7.
For perspective, in 2019, OKC traded Paul George (29) to the Clippers and received five first-round picks and two players. In 2022, the Jazz traded Rudy Gobert (30) to Minnesota for four 1st round picks and five players. In 2023, the Nets traded Kevin Durant (34) to Phoenix for four 1st round picks and three players. And earlier this season, the Nets sent Mikel Bridges (28) to the Knicks for five 1st round picks and three players. Saturday night, Nico gave Luka to the Lakers for Davis (32) and Christie and one pick. It boggles the mind. One total draft pick. And Davis will probably be finished playing before they can use it!
Utah and the Nets each have eleven 1st round picks in the next five years. You think they might have given up at least half of them for a shot at Luka? The other GMs in the NBA had no idea Luka was on the block. You think Memphis would consider giving up Jaren Jackson? You think the Cavs might have been tempted to part ways with Evan Mobley? Could you have pried Giannis away from Milwaukee? We’ll never know. Nico didn’t even ask.
Here is an excellent piece by Jamey Newberg that perfectly captures both the fan’s side of the shock and the lingering nauseating pit in my gut and the detailed point-by-point case for this being the most awful trade in the history of sports. He’s so good. I want Jamey to write my sermons! And you must read this article by SI’s Michael Rosenberg about how you must have a superstar to win championships in the NBA and how difficult they are to handle and how the Mavericks royally messed it up. And, while I am on the record as staunchly opposed to emojis, you need to see Dirk’s immediate response to the news late Saturday night.
I watched a little bit of the Lakers press conference today introducing Luka as the newest member of the team. He talked about the shock of the trade. He talked about the tears he shed when he got the news from his agent (neither Nico nor Kidd made the call). I remembered that Luka was two weeks away from closing on his new house in Dallas; his agent told the Dallas Morning News Sunday that Luka had fully expected to spend his entire career in Dallas. Luka was polite and said all the right things about playing in LA. He posed for pictures with his new purple and gold Lakers #77 jersey. He hugged his new GM, his new coach, and a couple of his new teammates. It was very much like watching your girlfriend get married to your sworn enemy.
And getting Anthony Davis and a 2029 1st round pick in return.
Peace,
Allan
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