{"id":724387,"date":"2026-05-03T06:27:33","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:27:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/724387\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T06:27:33","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:27:33","slug":"jeanie-buss-on-lakers-keeping-luka-doncic-trade-talks-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/724387\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeanie Buss on Lakers keeping Luka Doncic trade talks secret"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year’s Luka Doncic<\/a> trade is still fresh in the minds of NBA fans, and it was a humongous gift from the heavens to a Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> team that had seemingly gone stale. The Lakers gave up the seemingly 99-cent store-type price of Anthony Davis<\/a>, Max Christie<\/a> and a future first-round draft pick to the Dallas Mavericks<\/a> for Doncic, and just like that, a Mavericks team that was coming off a trip to the NBA Finals started plunging into the outhouse.<\/p>\n

According to reports, Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka and then-Mavs executive Rob Pelinka negotiated this trade for several weeks and kept their talks top secret. Lakers governor Jeanie Buss recently reflected on the deal during an appearance<\/a> on the podcast “Pretty Tough with Maria Sharapova,” and she said the trade talks were kept a secret so that former Mavericks owner Mark Cuban wouldn’t find out.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Dallas team wanted Anthony Davis and he was on our team. Conversations started, but it was important they remained private\u2026. Those conversations started in the beginning of January\u2026 Rob Pelinka, our general manager, was able to do that all without it leaking to the media because I think Mark Cuban might\u2019ve jumped in front of a train to keep it from happening… Nobody knew including Luka, and Anthony Davis, and LeBron James<\/a>. We had a game in New York that night, and the coach knew this was going to happen but he still had to play the game, and we won the game that night. It wasn\u2019t a distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cuban had purchased the Mavericks in 2000, but he sold his share of the franchise in late 2023. Had he still been in charge in early 2025, it is extremely unlikely this trade would have been possible, as he has made it clear that he never would have traded the guard.<\/p>\n

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Doncic’s arrival seemed to restore the Lakers’ mystique and reopen their championship window. It had been five years since they had last won it all, and since then, they had gotten past the first round of the playoffs just once. While they lost in the first round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs, this year they got past the Houston Rockets<\/a> in the first round, even though Doncic has been injured.<\/p>\n

The Slovenian superstar suffered a Grade 2 hamstring strain on April 2, and it is anyone’s guess if he will return at all in the next round versus the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>. But he turned in a sensational regular season during which he led the league in scoring average and averaged 33.5 points, 7.7 rebounds, 8.3 assists and 1.6 steals a game. He got into much better shape last offseason, and his defense, which has long been a bone of contention, improved.<\/p>\n

At age 27, Doncic seems primed to be the face of the storied Lakers franchise for many years to come, thanks to Buss and Pelinka’s efforts to keep their trade negotiations with Dallas top secret.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Jeanie Buss on Lakers keeping Luka Doncic trade talks secret<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year’s Luka Doncic trade is still fresh in the minds of NBA fans, and it was a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":724388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3793],"tags":[495,7,686,149,4057,194,8300,185,150,368,2087,166,7139,6,179,3088,11170],"class_list":["post-724387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-dallas-mavericks","tag-anthony-davis","tag-basketball","tag-dallas","tag-dallas-mavericks","tag-dallasmavericks","tag-houston-rockets","tag-jeanie-buss","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-mark-cuban","tag-mavericks","tag-max-christie","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-rob-pelinka","tag-trade-talks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116509228643832698","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=724387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/724387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/724388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=724387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=724387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=724387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}