{"id":125530,"date":"2025-02-25T07:09:32","date_gmt":"2025-02-25T12:09:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=125530"},"modified":"2025-02-25T07:09:32","modified_gmt":"2025-02-25T12:09:32","slug":"jason-kidd-luka-doncic-grow-up-fast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/02\/25\/jason-kidd-luka-doncic-grow-up-fast\/","title":{"rendered":"Jason Kidd: Luka Doncic ‘Has To Grow Up Fast’"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’ll take a while for everyone to get used to Luka Doncic<\/a> playing for the Los Angeles Lakers instead of the Dallas Mavericks. Not just fans, who are going through the five stages of grief. Not just his teammates, many of whom were quite fond of him. Doncic himself will have to shake off a trade that likely rattled him more than anybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt shocks you because you don\u2019t know about that side of the business,\u201d Kidd says, per Christian Clark of The Athletic. \u201cBut you have to grow up fast. It is a business<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou believe you are going to be with the franchise forever. But the business of basketball sometimes gets in the way. Teams change. I\u2019ve been involved in quite a few sales of the team. Any time there is a sale, there could be change. It just happens.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYou see yourself playing for an organization for a long time,\u201d he concludes, \u201cuntil you get called back to the locker room and told that you\u2019ve been traded to Phoenix.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jason Kidd Knows Where Luka Doncic’s Head Is After Mavs Trade<\/h2>\n

For those who are unfamiliar with Kidd’s playing career, the man who is now the Mavericks head coach is universally regarded as one of the best point guards in NBA history. Unlike the bulk of today’s point guards, Kidd’s game didn’t revolve around scoring. Instead, he relied on his basketball IQ, court vision, passing ability, and length to impact the game as a floor general and defensive playmaker.<\/p>\n

By the end of his career, he was a 10-time All-Star, nine-time All-Defensive selection, six-time All-NBA selection, five-time assist leader. He also won Co-Rookie of the Year in 1995 and an NBA championship in 2011. In 2018, he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n

Same Difference<\/h3>\n

Even a player as talented as Kidd, who was drafted second overall in 1994, has been traded. In fact, like Doncic, he was traded by the Mavericks. The reasoning was a bit different, but the overarching sentiment was the same. Dismayed by Kidd’s attitude, Dallas felt like they would be better off without him.<\/p>\n

In Kidd’s case, he was butting heads with key personnel members, including an assistant coach. Doncic’s situation was less dramatic without publicized personal feuds<\/a>. Nonetheless, the insinuation that he lacked a great work ethic was serious. There have been a number of players who limited their ceiling by not committing themselves to the game. Given that he’s considered a generational talent, for Doncic to be on that list is both shocking and upsetting.<\/p>\n

If true, it’s also not the culture that the Mavericks should want to invest in. At least not to the tune of $345 million. It may not have mattered to former controlling owner Mark Cuban, but it definitely mattered<\/a> to Patrick Dumont.<\/p>\n

With that in mind, as Kidd says, major changes often happen after franchises change hands.<\/p>\n

After Mat and Justin Ishbia purchased the Phoenix Suns in 2022, they traded a Hall of Fame-bound point guard (Chris Paul<\/a>) and 2018 No. 1 pick Deandre Ayton<\/a>. They also replaced Monty Williams with Frank Vogel, who are both now former head coaches. After Mikhail Prokhorov bought the New Jersey Nets in 2010, they relocated to Brooklyn. Joe Tsai purchased the remodeled Nets in 2019 and then they acquired Kyrie Irving<\/a>, Kevin Durant<\/a>, and James Harden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In Dallas’s case, they traded the face of the franchise. They obviously underestimated just how popular Doncic is. Yet, that speaks to the difference between their valuation of Doncic and that of everyone else<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

\u00a9 Christopher Hanewinckel-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’ll take a while for everyone to get used to Luka Doncic playing for the Los Angeles Lakers instead of the Dallas Mavericks. Not just fans, who are going through the five stages of grief. Not just his teammates, many of whom were quite fond of him. Doncic himself will have to shake off a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":125574,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30,1608,26,62,4721],"tags":[218,1133,1382],"class_list":["post-125530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mavericks","category-basketball","category-lakers","category-nba","category-trade-rumors","tag-jason-kidd","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba-trade"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125530"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125575,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125530\/revisions\/125575"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}