Feb 22, 2020; Miami, Florida, USA; Miami Heat former player Dwyane Wade reacts during the second quarter at American Airlines Arena. Mandatory Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports
More than a few eyebrows were raised upon hearing 3-time NBA champion Dwyane Wade’s stance on the trade that sent Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers.
The Lakers and Dallas Mavericks broke the internet Saturday when news broke that Doncic and Anthony Davis were trading places. While most reacted to the trade from either an emotional or basketball perspective, Wade claimed he first saw it from a business perspective.
The Miami Heat legend spoke candidly about the deal on his “The Why” podcast. Wade harped on how much the league at-large benefits from the move. He also implied that the NBA’s billionaire owners came together to make the “amazing business decision” to send Luka to the Lakers, the league’s most popular franchise by far.
“First of all, I said to myself, before all the reports came out, I said, ‘Oh, no players were involved in this decision,’” said Wade, via ClutchPoints’ Josue Pavon. “This was billionaire business. This was at the top. The last 12 to 15 years, the players have decided what we want to do. This was the owners, the governors, the billionaires deciding what they want to do.”
“…This was an amazing business decision by billionaires to say, ‘This is what I want for now, and this is what we need as a league.’ You get 10 years of Luka being the face of the Lakers. But you also get to put him with LeBron James … the guy who’s been the face of the league, who can show him how to be the face of the league, and also who can show him how to take care of himself the way he needs to take care of himself.”
It’s hard to argue against Wade about the NBA arguably being the biggest winners of the Doncic deal. Aside from the NBA dominating mainstream sports conversations during the week of the Super Bowl, the league’s most popular international player in Doncic is set to star for the Lakers for the foreseeable future.
But Wade made it sound like he believed NBA team owners colluded to make it all happen, for the benefit of the league. Wade’s take is all the more intriguing given that he is also a minority owner of the Utah Jazz and would also stand to benefit from the projected boost in global popularity.