When the Los Angeles Lakers acquired NBA superstar Luka Doncic from the Dallas Mavericks, it shocked the entire NBA world, including Luka himself. He expected to play out his whole career with the team that drafted him, given how much he had given them already in his young career.

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However, that all suddenly changed earlier this season, when he was sent to the Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis. Now, Doncic finally is returning to Dallas Wednesday night to face off with his former team.

While the trade itself may have brought some negative attention and put some distance in the relationship between the team and the Slovenian star, that doesn’t mean the fans within the organization don’t love him still.

That was shown in a pre-game tribute video for Doncic, which definitely showed how much he appreciated his time in Dallas. After the video was shown, Doncic was visibly emotional, wiping away tears.

After spending six full years with the franchise that traded up to select him with the third overall pick in the 2018 NBA draft, Doncic is understandably upset that the team decided to move on.

He had a close relationship with two key members of the organization in Mark Cuban and Dirk Nowitzki, who both now don’t have as much sway in the organization as they once did.

Cuban sold his majority stake of the team back in December of 2023, which gave the franchise more room to move on from Doncic.

Doncic was traded seemingly at the peak of his career, which made the trade even more shocking and inexplicable. He led the Mavs to the NBA finals last season, where they struggled and were ultimately defeated by the Boston Celtics, but the team wasn’t expected to make it that far in the first place.

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Doncic has his moments of being a bit hot-headed (he was ejected just last game against the Thunder) as well as not being in good enough condition to keep up on defense, but his offense and clutch shot-making are nearly unmatched among other NBA players.

Usually, when a star leaves a team, it isn’t this emotional, because they were the ones who wanted to leave, so seeing this situation play out is unprecedented, especially for a talent of Doncic’s caliber. This is the rare situation where a team wanted a star player gone and not the other way around.

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