Mavs Fans Have Begun To Mourn The Loss Of Luka Doncic By Bringing A Casket To American Airlines Center In Order To Pay Their Respects

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It's probably going to take a little time to get used to everything that has transpired in the NBA over the last 12+ hours, and it's definitely going to be super weird seeing AD and Luka make their debuts with their new teams. This was the type of trade that scrambles your brain a little bit, and you understand why.

But what sometimes gets lost in moments like this is what a trade like this does for a fanbase. If you live in a market where you've had to witness your franchise legends be traded to a big market as some sort of feeding system for the Lakers/Celtics/Knicks/etc you can probably understand what Mavs fans are going through right now. Shit, despite our back and forth this past June, even I can't help but feel for Mavs fans out there who are most definitely going through it, and for good reason.

Earlier this morning Clem shed some light on how Mavs fans were taking the news once it first broke, 

and now that everyone has had a chance to digest what the hell happened, reality has started to set in. The fanbase has begun to mourn, which now includes bringing a coffin to the American Airlines Center so everyone can pay their respects

Some might think this is going a little too far, but that just tells me you don't get it. This wasn't just trading any player. This was the entire franchise. The once in a lifetime prospect who you dream of as a fan. A generational talent who was one of the best players in the league from the very first second he stepped onto an NBA court. He represented the future, was considered one of the next faces of the NBA, and is a perennial All NBA/MVP guy when he plays enough games to qualify. You get maybe one or two of those homegrown players in your lifetime as a fan, and to see it ripped away like that is brutal. Not everyone is the big-market Lakers who can just pluck stars from whatever team they want whenever they feel like it. The Mavs hit the lottery in their transition from Dirk to Luka, and in the blink of an eye, it was taken from those fans.

Even if there are parts of this trade that on paper do help, Mavs fans don't give a shit about that right now and why should they? They've just had their hearts ripped out of their chests by a move that has legitimately shocked the entire sports world. I can only imagine how this all has to feel like a bad dream you really wish you could wake up from. 

Usually when these things happen, it's more like a Jimmy Butler/James Harden situation where they burn everything to the ground on their way out to the point where the fanbase ends up resenting the player. You're seeing it unfold in real time with Heat fans and Butler. What makes this so painful for Mavs fans is that this is nowhere close to that type of situation. All the reporting tells us Luka didn't demand a trade. We have no reason to believe he wasn't going to sign that supermax if offered later this offseason. He wanted to be a Mav and wanted to win as a Mav. No shit the fanbase feels like they just got kicked right in the dick.

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The crazy part is had Luka not gotten hurt on Christmas, I'm not sure this even happens. Chances are with a healthy Luka they play their way somewhere in between the 4-6 seeds. If the Mavs are a top 4 seed right now with a healthy Luka, does this even happen? I can't imagine it does. If they were "out" on Luka after the Finals then they wouldn't have signed Klay Thompson and could have just flipped Luka for AD over the summer. It's more likely that they were pissed about his Finals, he came back this year out of shape and even worse on defense, and then as soon as he got hurt it opened up a path for the Mavs to bail and they took it.

Who knows if Nico Harrison's plan ends up working out? Odds are that it probably won't. Teams don't trade generational talents before they even hit their NBA primes and then come out the other side looking like a genius. This also wasn't a free agent who came to DAL and played there for a few years and then was flipped. This was the homegrown crown jewel. He's certainly not perfect and his faults most definitely impacted their ceiling when it came to winning a title….but he's 25. You as a fan assume you have 10+ more tries at least with Luka to figure it out, and in reality, they didn't even get a chance to do it in the very next year after coming up short in the Finals.

So while part of me is somewhat enjoying the chaos that has ensued, I do feel for Mavs fans. It sucks. It's confusing. None of it makes any sense, but then again these things rarely do.