When the Lakers played on Saturday night in New York, they were without Anthony Davis due to an abdominal injury and got a big win over the Knicks. On Tuesday, they got a big win over the Clippers without Davis, but this time they were without their All-Star big man after shockingly trading him to the Mavericks late Saturday night after that win in New York, bringing Luka Doncic to L.A.
Doncic was officially introduced as a Laker on Tuesday in a press conference before their game across town, but he is still not quite back from his calf injury and was not active for the game. While we heard from Doncic, Rob Pelinka, and JJ Redick before the game, it wasn’t until afterwards that we’d get LeBron’s first statements on the trade. With the Lakers thrashing the Clippers, those came in his walk-off interview with TNT’s Jared Greenberg (video here), where he detailed the “whirlwind” last couple days and how challenging it’s been for him personally to see Davis traded — similarly to how Kyrie Irving talked about the “grieving process” he was still going through in Dallas.
“Been a whirlwind, so I can’t even imagine how Luka, AD, Max Christie, Maxi Kleber, and Hood-Schifino, was one of our teammates as well, [are feeling] — so it’s been challenging for sure,” James said. “Especially for me, I had what, six years with AD, won a championship with my guy. One of my best friends, obviously, but you know it’s a business, you understand that. It’s the business of basketball, we understand that, and I know he’s gonna do well down there in Dallas.”
James was then asked what he thinks the combination of he and Luka will look like on the floor together, and said it will be special, noting how they should be able to make life easy for their Laker teammates.
“It’s gonna be special, I think so. We’re gonna attract a lot of eyes. Obviously, our ability to score, rebound, pass is going to make it a lot easier on our teammates. And that’s all we want to do. We want to create opportunities for our teammates where all they have to do is catch-finish, catch-dunk, catch-shoot, and it’s our job to lead them every single night. Look, Luka’s a big-time player, 25 years old, hasn’t even reached his prime yet and he’s done some amazing things in our league already. Happy to have him. L.A.’s happy to have him and it’s a little bit surreal still to be honest.”