{"id":8866,"date":"2025-07-07T00:04:45","date_gmt":"2025-07-07T06:04:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/?p=8866"},"modified":"2025-07-07T00:04:45","modified_gmt":"2025-07-07T06:04:45","slug":"former-mavs-gm-donnie-nelson-slams-luka-doncic-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/2025\/07\/07\/former-mavs-gm-donnie-nelson-slams-luka-doncic-trade\/","title":{"rendered":"Former Mavs GM Donnie Nelson Slams Luka Doncic Trade"},"content":{"rendered":"

Donnie Nelson Shares His Thoughts on Luka Doncic’s Trade<\/h1>\n

We already know that Senior wasn\u2019t a fan. Now Junior is sharing his thoughts.<\/p>\n

Former Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson, who this week signed on with the Slovenian men\u2019s national team as a senior adviser, was recently interviewed by Slovenian website Ekipa24 where he was asked about his relationship with former Mavs star Luka Doncic and about his reaction to Doncic\u2019s stunning trade in February.<\/p>\n

Nelson\u2019s father, Don, a former head coach of the Mavericks, made his opinion of the trade known in June during the NBA Finals, with Nelson wearing Doncic brand shoes while accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award and calling the trade \u201ca tremendous mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n

The apple doesn\u2019t seem to fall far from the tree, in that sense.<\/p>\n

Donnie Nelson’s Reaction to the Trade<\/h2>\n

Donnie Nelson, who drafted Doncic in 2018 and says he\u2019s maintained a strong relationship with Doncic since he himself left the Mavericks as well as since Doncic was traded away, was \u201churt\u201d by the Mavs-Lakers deal, especially since he considered himself to be \u201cbuilding a community\u201d while serving as the Dallas GM.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring my years in Dallas, we always considered what was important to that community. And we looked at the players being a part of that,\u201d Nelson told Ekipa. \u201cOf course, this is the NBA and trades can happen, players come and go. But with all due respect, you have to understand that some players are different, special, and even more important to the environment and the community. It\u2019s important to treat those players with respect. That\u2019s why there was so much disappointment after what happened to Luka. Not just my disappointment, but a universal disappointment.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Trade and Its Aftermath<\/h3>\n

Doncic, of course, was shipped out with virtually no warning late on a Saturday night in February, and a large subset of Mavericks fans have since taken issue with the way the deal went down, along with some of the seemingly pointed comments from Mavericks brass since the trade.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were with Dirk Nowitzki for 21 years, and the last three years were out of pure respect,\u201d Nelson said. \u201cPeople like that deserve to say goodbye on their own terms and according to their wishes, and everyone deserves a decent funeral – figurative or literal.<\/p>\n

\u201cLuka deserves that kind of respect, and it\u2019s just not right that he didn\u2019t get it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nelson’s Father and the Trade<\/h4>\n

Nelson also elaborated on his father\u2019s stateside appearance — the former Mavericks coach now lives in Hawaii. Nelson said Don\u2019s journey to the mainland, in Doncic\u2019s shoes, was a symbol of how important it was that he let his thoughts on the matter be known. Donnie said, with Don now at age 85, that it was likely his father\u2019s final trip to the continental U.S. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt shows even more how important it was to him, what message he wanted to send to the international community, and how important Luka is to our family, and how we stand by him no matter what, just as we have stood by Dirk all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Donnie Nelson Shares His Thoughts on Luka Doncic’s Trade We already know that Senior wasn\u2019t a fan. Now Junior is sharing his thoughts. Former Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson, who this week signed on with the Slovenian men\u2019s national team as a senior adviser, was recently interviewed by Slovenian website Ekipa24 where he was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":8867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-8866","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/dmn-dallas-news-prod.cdn.arcpublishing.com\/resizer\/v2\/O4XNCUC35RAURKYMT2QGR7YROU.jpg?auth=ab31bbea2e5ea1f501ca96eca1f1b8efe309b810ffb8ff3340f6924ae21e2f19&height=630&width=1200&smart=true&quality=80","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8868,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions\/8868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citystuff.com\/dallas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}