Luka Dončić, Jimmy Butler and the trade deadline's big lesson: The NBA is a cold business

The NBA is a business. How many times have you heard that over the past week?

Deep down fans know it is another billion-dollar corporation. Players make more money than fans can imagine. Ownership makes even more. It is a job and not always one in which players get to choose where they work. A player's loyalty to a franchise comes from the relationships he builds within his community, and even then he is under constant reminder that it could all be ripped away from him at a moment's notice.

So never get too close. That is the message.

For fans, it is the opposite. Teams ask that you invest much of what you can expend, both financially and emotionally, into the promise of a championship. Fans cannot ask the same of them, for teams have removed emotion from their pact. Never has a trade deadline reminded us more of how cold a business it is.

Under the cover of night the Dallas Mavericks traded Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers. Nobody knew, it seems, but the team's respective executives, two old friends, Nico Harrison and Rob Pelinka. There has been no acceptable explanation for the deal, certainly not one that satisfies Mavericks fans.

It sent a message to everyone across the league, even superstars. And fans, too.

"You have to understand nobody's safe," said Giannis Antetokounmpo. "Nobody's safe."

For the entirety of the past seven seasons, the Mavericks had told their fans to invest everything into Dončić, and they were right. He rewarded them with appearances in the 2022 Western Conference finals and 2024 NBA Finals. This is how it is supposed to work; it is not how it always works, but it is the promise that every draft pick holds — that he will take you on this glorious journey up the mountain. Whether he reaches the top or not, that was for Dallas to discover. But they were robbed of that joy.

Meanwhile Jimmy Butler was holding the Miami Heat hostage. He wanted a contract extension; they did not want to give it to him, so he stopped working on his $48.8 million salary until they traded him to the Golden State Warriors, who granted him a two-year, $112 million extension. The other side of an equation.

None of this was about their experience of reaching the 2020 and 2023 NBA Finals together. That success was nothing more than a bargaining chip for Butler's next contract. It was all about the money, and if he was not going to get it in Miami, he would find it somewhere else — Heat Culture be damned.

That sends a message, too. Players can be as disloyal as their teams. It is only your loyalty they ask for.

The only ones not making out on these deals are the consumers. In the meantime, Butler is upset with the Heat because he might not have made $58.5 million two years from now, while the Mavericks — just purchased at a valuation of $3.5 billion — are reportedly concerned about paying $350 million to one of the few players who is worth it. These are absurd numbers. It is only funny money to their fans.

God forbid Butler had hit the open market and tested his value. Look how that turned out for the Philadelphia 76ers, who made Paul George the first player in three seasons to change teams on a true max contract. It almost seems as though arbitrarily valued teams are paying arbitrarily valued maximum salaries, only to cry poor when their arbitrarily valued luxury taxes come due. Just business, I guess.

Except that business dips into your pockets at the turnstiles and in subscription services. That $76 billion media rights deal the NBA just signed, who do you think is left footing the bill for that in the end?

It should be absolutely perplexing to every fan how, in response to the league's empowerment era, when players changed teams like day-old underwear, owners pushed an agreement that made it more difficult for teams to retain all of their own talent. As if loyalty were not already at a premium in the NBA, the second apron actually injects disloyalty into the process. Boston Celtics fans will find out soon enough.

The Celtics gave extensions to everyone in their starting lineup. They are on sale for $5 billion. And they will almost certainly balk at paying the luxury tax they helped set up for themselves. Make it make sense.

As salaries swell and ticket prices soar, there is a widening deficit between what you invest in fandom and what you get out of it. If teams quit on players under the cover of night, and players quit on teams at a moment's notice, how then are you supposed to feel? Is some measure of loyalty still too much to ask?