The Luka trade was my last step in ending a lifelong love of sports

Disclaimer - i didn't really mean for this to be so long. There is a very short summary at the end. I hope someone understands what I'm saying here and why I had so much to say. I've always been a lurker in this and all subs I'm in but I finally snapped. 👍

I (23M) have been a massive fan of American sports since I hung out with my friends the day after the Trey Burke deep 3 against Kansas. I grew up in a very homeschooling, large, religious family with a dad who hated sports and a mom who couldn't care less. That Michigan team changed my life - Trey, Tim, GR3, Nik, Mitch, even J-Mo were so exciting to watch in the THREE games I got to see them play at the end of March that it started an OBSESSION with basketball that still lasts in me today. I spent years and years digesting as much information as I could about the history of basketball as a whole. I spent hours in the driveway everyday tryna shoot like Kobe and imagining entire career scenarios for the version of myself that grew 14 inches in HS. I played 2k religiously every night for yearsss, becoming a sim rebuilder creating different what if nba scenarios over and over on my psp in bed in middle school and up to my ps4 in my first apartment. I have countless more examples of just like a statistical obsession with basketball and it's names and faces and it's content but I need to get to the point. All in all, I have been fundamentally OBSESSED with this game for 12 years.

The last 5 years, however, have been pretty tough. My parents stopped getting cable my senior year of hs and I couldn't afford it until recently. Now that I can afford it of course it's not worth getting because everything is streamed, and as someone who is also a fan of football, hockey, and baseball it would be a tough swing to try and watch everything I want to on a bunch of different subscriptions. The amount of advertising in sports has always been tough on-air, but the legalization of sports betting has made the ads (and media content) so much worse. As an ex-gambling addict who got started on parlays a few years back, it's super painful for me to see past nba and nfl stars doing "segments" before games and in talk shows that have no substance outside of betting "advice". Millions of kids every year seeing this and getting ready to gamble as soon as they can. I have always been a huge cbssports fan, and even that has gone from an awesome place for analysis and opinion pieces to a 1:1 ratio of real articles and gambling advice (although at least they mostly haven't made it to paywalls yet lol). Feels pretty clear that each league is in bed with the books to an extent, and even if its just for advertising the immense prevalence of that advertising makes me significantly more skeptical of any bad beat/confusing call. The clickbaityness of talk shows, podcasts, and articles is also difficult for me to deal with. Felt like if you asked someone who didn't know anything about college football to watch one news cycle last fall they would think Colorado was equivalent to mid 2010s Bama. Transfer portal, very few long term same team stars, massive contracts for mid to above average players (shoutout Timofey Mozgov), diva player tantrums balancing out with stupidly stubborn old rich white men tantrums... the list of things that makes it harder to watch and follow now feels just as long as the list of reasons I fell in love with it in the first place.

IN SPITE OF ALL OF THIS^ I had still been pretty heavily tuned in to all 4 leagues this year + NCAA FB/BB. A resurgence in Detroit sports + UM sports helped me stay attached to all the games I have grown up loving. For the first time since those John Beilein teams I really feel like I could witness a championship from a program I have always been invested in. Then - just as quickly as that late night Trey Burke shot changed my view of the world - a late night push notification Flipped the script all over again.

Since the day of the trade I feel like I'm going insane every time I talk about, read about, or even think about it. There is absolutely ZERO reasonable explanation for the trade. Luka has been easily a top 10 and probably a top 5 player since his 2nd year in the league. He clearly wanted to stay in Dallas for as long as possible, which we can presume would have been his entire because even without an A1 supporting cast they were in the Finals LESS THAN A YEAR AGO. He could have been an anomaly in today's game, a franchise cornerstone who loves the fans, the city, his teammates, his coaches, and casually averages 30,8,8 for 10+ years. He was and is on track to be one of the better athletes in sports history (just take a look at career stats and metrics year by year if u don't believe this). He is also INSANELY marketable. He reaches every spending basketball market and is even creating new fans (overwatch), super chill, electric highlights, fun, likeable, whatever positive attribute a basketball player can have besides ¿chiseled triceps and abs? - Luka has it. On his own merits and values alone there is absolutely no reason to even think about trading this man.

Anthony Davis is a pretty damn good basketball player. I'm not going to take a dump on the guy. I've never been a huge fan of his game just because he hasn't been the top player on a winning team since he played for John Calipari, but I'll admit he is a top level NBA player. However it is a fact that he just turned 32, he has rarely played 70+ game seasons over his entire career, and he doesn't really have a 3 ball and a league that currently lives and dies by it. All that said, it also just makes no amount of sense that the type of player from the previous paragraph wouldn't get shopped around if he was available. If nico had "shopped" Luka for any longer than a half hour every team in the league would be offering everything they had in the tool chest. Everything. Getting AD could have made more (but still very little) sense if they also got Hillbilly Kobe and 5-10 years of draft picks. Even in that scenario other teams probably put up a better offer. The fact that this deal just randomly happened late at night was disgraceful to the concept of a blockbuster trade in general.

I'm not even really going to address the "business" reasons for trading Luka. Like I said, dude is stupidly marketable and the cost of business would never come close to the revenue generation. Duh.

In my mind there are only two possibilities, and one seems more likely than the other. Less likely to me is that Nico just dislikes the guy. While I'm very much willing to believe there was beef prior to the trade, Nico would have to be braindead to trade a top 5 player in the world because of personal beef. It's possible, but in a 30 team league the microscope seems too zoomed in to be willing to do that. I think it's more likely that this is some lame ass sheisty shit. I feel like every sportswriter and personality isnt willing to address this possiblity because they would probably get blackballed by the league; there is no other reason i can think of that literally nobody even lets that concept breathe in print or on air. Im thinking Some form of collusion to drive NBA revenue and achieve personal goals. Im tempted to believe the puppet master here is Adam Silver because like why the purple and gold of all places??? I won't go too far into my thoughts on all of this because I don't plan on worrying about it long term because it has been eating me up for weeks already.

Overall, this trade absolutely shattered my belief that any of these leagues are anything more than dumb ass games made to distract and steal from the general, lower class, populous. That hurts to say as someone who feels like I've wasted my life on this obsession. It seems more likely to me that the lower 95% of American earners are being given bread and circuses for whatever reason the top 5% has deemed it necessary. I am not willing to accept that incompetency with a sprinkle of ego is the reason that the millionaire head of a billion dollar organization cemented his legacy as the most hated man in the nba this decade. If it quacks like a duck, it tends to be, and this feels like most egregious instance of the rich playing their hand on sports. They don't care about the fanbases, they don't care about the players, they don't care about the cultural importance, the history, the cities, the titles, they don't care about these sports at all. It might as well be a robinhood app in the pocket of a billionaire. Numbers on a chart.

Judge me for the ihatesportball take if u want. I'm really so over all of this. I don't want to see another fanduel offer, I dont want to see a progressive ad take the spot of a local legend, I dont want to see a heisman hopeful lose his job fresh off a playoff spot because his dad is deemed too greedy. And I NEVER, EVER, want to see the heart and soul of a fanbase ripped away from the thousands and thousands of people who put their hopes for local pride into him. ☮️

TLDR I have been a massive big 4 sports fan for half of my life. sports feel focused on nothing except for quarterly profit %, entirely soulless and devoid of culture. Luka trade is so nonsensical and impossible to defend that my dwindling suspension of disbelief finally shattered into pieces in regards to all paid athletics. I have given up on all of it:)