Kyle Kuzma's calculus on the Mavericks' upside

PLUS: The Lakers' bizarre gambit with LeBron and the Warriors.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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Night Café at Arles; Paul Gaugin; 1888

The most fascinating story to come out of the NBA trade deadline isn’t about the Hawks shopping Dejounte Murray, or the Raptors finally doing a teardown, or the Warriors asking for permission to talk to LeBron’s camp about a trade. For my money, the most interesting story this year was Kyle Kuzma basically being offered a ticket out of the rebuilding Washington Wizards to join an MVP candidate in Luka Doncic and a second-tier contender in the Dallas Mavericks … and declining.

The backstory for those who don’t know it. This is from Josh Robbins at The Athletic:

When Wizards chief decision-maker Michael Winger informed Kuzma that the general framework of a trade was in place to send Kuzma to the Mavericks — a potential deal that Winger felt only lukewarm about — Kuzma told Winger he wanted to remain with the Wizards.

“There was a point in time, Dallas, they definitely did want me,” Kuzma told The Athletic on Monday, before the Wizards played the Mavericks at American Airlines Center. “Winger presented me with what the trade was and obviously didn’t want to trade me and kind of left the decision up to me a little bit and asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to stay and continue to build something. And that was kind of the end of it.”

Winger called the Mavericks back and said the deal was off the table.

There’s a lot going on here.

The biggest eye-opener is the new Wizards front office led by Michael Winger asking a good player who has nonetheless never been an All-Star for his preference when considering a trade. It’s worth noting that Winger told Kuzma he was lukewarm on the offer — if it was an offer that really excited Winger, one presumes Kuzma would be in Dallas right now regardless of his preference. But still, as the person charged with doing what’s best for the team as it hits rock bottom in the standings, asking the team’s best player if he’d like to be traded to a much, much better team is pretty wild and seems extraordinary in the modern NBA.

Once we get past that, we have Kuzma choosing the terrible team. And it should be noted that the Wizards are not merely terrible: they are on pace to have the 13th worst winning percentage of all-time, they do not have a blue-chip superstar in waiting (unlike the similarly bad Spurs) and there does not appear to be a no-brainer blue-chip superstar at the top of the draft this season.

The Mavericks, meanwhile, have a top-5 player in the world in Doncic, another All-Star quality guard in Kyrie Irving and legitimate hopes of winning a championship within the next five seasons. And Kuzma chose to remain in D.C.