The Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks will play a preseason exhibition recreation in Las Vegas.
It is a choice made not by the NBA, however by the 2 groups that accomplished probably the most controversial trades in sports activities historical past simply months in the past when the Mavericks dealt Luka Dončić to the Lakers.
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Since that commerce, the Lakers flamed out of the primary spherical of the playoffs, and the Mavericks gained the NBA Draft lottery. Dallas will presumably choose Duke phenom Cooper Flagg, who shall be instantly handed the torch that Dončić carried because the workforce’s franchise participant and long-term hope for championship success.
Will Luka Dončić truly play in October’s Lakers-Mavericks exhibition in Las Vegas? (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Occasions through Getty Photographs)
(Allen J. Schaben through Getty Photographs)
Will Flagg, Dončić or each see the courtroom within the recreation scheduled for Oct. 15 at T-Cellular Enviornment? Who is aware of?
However the Lakers and Mavericks appear content material to money in on the hype in a matchup that ought to garner significantly extra consideration than your common NBA preseason contest.
The Lakers confirmed the existence of the sport Monday. And to be clear, this can be a recreation that each groups selected to schedule, as is customized with the NBA preseason. As The Athletic defined in a function on the NBA preseason final fall:
“Groups prepare their very own schedules, choose their very own opponents and have their very own causes for doing so. … There are few guidelines for the preseason. They don’t even play video games in the event that they don’t need to. The NBA doesn’t mandate a minimal variety of video games, simply that groups can’t play greater than six annually. The remaining is as much as the groups themselves.”
When will the Lakers and Mavericks play in a recreation that really counts? That is but to be decided. The NBA schedule usually is not set till August. Till then, each groups will preserve their collective buzz amid the intense lights of the Las Vegas Strip.
