Luka Dončić is no longer a Dallas Maverick.

I am confident there is no way any of this will ever make sense.

I remember exactly where I was when I learned the Rangers were on a path to trading Mark Teixeira. The location. The seat I was in. The speechlessness.

It was many months before it actually happened.

The way I heard about the Mavericks’ trade of Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Freakin’ Lakers was different. The first text that woke me was at 11:21 last night; even without guardrails here at Substack, I opt not to repeat what that text said.

There was another text at 1:22 am. Needless to say, I got very little sleep after that. I tried. Part by trying futilely to convince myself several times, as I hung around the rim of sleep, that it was just one of those really-bad-yet-very-convincing dreams. Didn’t work. More than once, half-asleep, I also found myself making sure in my head that it was February 1st when I got that first text, not April 1st, before waking up fully, pissed that I kept trying to escape this brutally awful truth.

And, though I tried and continue to try grasping for it, there is no context, no true precedent, no historical comfort to lean on.