The Los Angeles Lakers promised Luka Dončić they would build a Dallas Mavericks 2.0 roster around him, according to Dan Woike of The Athletic. Those promises were to give him a locker room full of his type of players, to find him replicants, if not improvements, of the balanced roster he made a Finals run with the Mavericks in 2024 against the Boston Celtics.

The 2024 Mavericks starting lineup had  Dončić, Kyrie Irving, Derrick Jones Jr., PJ Washington, and Dereck Lively II. The Lakers current starting lineup has Luka, Austin Reaves, Quentin Grimes, Sandro Mamukelashvili, and Walker Kessler.

Dallas 2.0? Why Chasing The 2024 Mavericks Blueprint Dooms The Lakers

Jan 24, 2026; Dallas, Texas, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic (77) walks back up the court during the game against the Dallas Mavericks at the American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images

There are numerous issues with the current Lakers roster. They lack point-of-attack wing defenders and wing depth. There is no current center rotation mirroring Gafford and Lively. As good as he is,  Reaves is not Kyrie Irving as a number two option. 

The biggest issue of all (and one that people tend to forget) is that the 2024 Dallas team actually was not close to winning. There was a sizeable gap between them and the Celtics. Building a replica of that team in 2026-2027, when both conferences have improved, may not be the right approach.

To get to that Finals team in Dallas, it took them seven years: two tanking seasons, the Irving trade, the Washington and Gafford trades, and Jones Jr. signing. There were trial-and-error signings and trades of different players: Javale McGee, Christian Wood, Richaun Holmes, Kristaps Porzingis, and Davis Bertans. Not to mention hitting on Lively and having Luka on rookie-scale deals. 

The lack of wing depth and a stopper is irrefutable, but I would argue that the Lakers project to be a more potent shooting team, given last year’s percentages (attempts). Doncic shot 36.6% from deep on 10.8 attempts. Reaves shot 36% from beyond the arc on 6.4 attempts. Colin Sexton shot 40.1% from the three-point range on 4.1 attempts. Sandro Mamukelashvili shot 38.9% from three on 3.7 attempts. Quentin Grimes shot 33.4% from the arc on 5.1 attempts.

End Of My Luka Dončić Rant 

May 1, 2026; Houston, Texas, USA; Los Angeles Lakers guard Luka Doncic (77, middle) reacts after a made basket against the Houston Rockets during the fourth quarter of game six of the first round of the 2026 NBA Playoffs at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Erik Williams-Imagn Images

The issue is that Dallas 2.0 was always a flawed conception of what the ideal team around Luka was, and Dallas lost for a reason with that team. His second-best player should not be a scoring combo guard who is only marginally better on defense than him. If they had wanted to build an ideal team around him, they should have done everything physically possible to get Jaylen Brown this summer, who is on the Philadelphia 76ers. 

 Dončić will eventually leave Los Angeles. He will be the first all-time great in the modern era to not win a championship with the franchise because the front office is incapable of building a sustainable contender. They just wasted the most cap space in the league on a team that is likely worse than last year and exhausted their entire supply of draft capital in the process.Whether the Lakers can successfully execute the Mavericks-style blueprint may ultimately determine whether he spends the rest of his prime in Los Angeles.