Early Sunday morning, shortly after the Lakers defeated the Knicks in Madison Square Garden, ESPN’s Shams Charania broke a stunning piece of news: The Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks were swapping their all-league players, Anthony Davis and Luka Dončić, with the Jazz participating in the deal to make the economics work. Quickly, the normally overreactive NBA hype machine went into full-blown overdrive, wondering aloud on social media who knew what, and when. Had LeBron James, whose camp signaled that he learned about the deal at a post-game family dinner, actually been in on the plot? Talmudic readers would note that LeBron’s postgame assessment of A.D., who’d been sitting out due to an injury, was a little too effusive. Also, Lakers owner Jeanie Buss and general manager Rob Pelinka would never blindside their biggest star with a personnel move of this magnitude, would they? After all, LeBron essentially picks his coaches—plus, his son is on the team, and was presumably a party to the ostensible postgame dinner alibi. Also unusual: Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison, whose team reached the NBA Finals the previous season, had put out a hasty post-deal narrative suggesting that Davis had become his own white whale—a two-way player who worked hard, conditioned his body, and fit his culture. Yes, yes, that’s all well and good. Indeed, Davis is a generational talent, a historic defender, an NBA champ, and a former top pick, and he has a relationship with Harrison from the latter’s stint at Nike. Notably absent from Harrison’s spiel, however, were the persnickety observations that Davis has had his own injury problems and, in a past life, forced his trade to L.A. by storming his way out of New Orleans—not quite culture-bearer stuff. Anyway, these curiosities laddered up to more existential questions… in fact, to a very simple question: How had this happened? Superstars on winning teams are never exchanged midseason. And generational scorers like Luka—especially in secondary NBA markets, such as Dallas, and especially on winning teams—are prized possessions. To wit: Mavs owner Mark Cuban, who recently sold down his position in the team, ensured that Dirk Nowitzki retired in Dallas. In the end, though, the answer—or at least part of the answer—appears to be deceptively simple: media economics.

The Los Angeles Dodgers have become the villains of Major League Baseball, consistently signing top free agents every off-season, because the team can afford to spend more on player salaries than any other MLB club. This financial advantage is conferred by the fact that the Dodgers have a local media deal that is impervious to the secular problems negatively impacting regional sports networks throughout the industry. Amid a time when cable distributors are forcing teams to lonelier price tiers, Charter is paying the Dodgers an average of $334 million a year through 2038—the most team-friendly deal in the sport. The Lakers’ local deal, also with Charter, is not nearly as lucrative as the Dodgers’. But the team’s local rights fee deal with Spectrum SportsNet is also the richest in its league, and will approach $200 million this year, sources have told me. Like the Dodgers, the Lakers’ deal is long-term and runs until the late 2030s. The Dallas Mavericks, meanwhile, are at the opposite end of the local rights spectrum. Before this season, the Mavericks walked away from a deal with Bally Sports that would have paid the team around $45 million per year. In its place, the team signed a deal with the local broadcast group, Tegna, that carries games on over-the-stations in the area. Local broadcast channels provide more reach than R.S.N.s, but they rarely come close to the rights fees that R.S.N.s pay. The Mavs also started a direct-to-consumer business called Mavs TV, though it is not known how many subscribers have signed up for it. Nevertheless, sources have suggested that the Lakers local media rights haul is seven or eight times higher than the Mavericks. As the R.S.N. business continues to crater, the local media environments in both markets certainly played a part in this deal. Luka, after all, was on pace to demand a five-year $345 million deal this summer. Sure, the NBA’s $77 billion national media deals will kick in next season, but it’s hard to see how the Mavs could afford to keep the star Slovenian guard while countenancing the dislocation of its local rights situation. There’s a growing belief inside professional sports circles that Cuban, who sold the bulk of the team to the Adelson family last year, foresaw this scenario unfolding and cashed out in advance. Indeed, when Cuban bought the team in 2000, he helped the NBA ownership understand the financial upside of their media potential. The next wave of ownership economics will likely be defined by real estate dealings—hotels, casino development, interactive stadiums, etcetera. It’s hardly a wonder why Cubes is out and the Adelsons are in charge now.

On a national level, media companies seem genuinely excited about the idea that the Lakers, the league’s marquee team, will be led by a telegenic superstar after LeBron’s eventual retirement. Matt Kenny, vice president of programming and acquisitions at ESPN, told me that he was in Vegas for his daughter’s volleyball tournament when he learned about the trade from his son back home. Naturally, Kenny immediately got up and checked the schedule to find out when the new-look Lakers would be on ESPN. (TNT has two games this week.) Kenny noted a March 8 game at the Celtics that will be on ABC and an April 9 game when Luka returns to Dallas. By Sunday morning, he had a summary typed up: ESPN has eight more Mavs appearances for the rest of the season and seven Lakers games, with an option to add an eighth that I presume he’ll pick up. Before the trade, Lakers national TV game ratings had been up 1 percent year over year, including a 5 percent hike on ESPN. “There’s a narrative out there, of course, that this cements the Lakers stature in the league with an all-NBA dominant superstar for the next decade,” Kenny said. “As those of us in the business know, you just never know. But what this means in the short term is just an incredible shot in the arm for the NBA as it heads into All-Star weekend. And it certainly has a rising tide effect on both teams.” Jared Stacy, Prime’s director of global live sports production, told me he woke up to more than 100 texts. Perhaps because Amazon doesn’t begin its new NBA deal till next season, Stacy initially worried that the inbound had to do with the fires. (Stacy, who lives in L.A., actually used to work for the Lakers.) “The first text I saw was a text from my cousin that simply said WTF,” Stacy told me today. “I start looking, and I see in my thread pictures of Luka in a Lakers uniform, and my mind pivots from terrible fire stuff to, wait… the Lakers got Luka?” He was excited for his team and his city, of course, but also Amazon. “The idea that one of the league’s great stars, at the age of 25, is coming to L.A.? That’s pretty exciting for us,” he said. “As I’m digesting it, I started to think that if we were on the air right now, we would be able to go and bring in Dirk Nowitzki for his thoughts. I started to think about how we would cover it a year from now.”

On MLS Season Pass: “It’s not true to say, as you did, that ‘the Apple deal… puts almost every game on Apple TV+.’ The often misunderstood fact is that MLS typically only puts an average of six of its 14 weekly games on Apple TV+, which is $9.99 per month. Sometimes it’s as few as two. To get the rest, Apple forces everyone (including Apple TV+ subscribers) to add on MLS Season Pass for an additional $14.99 per month. And they don’t reveal which games are placed outside of the Season Pass paywall until a couple days before each game. This is actually the most frequent gripe that we soccer fans have about the MLS-Apple deal.” —A Varsity subscriber On Greg Olsen’s next move: “Should Amazon so desire, they could easily stroke a check to fulfill Herbstreit’s contract and go after Olsen. However, I doubt Greg is doing himself any favors by calling attention to his displeasure. Everyone already knows he’s better than Brady right now.” —A Varsity subscriber The Romo Meter: “I guess I’m in the minority over the past two years in that I still enjoy Tony Romo’s commentary. What others seem to dislike about him—his occasional rambling and atypical personality—is exactly why I like him. After decades of listening to the same stodgy style from major broadcasters (Troy Aikman and Joe Buck are functional but boring!), I get a kick out of Romo’s goofball sensibilities. What he lacks in precision, he still makes up for in in-game nuance. He definitely deflates in blowout games, but no one matches his level of passion and fire in close contests. I’ll trade away the lower floor for the higher ceiling.” —A Varsity subscriber On Fox’s Super Bowl sellout: “Thank god things are going well for Lachlan Murdoch. Was worried his family’s destruction of much of Western civilization and democracy was gonna catch up with him some day.” —A Varsity subscriber On Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the ACC: “The intern that writes your headlines deserves a raise. Did she read the series in original French or the English version from 1872?” —A cable guy On Marchand: “Gewürztraminer! I know all about that German wine. I tried it in 1993 for Cornell’s legendary Introduction to Wines class. Ask Pitaro about it. He had to have taken that class, too.” —A sports media veteran

See you Thursday from New Orleans, John