Interesting comments from PDB in his last spot with the Ticket, and something I really never thought about:
Just from a sports angle, how stunned were you by the Luka Doncic trade?
Pete DeBoer: Yeah there was a buzz in our dressing room about it. Because we play in the same building and Dallas really is a pretty small town from a sports world. There's a lot of connectivity between the teams and the players. I think our players have been to quite a few Mavs games and I think they've gotten friendly and familiar with a lot of their players. I know you saw last year I think in the playoffs, we had some Mavs players at our playoff games cheering us on and wearing Stars jerseys. There's a big connection there and there was a big buzz in our room and obviously a little bit of a shock like everybody else.
Just from a coach's perspective, if a guy like that on your team is no longer, how do you handle that?
DeBoer: I can't put myself in Jason Kidd's shoes and wonder what was going on there. I think it's interesting, we're all here to win a championship. When you get close and don't, like the Mavs did last year and we did the last couple years, sometimes you have to make bold decisions in order to try and get over the edge or get over the top if you don't feel internally that you can. I don't have an explanation for it and obviously I'm not knowledgable enough in the NBA and the return and what they got and what they didn't get. I loved watching Luka play. I'd love a championship in Dallas more for one of the teams, including ours.