Dirk Nowitzki shares first reaction to Mavericks' Luka Dončić trade: 'Disappointed and sad for him'

There might have been no one more conflicted about the Dallas Mavericks' widely criticized Luka Dončić trade than Dirk Nowitzki.

On the one hand, Nowitzki is the easy answer for the greatest and most beloved player in Dallas history after 21 years of playing for the team. He still works for the Mavericks in an ambassador and advisor capacity and still has a house in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

On the other, Nowitzki was close to Dončić in the way that only two intersecting superstars can be. Dončić joined the Mavericks in Nowitzki's final season and the two of them are still close, with Nowitzki providing the 25-year-old a blueprint for succeeding as a European star in the same market.

Seeing the two split wasn't easy, as Nowitzki recounted duringa live appearance at 96.7 The Ticket's Ticketstock event. Not helping matters was the fact that Nowitzki was somewhat far from home when the news broke at 11:12 p.m. in Dallas:

"When I saw the news, I was actually all across on the other side of the world. I was vacationing with the family in the Maldives ... Actually about to go to lunch and then we're leaving that day to travel back and my phone starts blowing up."

Nowitzki went on to explain why he joined Dončić for his Lakers debut. Again, it was a conflicting experience:

"Fast forward coming home, obviously Luka, we texted a bit. I felt a little disappointed and sad for him. He obviously didn't see this coming. He invited me to come out to his first game in L.A. and I felt like I had to support him. I felt like I played with him in my last season. We got close. I tried to mentor him, I tried to help him as much as I can in the last few years.

"He's good kid, so I felt like I had to go out there and support him in this new chapter. It was reported that he was pretty down and disappointed how it went down, so I wanted to be there for him. I wanted to be there for his family and show support. You guys saw my face, it was weird. It was surreal to see him play for the Lakers. I'll never be a Lakers fan but I must always be a Luka fan."

As surreal as the game might have been for Nowitzki, it apparently meant a lot for Dončić, who said after the game that his appearance was "amazing."

Three weeks after what might have been the most shocking trade in NBA history, we're still seeing ripple effects of the move in Dallas. After more than two decades of watching Nowitzki star and eventually succeed in bringing home a championship for the Mavericks, Dallas was clearly hoping for the same story, or even more, from Dončić.

Barring a trade demand or some massive extenuating circumstance, NBA teams don't trade away 25-year-old perennial All-NBA players. And then Dallas did, apparently because it wanted to shore up its defense with Anthony Davis and had concerns about Dončić's conditioning. For the most part Mavericks fans haven't bought into that reasoning.