To Dallas Mavericks fans, there’s nothing funny about the trade of Luka Dončić. NOTHING. And yet, Matt Lyle and Matt Coleman had the gall to write a comedy about this tragic event. In fairness to them, the Matts have a great track record. Their previous play, Rapture, about a group of libidinous churchgoers in a small town, was hilarious. Lyle is also the author of
Big Scary Animals, about a suburban couple that accidentally moves into gay Oak Lawn, and many other worthwhile laughers.
Premiering this month at Theatre Three, The Trade: A Tragedy in Four Quarters, attempts to make light of Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison’s behind-closed-doors swap of generational talent Dončić for another NBA star, Anthony Davis of the Los Angeles Lakers. (Davis’ hernia is a character.) Mavs fans went apoplectic when the trade went down last season. To this day, you will see nary a social media post about the team that doesn’t include the comment, “Fire Nico!”
I talked to Matt Lyle in the Theatre Three lobby about Harrison’s hubris, negotiating with Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka in secret, keeping the talks hush-hush until the outcome couldn’t be reversed, and his own hubris in writing the play. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Where were you when you heard?
I was in bed. My wife was asleep. The WFAA app popped up with a news notification. I was, “Let me check this.” And I didn't go to sleep until like 2:30 a.m. I went right to NBA Twitter. “Is this real?” Yeah, doom scrolling is the right word. Matt Coleman, who co-wrote The Trade with me, did not see it until the next morning. I texted him probably 10 times.
So you immediately think, “This is funny. I should write a play about it?” Because you know what, Matt, this isn't funny.
You take the pain, you dig deep into that and sometimes you find some humor. No, at the time, it was not funny at all. I was super sad and angry. You feel silly a little bit afterwards, because you give so much energy to something that doesn't involve you. I don't play basketball, I don't work for the team. I just have followed them for 20-something years, and just place so much of my time and my life and attention and thinking through every game, every roster move. I just really love it. It's a third of what I give my attention to. It's a way that I escape the day to day of life. And then the rug was pulled right out from under it.
Once you settle into it, we thought, “Nico is worthy of derision,” in that way you can do as a comedian. He thoughtlessly screwed everybody over, and then had zero remorse. I mean, he thinks he made the right decision. I'm sure he realized afterwards that he misunderstood the fandom and how Dallas feels about certain players, which I think comes from how we felt about Dirk.
How do you go about bringing your comic mind to this situation and making it into a play that we can laugh at?
I couldn't have done it right away, because I would have been too upset. But then you can channel that as you write, because it’s satire. Matt and I would talk on the phone, and we would heighten the situation outside of the reality of it, to the point that we would start laughing and make each other laugh. You heighten the emotions. You set something up, then you surprise, which the show is full of: set up, surprise, big emotions undercut with a joke. There’s a chorus speaking at the same time with a lot of funny lines. It keeps it fun and light.
There was something in the description of the play that I identified with, this human capacity to behave in contradictory ways. Nico spent years building a team specifically around Luka that would complement his skills and then traded him, he says, because Luka was out of shape. He really traded him because Luka wouldn't do what Nico wanted him to do. Because Luka doesn't have to do what Nico wants him to do because of his talent, right? So maybe the comedy is about hubris and the human capacity for blind spots?
Yeah, Nico’s going to do whatever he’s going to do, no matter what. The whole first act is leading up to the trade. Everybody and everything speaks against it. We play everybody comically. Nico is dug in, secretly as he could possibly be, trying to find every reason to do what he already wants to do. There’s a very funny scene between Nico and Rob Pelinka set in Ascension Coffee that's a musical number, a parody of “Baby, It's Cold Outside.” It’s pretty great that Brian Gonzalez plays Rob Pelinka because he’s this Broadway-level song-and-dance man.
You’ve designed The Trade as a Greek tragedy, down to the chorus.
We have the scene where Nico tells [Mavericks governor] Patrick Dumont. And Patrick Dumont is played in a very interesting way. The whole thing has this Greek tragedy feeling to it if you consider Nico a tragic hero, somebody who has done right up to a point and gets filled with hubris where he thinks he can do no wrong and he can challenge the basketball gods in that Greek way. He makes the mistake that then sends him and everybody around him to the gutter.
Who else is depicted?
Chad Cline plays Luka. There are a couple of scenes between him and Nico. Mark Cuban, Michael Finley and Derek Harper show up, too. There's a fan/employee perspective, people who work at the AAC who are also fans. They’re super proud and happy to have the dream of working for the team they also follow and love.
In the second act, how does Nico deal with the backlash?
He hides in the tunnel at the games like he did in real life.
Have you been to a game since? I won’t go or go out of my way to watch them on TV. My fandom is over. I refuse to cheer for the laundry.
I've not been to a game since. I don't know when I will. It’s real odd. That's one of the cases that our character Nico makes. He assumed that we would just cheer for the laundry. That as soon as we won, everybody would be OK with it and that's probably right for some people.
Does he say in the play how they’re going to win without Luka?
“Defense wins championships.”
One of the things that hurts the most is just the chance to see guys like Kyrie and PJ and Gafford with Luka, that team that they put together last year. You see the vision. You see how this is all going to work together. And of course, it was cut out. It’s not just stealing that team's chance to do something special, but the night-to-night, exciting nature of the way Luka played. I mean, literally, there were four highlights every night. Like, how much fun is that, to every night be like, “Oh my god, I cannot believe he just did that?”
Has writing The Trade helped you heal?
Yeah, I feel better. It's been fun to actually laugh about it, like in rehearsal. Some of the cast knows what happened and some of them are learning about it. We have conversations. Like does this make sense? It’s entertaining, and it’s also a little bit of a primer on basketball for theatergoers who didn’t follow the trade. And for the people who are there because of the basketball content, they learn what theater is about and how we tell these stories.
Details
Oct. 9-Nov. 7 at 2688 Laclede St., Suite 120, Dallas. $37-$40. theatre3dallas.com.
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