Danny Ainge had no idea he was helping the Lakers trade for Luka Doncic

Rob Pelinka, take a bow. Fooling Danny Ainge into helping the Lakers trade for Luka Doncic is a masterful gambit.

Rob Pelinka has taken a lot of criticism, largely warranted, throughout his time in the Lakers front office.

But it’s hard to imagine someone more masterfully managing the Luka Dončić trade than he did.

First, there’s the whole negotiation: He fielded the crazy idea of trading for Luka Doncic, laughed in the face of Mavs general manager Nico Harrison, and then proceeded to gaslight him to talk him down from his initial asking price.

But that’s not even the best part of all of this for Lakers fans.

To complete this deal, a third team was needed. The Lakers looped in the Utah Jazz and the hated Danny Ainge but, as Tim MacMahon and Ramona Shelburne of ESPN reported, kept them in the dark on what deal they were helping out with until it was too late for them to do anything about it.

Even the Utah Jazz, the third team that facilitated the transaction by collecting two second-round picks for absorbing Jalen Hood-Schifino, didn’t know Doncic and Davis were a part of the deal until about an hour before it was completed, league sources said. Even Jazz President, Danny Ainge, who hails from the Lakers’ hated rival, the Boston Celtics, had only about 30 minutes notice, sources said, that Los Angeles was about to acquire Doncic to be the new face of its franchise.

But by then it was too late to do much about it. NBA history was about to be altered.

Let me first just say...

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s laugh at him again with more details on Ainge’s involvement.

Utah just had to complete a trade with the Clippers earlier Saturday morning, to free up roster spots to take in another player. The last part of that deal was completed Saturday around the same time the Lakers and Knicks were tipping off in New York.

The Lakers had asked the Jazz to complete the trade involving Drew Eubanks and Patty Mills by the time they were finished against the Knicks because they didn’t want Max Christie to have to fly back with the team on their Sunday morning flight back to Los Angeles, then learn he’d been traded.

Shortly after the Jazz completed their business with Mills, they learned of the magnitude of the trade they were about to be involved in. All that did was buy them an extra hour to digest its ramifications.

Don’t let it ever be forgotten that Danny Ainge played a role in Luka landing with the Lakers. Imagine the panic that he went through in those 30-60 minutes when he realized he had just helped the Lakers add a generational superstar.

Let’s add some more fun to it. Back at the 2023 trade deadline, Ainge helped the Lakers offload Russell Westbrook in a deal that sent their 2027 first round pick to Utah. That deal also helped catapult the Lakers to a Western Conference Finals with the additions of D’Angelo Russell, Jarred Vanderbilt and Malik Beasley.

Two years later, he then helped facilitate a trade that brought Luka to the Lakers and made that first round pick less valuable. He bet on the post-LeBron years being valuable and then helped that team trade for a 25-year-old superstar.

Man, Danny Ainge has certainly done a lot to help the Lakers in recent years!

Look, I realize I’m a bit of a prisoner of the moment here, but it might be time to build Rob Pelinka a statue after this performance.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.