The superstar is always right

After the Mavericks traded Luka Doncic a few days ago, leaks started getting out that the Dallas Mavericks star was “out of shape.”

Mavs GM Nico Harrison didn’t have enough confidence in Doncic staying healthy to continue building the franchise around him. The decision, more likely than not, will cost him his job down the road.

If you’re having trouble getting Doncic in shape, fire the training staff and strength staff and keep bringing in new faces until you find the group that connects with Doncic.

If Doncic doesn’t “fit your culture,” then keep cycling through coaches and veteran cores on the roster and reverse engineer a culture around your superstar.

If the GM believes that he can’t build a winner around Luka, who just led Dallas to the NBA Finals, then fire the GM.

If the owner doesn’t want to commit to a supermax contract with one of the three best players in the NBA, then that’s grounds to sell the team.

It’s still a miracle how the Mavericks were able to land Doncic in the first place back in 2018. They’ll probably never get a chance like this for decades with a homegrown player like Doncic.

It sounds like Doncic wasn’t handling his career as well as he could have been. But, to tweak an old saying, the superstar is always right. Because without the superstar, you have nothing.

That brings me to Joe Burrow.

Burrow is the tentpole of the Bengals’ culture, the captain of the team and the city of Cincinnati’s most valuable asset. Unlike Doncic, he’s in perfect shape and is a model citizen in the building who serves as an extension of the coaching staff. Burrow is the smartest guy at Paycor Stadium.

Right now, Burrow is being more vocal than he has ever been. Ja’Marr Chase, Trey Hendrickson and Tee Higgins want new contracts.

The Bengals are on the verge of losing the plot of building around Burrow. There’s a lot of risk in taking a direction that goes against what your superstar player has in mind.

That risk can pay off. But it can also definitely backfire.

There’s a world where the Bengals lose Higgins and Hendrickson, and it ends up turning out well for the Bengals in the long run. They follow a plan to replace those two franchise cornerstones with free agents and draft picks, take a page out of the Tyreek Hill trade playbook and redistribute their resources across the roster.

My issue with the Bengals’ approach so far with their stars looking for new contracts is that they haven’t been decisive enough. The tone feels like, “If the price is right (and it meets the Bengals’ number), we’re cool. If not, we’ll move on.”

The decisions about the futures of guys like Hendrickson and Higgins shouldn’t come down to a few million dollars in negotiations. They should be philosophical decisions.

The Bengals should know what they want and go get it.

Burrow would probably eventually buy in if the Bengals make some unpopular moves this offseason and still win in the long term. He’d probably buy in if the Bengals’ kept their stars and the bulk of a contending roster intact. He wants to win, and he has a track record of following what’s best for the team.

But if the Bengals take some risks this offseason, let some more of their best players walk and don’t win again in 2025, that’s where things take a turn for the worse.

As the Bengals decide what the next version of this roster is going to look like, they can’t lose the forest through the trees.

If you’re having trouble building a Super Bowl caliber roster around Burrow, then change your philosophy.

If you’re having trouble keeping Pro Bowl caliber players in the building, then change your negotiating tactics.

This entire operation still revolves around No. 9. If the Bengals lose sight of that and prioritize signing “perfect contracts” with Hendrickson and Higgins instead, then they’ll be going out of a Nico Harrison-type limb.

So far, Burrow and Trey Hendrickson have been the only ones who are open and up front about what their priorities are.

The Bengals are lucky that Burrow isn’t Doncic, that Burrow is an archetypal franchise quarterback and that Burrow drives the team’s culture.

You don’t get many chances at having an elite, elite quarterback who acts the part on and off the field. We all know that Burrow handles pressure just fine. As he applies some pressure on the front office, we’ll see how the other side of these negotiations handles it.