The psychological trap behind the Luka Doncic trade. Be careful, it's probably afflicting you, too (especially if you are successful).

Even with the Super Bowl coming up in two days, the biggest story in the sports world this week is the Dallas Mavericks' baffling decision to trade Luka Doncic, the 25-year-old superstar who led them to the NBA Finals last season while averaging an astonishing 34 points, 10 assists and 9 rebounds per game.

It is is not an exaggeration to say that the trade of Doncic for 31-year-old Anthony Davis--a great player in his own right, but one who is both older and less impactful than Doncic--is unprecedented in the history of the NBA. Never has someone so young, so talented, and so accomplished been traded without first demanding that his team do so. It was so shocking that most observers initially assumed the news was either a prank or the result of a hacked social media account. Once it was confirmed, analysts and pundits have been searching in the dark nonstop for a sensible explanation.

This search has led us to some strange places. Perhaps Luka Doncic, a man who has been first-team All NBA for five consecutive years and had one of the most extraordinary seasons in NBA history just last season, is such a glutton that he is about to eat his way out of the league. Or maybe he is an alcoholic! After all, he was caught on camera drinking one beer after a game in last year's finals. Maybe Rob Pelinka, the GM of the Lakers, has mind control powers and hypnotized Mavs GM Nico Harrison into making the trade. Maybe Nike is behind it, or the NBA itself forced Harrison's hand behind the scenes, to get Doncic to their highest profile franchise.

Only this morning did I hear an explanation that I found compelling. I'd like to discuss it here, because I think it has implications for all of us who, like Nico Harrison, are in leadership positions that force us to make tough choices that sometimes go against conventional wisdom.

But first, I want to take us back 5 years, to the height of the pandemic, and the ESPN and Netflix documentary The Last Dance.

Remember The Last Dance? The 10-part a documentary on Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls' dynasty captivated sports fans in a time when we were all stuck at home, and had no live sports to distract us (as always, MJ had perfect timing). One of the main themes in the documentary was the team's growing frustration with GM Jerry Krause, who had decided to let the team break up after that season, rather than bring back his aging roster to compete for another title.

The most famous quotation from Krause during that time, the one that angered Jordan even 20+ years later, is this one: "Players and coaches don't win championships, organizations do."

Jordan felt this statement minimized his accomplishments. Krause felt it spoke the truth, and that the dominant narrative underestimated the role he and his front office team had played in the Bulls success.

And Krause had a point. He had made exceptionally shrewd moves over the years. In 1987, he took a huge risk in selecting a skinny small forward who didn't even play D1 basketball with the 5th pick in the entire NBA Draft. Scottie Pippen became one of the greatest players of all time. Next, instead of selecting a talented scorer, he selected a "dirty work" guy with the 10th pick of the same draft. Horace Grant became a third star on three straight title teams. He angered Michael Jordan by trading his favorite teammate for center Bill Cartwright, but Jordan got over his anger when the move propelled the Bulls to the finals. He promoted an unproven assistant coach to lead the team, and Phil Jackson became the winningest NBA coach of all time. He signed Dennis Rodman when Rodman was on his way out of the league, a move that helped propel the Bulls to 3 more titles. All in all, Jerry Krause brought in 11 of the 12 championship players on 6 title teams in 8 years, a record virtually no GM in history has matched.

Was it that crazy for him to believe that he could do it again? To believe that, if this team broke up, he could rebuild again and put together another team capable of winning multiple championships?

He certainly didn't think it was crazy, and said as much in the documentary. He was looking forward to the challenge, and was confident he could succeed.

But it turned out, yea, it was kind of crazy. Because there is one little element that he missed. He did bring in 11 of the 12 players on 6 championship teams. The one player who was already there when he arrived? Oh yea. Michael Jordan.

Krause made many, many great moves. But even discounting the role that luck played in the success of these moves, the obvious fact remains that none of these moves would have amounted to any championships if it weren't for the one piece that was already there. That stroke of luck is something he would not be able to replicate.

Krause exhibited a common psychological error known as attribution bias. It is our tendency to attribute our successes to our own efforts, and our failures to events outside of our control. Men tend to exhibit attribution bias to a much greater degree than women, though all of us can be susceptible to it.

The tricky thing about attribution bias is that, in many cases, it can actually help us succeed. A great deal of research supports the benefits of an "internal locus of control," the idea that we, rather than outside forces, are in control of our own destiny. Whether true or not, belief in this idea is essential for the continued motivation to overcome the inevitable obstacles that get in our way as we pursue our goals.

Attribution bias often goes hand in hand with an internal locus of control; they are two sides of the same coin.

But it can also lead to major errors, such as Jerry Krause believing he could break up the Bulls and rebuild the team into a contender in a few years. It has been 27 years, and the Bulls have not been back to the Finals since.

I thought about this when listening to a podcast on my way to work this morning. In his The Mismatch podcast with Dave Jacoby, NBA analyst Chris Vernon expressed this reaction to the press conference Nico Harrison gave after trading Luka Doncic:

"I don't know how you could have had a great press conference after this trade, but as I was watching it, this is what struck me. It dawned on me as I was watching it.

Oh my God. This guy thinks it's him. He thinks he's responsible. He thinks he's the reason the Dallas Mavericks were in the Finals. He thinks that they have had this level of success because he's the General Manager."

Once again, attribution bias.

Harrison, like Krause, has been quite a successful GM over the past few seasons. He brought in Kyrie Irving when the no one in the league seemed to want him, and Irving regained his All-Star form. He drafted Derrick Lively, who became a key piece of their championship roster. He was mocked for hiring Jason Kidd after Kidd had flamed out in his previous two coaching stops, but Kidd galvanized the team and led them to the Finals. It is not unreasonable for Harrison to consider himself to be very good at his job and to trust his own judgment.

But then again, he also took over a team with a 21-year-old guard who was already one of the three or four best players in the entire league. Making good moves is decidedly easier when you are building on that foundation. And Harrison just traded that foundation away.

Perhaps this move will work out, and Harrison will be hailed as a genius. It is possible. But the patterns of NBA history say that the opposite is far more likely, and that Harrison's hubris and attribution bias will prove destructive. For their part, Mavericks fans are acting as if a loved one has died.

It is easy to mock Nico Harrison or Jerry Krause, but once you start looking for the deleterious effects of attribution bias, you see them everywhere. It happens when successful start up founders anoint themselves as sure-to-succeed angel investors, neglecting the role that luck played in their achieving product-market fit. It happens when tech entrepreneurs believe they can fix public education or the entire US Federal Government or all the problems of the world. It happens when companies make acquisitions due to a belief that they can operate the acquired business better than existing management, though that is generally not the case. It happens when national governments believe they can fix intractable problems in the most complicated places on earth.

These efforts are often correctly associated with the "halo effect," in which people with expertise in one area are believed to have expertise more broadly. For the individuals themselves, though, this can stem from a simple case of attribution bias: I am very successful, therefore I am much smarter than other people, therefore I can do this other thing better than those other people. The realization that their success is not based on being smarter than everyone else, but is instead based to a large degree on luck, could mitigate these temptations.

But again, here's where it's tricky. An internal locus of control is necessary for success, and attribution bias stems from that internal locus of control.

So, as leaders, what do we do? Do we just accept attribution bias as an inevitable side effect of an internal locus of control, and let it happen? Ideally not, especially when this attribution bias can lead to such drastic errors in judgment.

The trick (and it is not an easy one), is to maintain an internal locus of control when looking forward, along with a clear-eyed approach to the past that avoids attribution bias. This distinction is extremely difficult to make, and becomes more difficult the more successful we are. One way to mitigate this challenge is to surround ourselves with trusted advisors who are both clear-eyed themselves and unafraid to tell us the truth, even when we don't want to hear it. To do so, we must communicate explicitly and implicitly with the people around us that we are open to hearing these uncomfortable truths. We also need to check these biases every time we have to make an important decision.

None of these methods is easy or foolproof. Attribution bias and the overconfident risks that often come along with it is an ever present danger for all leaders.