“The easiest thing for me to do is nothing,” Nico Harrison once said, among his scattered and infrequent public attempts to defend the worst trade ever made. “Everyone,” Harrison continued, “would praise me for doing nothing.” And despite that awkward self-centering, it is most likely true that Harrison would still be receiving praise if he had, in fact, done nothing at last season’s trade deadline. If he had accepted that he had built a title-contending version of the Dallas Mavericks, albeit one that didn’t quite match his preferred vision, that didn’t quite employ all his best friends, that wasn’t quite wholly his.
On Tuesday, Harrison was fired as general manager of the Dallas Mavericks, a decision made overnight by Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont after the team’s governor decided there was no longer any use delaying what had become to be seen as an inevitability. In a bland six-paragraph statement, Dumont said, in part, “When the results don’t meet expectations, it’s my responsibility to act.” In other words, it was untenable for Harrison’s tenure to continue, not with the team’s 3-8 start, the continued chants of “Fire Nico” from the stands, the glum reluctance from the players to return home from road trips knowing the unsettled discomfort that existed within their home arena.
Harrison was victim to his own ego. For three consecutive seasons, Harrison had made major trade deadline moves that were initially criticized, at least in part, by the mainstream analysis. As time went on, the outlook on those trades had turned rosier when they mostly yielded results. To Harrison, it was proof indeed that fortune favors the bold. That Harrison’s decision to systematically stamp out the messy system in place under Mark Cuban for a more corporate Nike-style, even at the expense of many long tenured employees who had held earned power outside their specific job titles through respect and competence, was clearly the right one. So Harrison kept ousting employees he was unfamiliar with and, at his fourth trade deadline, moved on from the most powerful of these people in his boldest decision yet.
That decision, to trade Luka Dončić, finally went too far. It was one he ultimately couldn’t survive.
There had always been signs that Harrison was underwater in his front office role. In the first years, front office executives around the league found it curious how difficult it was to reach him on the phone, league sources said, until more of those responsibilities were shifted to assistant general manager Matt Riccardi. Some trades were surprisingly pricy for the returns; others that likely would’ve been mistakes, like how Harrison attempted to deal two first-rounders for Kyle Kuzma, went unpunished despite Harrison’s best efforts. One team source recalls a document where Harrison placed Jrue Holiday within the same trade target tier as Nikola Jokić. While at Nike, Harrison’s role involved talent evaluation. But from the very first moment he was hired, several league sources say, there were questions whether those evaluations would translate to coherent team building.
Even then, Dončić’s presence meant that Harrison’s team building objectives were never all that uncertain: Acquire 3-and-D athletes; get rim-running centers; and let Dončić make it all come together. Harrison, clearly, underestimated how much Dončić contributed to that equation. After trading him, however, Harrison entered into an uncharted team-building path where his own objectives were the team’s priority.
Harrison may always believe that his vision would have worked if it had been given a chance to prove itself. It was always foreseeable, even predictable, that the injury-prone players he tied his fate to, Anthony Davis and Kyrie Irving, would be prone to injuries. But Harrison’s vision was one where he didn’t seriously pursue a proper point guard for the season’s opening months. It was one that head coach Jason Kidd clearly didn’t buy into. Not only did Kidd refuse to start D’Angelo Russell for the season’s opening games, but he also almost completely avoided playing Davis and Dereck Lively II in the same lineup except for their nominal minutes together as starters. (They played just 29 minutes together in the three games they were available.) Dallas has the league’s 29th-ranked offense, barely ahead of the injury crisis known as the Indiana Pacers. If Davis, Lively and Daniel Gafford can be healthy all at once, it’s unlikely that lineups predicated on two non-shooting big men playing alongside each other will suddenly fix this flailing offense.
Curiously enough, Dumont’s statement wasn’t a rebuke of Harrison’s philosophy or a plea that Dumont himself had shifted perspectives. That’s alright, although it puts even more of a priority onto who will steer this franchise into its future, newly focused around Cooper Flagg as the guiding light. (If Harrison had remained in charge, you could not have guaranteed that was sole priority.) Right now, the Mavericks have announced it’ll be the team’s two assistant GMs, Riccardi and Michael Finley, leading the front office in the coming months. As first reported by our own Marc Stein and ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, minority owner Mark Cuban is pushing for Dennis Lindsey, who advised the front office during the team’s 2023-24 season, which culminated in a failed run to the Finals. Lindsey, formerly the architect behind the multiple-50-win Utah Jazz teams, is currently second behind general manager Trajan Langdon in Detroit. Lindsey’s family remains in Dallas, a league source tells ALLCITY Network, which could make this job appealing for him, although possibly not until next summer.
This all sets up a fascinating question: How much does Dumont allow this interim front office to chart Dallas’ future in any direction?
Dumont once trusted Harrison and his ideas so much that he greenlit the very Luka Dončić trade that began this “get fired” speedrun challenge that Harrison just aced. Again, that’s fine, but is that someone who will confidently give the “tear it down” nod without being influenced to do so. Because Dallas lucked into Flagg, he might do exactly that. There’s no harm in resetting this entire franchise around the timeline of the player who provides reason to be excited for the future. That said, league sources caution how robust of a trade market, in this scenario, might really exist for Davis, who makes $54 million this season. The type of sale that Dallas has is more garage than estate.
Even then, the only first rounder Dallas has control over until 2031 is this year’s. If selling players is needed to make sure there’s another lottery pick added to this team — even if Dallas didn’t have any trouble losing games with its current roster — then that’s reason to do so. But Flagg’s going to be very good very soon, and there are still younger veterans on this team that Dallas won’t wholly jettison by next season when trying again to win is the only sensible path forward.
Harrison won’t be tasked with any of those decisions anymore. He was once atop of the world and praised for it. This results-based world ignored his sometimes shaky, oft-forgiving process that led to his results. It gave him more credit for Dallas’ success than Harrison ever gave to Dončić for his role in it. Now fired, he might still believe that time never told whether his vision was correct. But it’s still a results-based world. Given that Harrison could have simply done nothing, and been praised for it, Dallas was never going to stomach what they’ve lately been.
