Nine months aftertrading away Luka Doncicin a move that stunned and bewildered the sports world — and left Dallas fans livid — Mavericks owner/governor Patrick Dumont is set to fire general manager Nico Harrison.
The axe was expected to fall Tuesday morning at a meeting in Dallas, according to multiple reports.
As of this writing, it is unclear who will take over as GM of the franchise, both in the interim and in the long term.
Momentum toward the decision has been building since the moment the trade was announced and the fan backlash started in Dallas, which included mock funerals for the franchise and “fire Nico” chants at games. It was fueled at the start of this season by the Mavericks stumbling out of the gate to a 3-8 record, while Doncic is in the best shape of his life and has played like an MVP in Los Angeles — averaging 37.1 points, 9.4 rebounds and 9.1 assists a night — lifting the Lakers to an 8-3 start.
Trading away a player entering his prime who had taken the Mavericks to the Finals two seasons before was an unfathomable decision. However, Harrinson — a long-time Nike executive who had a strong relationship with Kobe Bryant — was convinced we had seen peak Doncic, that he wasn’t committed enough to conditioning and the game to take the team to the next level.
Dumont signed off on the trade at the time, backing his GM Harrison (and likely okay with trading away a player they otherwise would have been up for, and deserved, the largest contract in NBA history).
However, in a courtside interaction on Monday with a young fan, Dumont reportedly admitted his mistake. Dumont was approached by Nicholas Dickason, whose father forced him to apologize to Dumont for flipping him off after San Antonio blew out Dallas on opening night. Dickason later told Mike Curtis of the Dallas News that Dumont admitted he made a mistake in approving the trade, saying, “‘Sometimes you have good intentions and you make mistakes.’ We all do it.”
It was the negativity from the fan base about the trade that ultimately did in Harrison more than the record — the NBA is an entertainment business, and angering the people who spend their hard-earned money on tickets and jerseys is bad for business. Harrison and Dumont underestimated how much the fan base was attached to Doncic and saw him as one of their own, a lifelong Maverick in the Dirk Nowitzki mold (and Doncic admitted he saw himself that way too, it took a while for him to come to grips with being traded). Dickason had spoken with Dumont Monday while wearing a Doncic Lakers jersey.
Anger about the trade subsided some after the Mavericks got lucky in last season’s NBA Draft Lottery and, with a 1.8% chance, jumped up to the top spot and was able to draft Cooper Flagg No. 1. There was hope that Flagg, Anthony Davis (the primary player Dallas got back in the trade) and Kyrie Irving (out injured until mid-season recovering from a torn ACL) could have the team at the top of the West. Instead, without Irving and with Davis missing more than half the team’s games so far due to injury (a very predictable outcome, based on Davis’ history), coach Jason Kidd has tried using Flagg as a point forward, and the Mavericks have looked lost. While it’s possible that all the puzzle pieces fit together once Irving is healthy (expected later this season, but there is no specific timeline), this team will be in such a deep hole in the stacked Western Conference that the Mavericks will struggle to climb out.
Harrison was the GM who assembled key parts of the 2024 Mavericks’ Finals team, making key in-season trades for P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford. He had made other smart moves as a GM, but he made one massive miscalculation that ultimately cost him his job and set the Mavericks way back.