“*The easiest thing for me to do is nothing, and everyone would praise me for doing nothing.*” —Nico Harrison
It’s important to remember, as the Mavericks spend the next decade digging out of the wreckage that Nico Harrison wrought, that none of this had to happen. Harrison did not need to snuff out the team’s bright future by exiling the best basketball player ever to wear its uniform, and he damn sure did not need to trade Luka Dončić to the Los Angeles Lakers. Harrison did not need to do this for a return that other people in his profession made fun of long before the post-Dončić Mavs underperformed even the lowest expectations. For that matter, the Mavericks did not need to accost their fanbase for daring to feel betrayed by Harrison’s actions, and they did not need to skirt accountability like a cat conducting a jewel heist. Above all, the Mavericks did not need to spend the last nine months hemorrhaging wins, attendance, dollars, and, most of all, credibility—the collateral damage of one guy getting really mad at work.
Try as he might, Nico Harrison never stood for the Dallas Mavericks. As of this morning, he is out of a job. He’ll likely never again work in the NBA or even in NBA circles, which is as it should be. You may be able to come back from waging internal political warfare, firing a beloved senior staff member by Zoom as he tended to his dying mother, perhaps even making the greatest, most loyal athlete in Dallas history wary of the Mavericks’ whole deal. But you cannot do all of those things and trade a civic treasure and express zero remorse for it. For that, you get shitcanned, and you stay shitcanned.
Now that Harrison is gone, it’s impossible not to watch this video of him at last night’s game and wonder if he knew what was coming. He, like everyone else, spent the last nine months watching “Fire Nico” reach Green Eggs & Ham status: applicable in any situation, for any reason, under any circumstance. Because we heard it at Mavs games and at their own draft party, but also at college games near and far from the American Airlines Center. For that matter, we heard “Fire Nico” at baseball games, hockey games, and soccer games. Near the Rio Grande and in the heart of the Midwest. On parade routes, at film premieres, in Medieval Times, before pro wrestling shows. And it’s been spotted on at least one vanity license plate. “Fire Nico” transcended basketball long before this new, terribly depressing Mavs season began. It became Dallas culture.
Of course, the chant would not have become so pervasive had Harrison made only a run-of-the-mill terrible deal like, say, trading Quentin Grimes for Caleb Martin. (Alas, he did that, too.) And had the aftermath of the Dončić trade been different, “Fire Nico” might not have germinated like it did, either. It endured because Nico Harrison, so eager to take credit for Doing Stuff in the earliest days after the trade, became evasive upon realizing that the situation was as doomed as everyone else already knew it was. He hid behind security guards and staged camera-free media availabilities. He slunk out of the American Airlines Center via portable stairs to avoid confrontation. On the rare times Harrison did show face, he front ran. Scorned fans? They’ll be back when we win. The blind luck of winning the Cooper Flagg pick? People are finally starting to see the vision. Championships? Won by defense.
Few were fooled, and even fewer forgave, and “Fire Nico” grew louder. It became a meme to express anger at people who ruin things that you donate your time, attention, and money to, and who give you zero reason to believe they give a damn about you. Whether or not that excuses Harrison getting run up on at a Twin Peaks in Addison, it at least informs the situation. If not at Twin Peaks, when was the next time that someone—anyone—was guaranteed an audience with him?
Firing Harrison is the start of how people move on, but it is hardly the finish. This was always bigger than him. Patrick Dumont has been seen and heard from even less than the Mavs’ now-former general manager. His only public comments about the trade took place at a ticketed real estate event held in a hotel ballroom. Despite that, in the open letter he penned to the fanbase announcing Harrison’s departure, he guaranteed transparency. Notably missing was any examination of the events between the Mavs winning the Western Conference Finals in May 2024 and the 2025-26 NBA season, aside from terming them a “difficult last several months.”
Add that to the Adelson family’s, shall we say, bold tactic to try to oust the Stars from joint control of the AAC, ahead of a looming battle with the city of Dallas over the team’s next arena, and the score remains the same. The Dončić trade was always about power: how it can be wielded by out-of-towners over local institutions and how it shields them from the ramifications over how they operate. And the Mavericks’ most powerful out-of-towners aren’t going anywhere.
So where does that leave Dallas? Ideally with the better tomorrow Dumont promised in that letter. There is a way to retcon some of the last nine months as an executive doing what smart C suiters should: trusting his middle manager to make a call in a field where the boss has no experience. There is no excuse for being that obtuse about what Luka Dončić meant here, of course, let alone sanctioning an arena-wide campaign to silence dissent over the trade. But perhaps lessons have been learned. The teachable moments are aplenty.
Know this, though: we are years away from a Mavericks renaissance. Back in March, Josh Bowe outlined all the ways Harrison marooned this roster in deep waters, and while Flagg obviously changed that equation, Dallas still does not have control over any of its first-round picks from 2027 through 2030. (We’ll have Josh on StrongSide: The Show tomorrow.) Whoever assumes Harrison’s post will need to offload a number of veterans and wait out the contracts of those he can’t. He’ll need to hope that Dallas’ 2026 draft pick yields a talent almost as impressive as Flagg—the crop is deep; it’s possible—and pray that Dereck Lively’s body holds up better over his next 10 seasons than it has in the first two. Most of all, that general manager and his bosses will need to make a jaded city believe in the Mavericks once again, even when Luka Dončić and his revenge bod inevitably win an MVP in Los Angeles, if not a championship.
There’s a lot of work to be done. All because Nico Harrison couldn’t sit by and just do nothing.
Author
Mike Piellucci
Mike Piellucci
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Mike Piellucci is D Magazine's sports editor. He is a former staffer at The Athletic and VICE, and his freelance work has been featured in The New York Times, Sports Illustrated, Los Angeles Magazine and The Ringer. A Dallas native, he is a graduate of Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas and the University of Southern California. He’s a big fan of Star Wars and Johnny Cash.