Apr 9, 2025; Dallas, Texas, USA; Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison during the game between the Dallas Mavericks and the Los Angeles Lakers at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images It’s probably time for Dallas Mavericks general manager Nico Harrison to just stop talking.
The Mavericks were unceremoniously bounced from the NBA Play-In Tournament, and Harrison wasted no time facing the noise on this failed season when he met with the media on Monday afternoon.
“I did know that Luka was important to the fan base,” Harrison said. “I didn’t quite know it to what level.”
If that quote isn’t bad enough when the little tiny voice inside your head reads it, you should actually try listening to Harrison babble that quote out. It’s somehow even worse.
He proceeds to explain that he believed a team of Kyrie Irving, P.J. Washington, Klay Thompson, Dereck Lively and Anthony Davis was a championship-caliber team.
What?
You traded Luka Doncic, one of the best players of this generation, to the Los Angeles Lakers — the team that already employs LeBron James, arguably the greatest player of all time. Forget about the Mavericks competing for an NBA title — they aren’t even as good as the team they made the trade with in their own conference.
But what is Harrison supposed to say? There’s nothing he can do now. Many basketball fans wondered if Mavericks brass would have had enough of the backlash and fired Harrison to make a stance.
That seems unlikely.
Instead, it seems like the Mavericks will stand by the guy who made an incredibly controversial trade and will continue to make excuses for a move that will never make sense. It has already cost them buy-in from the fans. Dirk Nowitzki, the most beloved player in the history of Dallas basketball, is at odds with the organization over Harrison’s cold-blooded firing of longtime Mavericks staffer Casey Smith.
It’s ugly right now in Dallas, but there’s no undoing it.
Since the trade cannot be undone, it would be in Harrison’s best interest to go away for a while. Right after the trade happened, Davis predictably got injured. Then, the Mavericks lost Kyrie Irving to a season-ending injury as well. The basketball gods were not kind to Dallas after this trade transpired. Take it on the chin and try to regroup for next year. It’s all you can do.
Now that the season wrap-up media availability is over, everybody inside the Mavericks organization should enjoy some time off — far away from microphones or the media.
The more Harrison talks, the more he goes viral — and somehow, the worse this trade looks as time goes on.
The Mavericks will be pulling for the Minnesota Timberwolves very hard in the first round of the NBA Playoffs. The last thing they need is for Doncic’s Lakers to make a deep run in the NBA Playoffs.
But this is officially the season of doom for the Mavericks, so that run to the NBA championship sort of feels inevitable.
