Nico Harrison deserved to be fired.
He sealed his fate on February 1, at 11:12 p.m. EST, when the former Nike executive turned general manager made the most foolish and irrational trade in recent sports history.
Harrison sent Luka Doncic — one of the four best players in the NBA and a five-time All-NBA First Team selection — to the Los Angeles Lakers for . . . does it matter? He traded Luka Doncic eight months after Doncic led the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals.
Read that sentence again. It’s stupefying.
But the Mavericks’ return for the 25-year-old generational talent is relevant and is also the reason Harrison will likely never work in an NBA front office again.
For Luka Doncic, the Mavericks received Anthony Davis, a 10-time NBA All-Star nicknamed “Street Clothes” due to his propensity for sitting on the bench in street clothes, a promising rotation piece (Max Christie), and the Lakers’ 2029 1st-round pick. That’s it.
For comparison: The Utah Jazz obtained four first round picks (three unprotected) and a pick swap for Rudy Gobert. Mikal Bridges, who has never been selected to an All-Star team, fetched five unprotected firsts for the Brooklyn Nets! Harrison never orchestrated a bidding war. He didn’t negotiate with anyone other than the Lakers Rob Pelinka. Instead, he was fixated on teaming oft-injured Anthony Davis with oft-injured Kyrie Irving.
“If you pair [Davis] with Kyrie and the rest of the guys, he fits with our time frame to win now and in the future,” Harrison said in February. “The future to me is three, four years from now. Ten years from now, I don’t know. They’ll probably bury me and J (Mavericks coach Jason Kidd) by then. Or we bury ourselves.”
Give him points for self-awareness.
The results have been predictable. Davis, who was hurt at the time of the trade, suffered a left abductor strain in his Mavericks debut. He played just nine games last season. The 32-year-old center (who still thinks he’s a power forward) then arrived overweight to training camp, promptly injured his calf, and has spent the last six games on the bench in, yes, street clothes next to Kyrie Irving. The Mavericks gifted point guard tore his ACL about a month after the Doncic trade because we live in a cruel world and when it rains, it pours. Pick your favorite cliché.
Harrison compounded his colossal error over the summer. Though aware Irving would be unavailable until 2026 at the earliest, he failed to acquire a true facilitator or capable shot creator — unless you consider the much-traveled D’Angelo Russell (now on his sixth team in 11 seasons, not counting his multiple spells with the Lakers and in Brooklyn) to be either.
Predictably, the Mavericks record sits at 3-8, good for 14th place in the loaded Western Conference.
Meanwhile, Luka Doncic is thriving in Los Angeles despite a mismatched roster, the absence of an injured LeBron James, and the lingering cloud of James’ future hanging over the franchise. Through seven games, the slimmed down Don is averaging 37.1 points 9.4 rebounds and 9.1 assists for the first place Lakers. Harrison believed that Doncic’s off-court habits — the hookah, the occasional beer and fast-food burger, an aversion to cardio and weight training — would quickly catch up to him. They’d make him more susceptible to soft tissue injuries such as the calf strain that knocked him out for six weeks at the start of last season. Doncic took it personal.
The Luka Revenge Tour will continue despite the public humiliation and dismissal of the man responsible for it.
Mavericks fans revolted on the night of the trade with organic protests sprouting outside the American Airlines Center in the midnight hour. Since then, their furor has intensified with each loss and each setback. The “Fire Nico” chants have grown louder. Monday night’s loss to the Milwaukee Bucks was a decisive moment for new Mavericks owner Patrick Dumont.
Sitting courtside, Dumont struck up a conversation with an 18-year-old fan in a purple and gold Luka Doncic jersey. He reportedly showed contrition for the trade and told the kid he’d make it up to fans. Less than 24 hours later, he fired Harrison.
It must be stated that Dumont, a former investment banker who married into the billionaire Adelson family, was fully on board with trading Doncic. He allowed Harrison to convince him that Doncic was too much of a risk to sign to the five-year $345 million extension he would’ve been eligible for last summer. While Dumont should be praised for pivoting from Harrison, he must not be absolved for signing off on the trade. Now he will hire the person entrusted with constructing a roster around Cooper Flagg, the 18-year-old phenom Dallas lucked into last spring after winning the NBA lottery.
Squint and there is a reasonable path forward for the Mavericks. Trade AD at the February deadline. Don’t rush Kyrie Irving back. Tank the season. Hope like hell the ping pong balls fall in their favor once again. (The 2026 draft is loaded and will be the last time Dallas controls their first-round pick until 2031.) Deal Irving over the summer. Reload around Flagg, 21-year-old big man Dereck Lively II, and whatever assets they accumulate over the next nine months.
Dallas Mavericks fans should have mixed feelings about the future. There are teams in worse shape than them, franchises with less hope and bleaker prospects. Plus, the despised public face of this debacle is now gone. But the person in charge remains and will now oversee the most unnecessary rebuild in the history of sports.