Nico Harrison Takes The Fall

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You’d be hard-pressed to call it a surprise. It happening, that is — the Mavericks firing their now legendarily scapeGOATed GM, Nico Harrison, for making what is widely considered the worst trade in the history of the NBA.

And yet, the timing is curious. It happened Tuesday morning, nine months after he traded then-25-year-old super-duper-star Luka Doncic for then-31-year-old just-regular-superstar Anthony Davis. Nine months, which is kind of a long time away from the fireable offense in question, no? If it was that bad, shouldn’t this have happened, I don’t know, nine months ago? Although, if it was damage control you were after, you might’ve been better off going for ten months ago.

It does make me wonder, as others have been wondering this week, whether Mavs governor Patrick Dumont — peerless NBA historian that he is — may have kept Harrison around just long enough for the team to start losing, so he could unload him at an even lower point than the immediate aftermath.

When the Mavs improbably won the lottery, getting their hands on an excellent prospect in Cooper Flagg, it looked as if the basketball gods might’ve felt bad for Harrison. These days, it doesn’t look that way anymore. As was the concern all along, Davis has barely played. Kyrie’s still out, too, and in his absence, Dallas’ aforementioned star rookie, Flagg, has already lived out his entire career as an NBA point guard. Didn’t work out, and the team has zero juice. They’re the worst offense in the league,

I think it’s fair to ask how many NBA teams do have juice when they’re down their two best players. Indiana has been horrendous this year without Tyrese Haliburton. The Celtics aren’t exactly lighting it up short Jayson Tatum. How much worse would they be if they were also missing, respectively, Pascal Siakam and Jaylen Brown?

The problem is, it was perfectly foreseeable that Davis might miss a lot of time. It’s all he’s ever done, and just like the rest of us — sigh — he’s not getting younger. When you deal for a guy who’s been that frequently injured before he turns 30, you kinda get what you pay for as his fourth decade wears on.

And the core malpractice here from the very beginning was just not canvassing the league for a better deal. It didn’t have to be Davis, and, essentially, only Davis. (Sorry, Max Christie.) It could’ve been like five first-round picks! I wouldn’t, personally, but you can make a case that trading Doncic wasn’t crazy. He was childish, out of shape, seemingly quite entitled in Dallas. I get the frustration.

What I don’t get, and may never get, is the tunnel vision. That’s where you lose me.

I’m not sure that Harrison will ever make a comeback as a GM. He had a long and successful career at Nike prior to taking that role, so my feeling is he’s probably set for life.

And while much has been made of the story that made the rounds last year, the one about him blowing a pitch meeting with Steph Curry, my guess is that pretty much everyone who gets as high as Harrison got in that business has some version of that story under their belt.

For a brief, shining moment, Harrison’s willingness to buck the received wisdom of the league and make deals for players like Kyrie Irving, P.J. Washington and Daniel Gafford made him look like one of the smarter GMs going. They made their way back to the Finals in 2024, in large part, because of his roster-building.

But that still wasn’t the main reason they got there. The main reason was the guy he traded, and not even hitting the lottery jackpot could save him in the end. Harrison won’t be around to see what the Mavs can make of Flagg. The time will likely come when Flagg is the leader of this team, and they’re back to relevance a little quicker than — let’s be real — they deserve to be.

And it’s very rare to say, in our legacy-obsessed sports discourse, that anyone’s legacy is already settled. But I’d be willing to bet on this one. I only wish, for Harrison’s sake, that that wasn’t true. And that it was a little nicer. But I guess that’s why you don’t trade Luka Doncic.

🏀 Since we’ve been talking about the merits of dominance and dynasties lately, we should probably note that the OKC Thunder look friggin’ scary this year. I don’t think the Lakers are very good, but I was still impressed when the Thunder did that to them Wednesday night. Even more than Steph’s vintage 46, and Jokic’s absurd 55-point outburst (on 18-for-23 shooting, folks — tell that to Cade Cunningham), that’s my story of the NBA this week. They’re 12-1 and Jalen Williams hasn’t played yet. Look out, y’all.

⚾ I could’ve written about two separate earthshaking gambling scandals this week, which is sobering in itself. First, we got the news about Emmanuel Clase, which we’d known about in some form since July, but at least I personally kinda forgot about. As has been pointed out by many others, it remains very much unclear to me what the benefit for Clase even was here. The indictment reports payouts as small as $2,000. And while I’d have a use for that, a multiple-time All-Star closer with $15M in career earnings probably doesn’t. Or shouldn’t. Feel like I’m missing something here.

⚾ Much as Cal Raleigh must feel like he’s missing an MVP award right now. It was the only exciting award race of the season, as Shohei Ohtani unanimously won his fourth (in five years) and Paul Skenes and Tarik Skubal ran away with their respective Cy Youngs. It’s one of those years where you kinda wish they could just McNair-Manning it and split the damn thing. Raleigh was incredible this year. So was Aaron Judge. Gun to my head, I’d probably have gone Judge too, but I wouldn’t have felt good about it. A catcher hit 60 HRs! Just bad luck. Ah well.

🇯🇪 Then we had the Jersey mob x NCAA collab we never knew we needed. Is Jackie Jr. getting up to trouble at Rutgers again? I’m afraid not, folks. It’s worse than I feared. They’re wrestlers. We’re still waiting on any further details as to schools or athletes involved, but safe to say it hasn’t been like, an awesome week in terms of sports gambling.

📚 Book corner, baby! We’re so back. The Great Believers was pretty devastating start to finish, and maybe especially trying for me to read, as someone who spent longer than they’d have liked in a hospice unit this year, but man. That book really gets its claws into you. I was thoroughly hooked after a slow-ish start, for me, through the first 50 pages or so. Yale is one of those characters who I suspect will stick with me. Glad to have him.