In his seemingly never-ending effort to explain it, Harrison has given a number of incriminating press conferences. He is totally out of touch, displaying a psychology-textbook-level of cognitive dissonance about how “Kyrie, Klay, PJ, Anthony Davis and Lively… that’s a championship-caliber team.”
But through all the noise and bothersome quotes, reporters are starting to piece together a picture of who Harrison really is. And it’s starting to make all this make sense.
In the latest of several notebook-emptying articles, ESPN’s Tim MacMahon brought us behind the scenes of Harrison vs. his own medical staff, and how he fired longtime Mavericks director of health and performance Casey Smith via video call while he was visiting his sick mother. The revamped staff never gelled with Doncic or his people, and that may have been one of the many reasons Harrison decided to cut bait on the biggest fish he’ll ever see.
But I don’t see it that way. I see a megalomaniac who saw enemies everywhere, one who was so convinced of his own correctness that he built a world where trading Doncic was the right thing to do. And if that’s who Harrison really is — and every quote paints that picture more clearly — he was always going to trade Luka. Because stars are the real power figures in any NBA franchise. And Luka, as a star who Harrison didn’t have a previously collaborative relationship with from his time at Nike, was always going to be a threat to his authority.
Someone didn’t even need to have as much sway as Luka for Harrison to view them as a threat. Take Casey Smith, for example. The longtime trainer was a pillar of the Dallas Mavericks’ organization, which should have made him one of Harrison’s most important allies. Instead, Harrison saw someone with the potential to undercut his decisions and provide an alternate viewpoint, so he removed him. According to one source MacMahon quoted, “He was 100 percent threatened by him.” Another source told ESPN that his firing because he was “too negative.”
