Ever since Nico Harrison’s end-of-season press conference, Dallas Mavericks fans have been overflowing with uncertainty as the organization approaches the offseason. Despite making some good moves throughout his time as GM, Harrison’s decision to trade Luka Doncic has compromised his trust with Mavericks fans, and there’s no true indication as to what the Mavericks will do this offseason, considering how volatile Harrison has proven to act.
Harrison did a poor job of trying to justify the trade in both of his final two media appearances this season, and it’s needless to say that Mavericks fans are ready for him and the organization to be quiet about the trade at this point, as the pain from this disastrous move is bound to keep trickling down every time Doncic does something notable or when the Mavericks struggle.
Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont and Harrison obviously didn’t accurately forecast how badly this trade would impact fan perception, and now Dumont is trying to play crisis control because of his decision to blindly trust Harrison with a franchise-altering move. In a recent article by reporter Tim Cato of DLLS Sports, Cato exposed the mounting tension (subscription required) between Harrison and Dumont, and many Mavericks fans who are pleading for Harrison’s removal will be happy at what this report hinted might be happening behind Dallas’ walls.
Cato reported that calls from the Mavericks fanbase for Dumont to fire Nico Harrison “[have] certainly been noted.” “However, those team sources consistently express belief that Dumont no longer sees Harrison as a figure with irreproachable basketball expertise,” Cato also wrote. “Most notably, team and league sources say, Dumont has had frustration with Harrison not warning him — or, perhaps even more damningly, being unaware — of the fandom’s outrage following the trade. Those same sources say it had some influence over Dumont’s decision to make Harrison appear for last week’s closed media event, which Harrison did not want to.”
Cato’s article clearly exposes how much dysfunction is brewing at the forefront of Dallas’ front office, and as naive as Dumont may have been about the NBA before this trade, he’s a businessman and it’s clear he’s getting agitated at all the revenue the Mavericks are expected to lose in the near future because of Harrison’s ill-advised decision.
Obviously, it seems Dumont is seeing Harrison as far less of a basketball savant despite his ability to construct a roster that made it to the 2024 NBA Finals. Harrison single-handedly fractured his image as a GM by making the Doncic trade, and this won’t change barring imminent success for the Mavericks in the form of winning a championship in the next season or two.
Cato also wrote that Dumont isn’t necessarily ready to fire Harrison, but it’s clear from the reporting that Dumont is angered by how Harrison took advantage of him and didn’t give him a fair enough warning of how much trading Doncic would outrage the fanbase. There have also been rumors that Dumont wants to bring an experienced executive in alongside Harrison, which is exactly what Harrison doesn’t want, given his obsession with power and fully running a team.
It’s nice Dumont could be instilling checks and balances to ensure a catastrophe like the Doncic trade never happens again in Dallas, but he clearly hasn’t fully abandoned trust in Harrison, even if he is losing some trust in him. It would be too soon to admit such a plea of submission regarding the Doncic trade for someone with as much ego as Dumont, but in a vacuum, it’s clear that Mavericks fans’ desire for Harrison to be removed from the organization is completely justified.
