On February 1st, the basketball world, and my Dallas Mavericks fandom, was shaken pretty aggressively by the surprising, unthinkable trade of young superstar and Dirk heir, Luka Doncic.
Every piece of communication made by the team, or Nico Harrison himself since has made things worse, including the press conference immediately after.
As a way of wrapping my brain around the loss of my favorite teams’ favorite player, I tried to go back in time and rewriting the speech given by Nick Harrison, to see if there was a way to sell this transaction to a fanbase that has felt belittled, denigrated and insulted nearly every day since the trade happened.
I’m not saying I agree with the trade, the thinking behind it, or almost any move the Dallas Mavericks as an organization have made since. I’m merely trying to see if, communicated differently and giving the benefit of the doubt, there was ever a path forward. If I were Nico Harrison and I had to sell this to the fanbase, here’s what I would’ve said:
Hi everyone, thank you for coming.
Since I got here, I’ve had one mission: To build the Dallas Mavericks into a championship team.
Every single move I’ve made has been to try and achieve that goal, including this one.
Luka Doncic is a tremendous player, who should have one if not two MVP trophies. He is an outstanding teammate, man, father and friend. His future is so bright. Over the last three seasons, led by Luka, we have come so close to achieving our goal: to bring a championship to Dallas.
Going into this season, we felt like we had one of, if not the, best roster in the NBA, top to bottom. As the season unfolded, we felt like our roster as constructed was not one that could win an NBA title. But we developed a plan to get there.
And unfortunately, it meant parting ways with our young superstar, in one of the hardest decisions I’d ever have to make. We knew what was ultimately missing on our roster was a 7’ in the mold of a Dirk offensively, with a bit more athleticism and speed, who would anchor our defense, like Tyson Chandler did back with Dirk in 2011. And that player is Anthony Davis. There is not a better two way player in the league, and Jason Kidd was beyond excited about the possibilities of pairing him with Kyrie and Klay, with PJ on the wing and then Gafford or Lively at the five. It will allow us to play with pace, size and energy on both ends of the floor that we feel like we need to achieve to be a championship squad. Jason will be able to tell you more about this as him and his staff continue put together a plan.
