Nico Harrison traded the franchise’s star player, someone beloved by fans, and what he got back made Dallas older, shortened whatever championship window they had and placed that hope on the bodies of a couple of players with long injury histories. This season, his team is off to a 2-7 start, which has them dead last in the West — they went from a Finals team in 2024 to one that does not threaten anyone in the conference. While they landed the No. 1 pick, Cooper Flagg, he is being played out of position, and it shows.
All of which begs the question: Is Harrison’s job in danger in Dallas? It’s a valid question, reports Tim MacMahon of ESPN on his Howdy Partners podcast.
“A legitimate question right now is: Is Nico Harrison’s job in serious jeopardy? That is an absolutely legitimate question. It’s the question obviously Mavericks fans have been hoping would be answered with an affirmative since early February, I don’t have a firm answer for you right now that you know that that’s as much as I can tell you, but it is absolutely legitimate question. When you talk to people about the Mavericks around the league, it is the first question that people are asking.”
Luka Doncic, averaging 40 points a game this season, being an offense unto himself and lifting the Lakers to a 7-2 record with a top-10 offense in the league, is salt in the wound for Mavericks fans watching their team have the worst offense in the league through nine games.
However, the Doncic trade never happens if team owner/governor Patrick Dumont doesn’t sign off on it (it may not have been hard to talk him into not giving Doncic what would have been the largest contract extension in league history). Harrison can also point to the ACL injury to Kyrie Irving that has him out until mid-season at some point — plus shorter-term injuries to Anthony Davis and Dereck Lively II — as mitigating factors. However, as MacMahon notes in the podcast, Irving’s injury was known and the team had all summer to find a solution (D’Angelo Russell is not a solution), and they traded for Davis knowing his injury history.
All of which makes one wonder if Dumont has the stones to fire Harrison, in a move that would be seen as a tacit admission that the Doncic trade failed, a trade he approved? Does he give Harrison more rope, hope the Mavericks start to turn things around, or does he go the route we saw from GMs in Memphis and Denver last season, where once the decision to move on from a coach (and GM in Denver) was made, it happened rapidly without concern for timing?
Cooper Flagg is going to prove to be a star in this league, but he’s a rookie with a steep learning curve asked to play out of position as a point forward and initiate the offense (watch any point guard who comes into the league and, just like quarterback in the NFL, you see it takes time to adjust and comes with bumps and bruises along the way). The 1.8% luck that landed Dallas that pick only buys management so much of a grace period.
Is that grace period about to be up in Dallas?